It was a rainy day in the middle of a long rainy season, and perhaps that dampened the curiosity of casual fans. A good chunk of the seats reserved for sponsors and subscribers ended up open. The top section of the club filled up with folks from the line.
Joah Spearman (CEO, Localeur; board of directors, KLRU): It was the most diverse “Austin City Limits” taping I’ve ever been to by far. I’ve gone to dozens of tapings. … I probably had eight or 10 black male friends with me at that show.
Reggie Coby (musician, rapper): I was up top on the balcony and the people who were the rich people were down (below). You could tell that they weren’t really Kendrick Lamar fans. Up top we were going nuts.
Evelyn Ngugi: We got in, got in our seats. It was me and my friend and we were like the only black people in our section.
Though the audience at the Kendrick Lamar taping seemed more diverse than the average “ACL” taping, black people were still a small percentage of the crowd, and there’s an inherent tension when a black artist known for making music that revels in blackness plays to a majority white crowd.
Jonathan “Chaka” Mahone (rapper): “The Blacker the Berry” got me high. I don’t know how Austin felt … I remember looking around and realizing that the crowd didn’t seem to connect with that song as deeply as I do, but that song right there took me to a place that I needed to go spiritually.
Joah Spearman: It was the first “ACL” taping that, myself as a black man, I felt like it was a taping that was specifically for me. … Like, wow, I’m hearing him in Austin, Texas, I’m one of the 6 to 7 percent of black people in this city, and here’s a show where the artist looks like me. And the artist is talking about things that I’ve lived and all these things.
But Lamar’s message and his platform as an international artist transcend race. He remarked on it at multiple times during his set. He was an enthralling performer. Most of the crowd was thoroughly engaged. The energy level, the hype kept building throughout the night. Joah Spearman was swept up in the experience.
Joah Spearman: I had a sense that the show was coming to a close, and I kind of always had a sense that he was going to end with “Alright.” I didn’t know he had a set list that had other stuff on it, and there was a little pause, and I just started saying, “We gon’ be alright.”
The folks in Spearman’s group, including his fiancee, Susannah Haddad, picked up on the chant, and it rapidly spread.
Susannah Haddad (media and events coordinator, La Patisserie): Basically, it started from the crowd and just being like, this is how much we represent with this song.
Terry Lickona: We were sitting in the control room watching the show, of course, as it was happening. … It was certainly not the way we rehearsed it that afternoon and the director was, I can almost hear him shouting, “Get some shots of the crowd, get some shots of the crowd. People are chanting.” We didn’t know how long it was gonna go on … or how Kendrick would react to it.
Gary Menotti (director, “Austin City Limits”): That was not on the list to play (next). That was a forced effort from the audience.
The chant took over the room. Soon everyone in the house was shouting together, “We gon’ be alright.”
V. Marc Fort: The audience started chanting “Alright” and you could see it on his face that he was just overcome by the vibe in the room and how much everyone was feeling it. That was just a moment that you don’t experience or see at 99 percent of the concerts you go to, where the audience is able to show their love and the artist has to take a moment and pause.
Reggie Coby: It started kind of quiet, “We gon’ be alright,” and then it just grew, we were losing it up there at the top. … It felt like a moment.
Lamar took to the front of the stage like a conductor and began directing the chant.
Reggie Coby: He built into this crescendo, then he brought it back down and he brought it back up and I was just like, “This is, this is crazy.” I was going nuts at that point.
V. Marc Fort: Americans are seemingly at the most divided times in our history in the last 50 years, so that all of those things coming together right at that moment and then the song and the chorus and the lyrics coming together as an anthem for almost the healing of Americans, or of all of us together as people. It was just really a powerful, super powerful moment.
The overriding emotion in the room at that moment was elation, but race in America (and in Austin) is complicated. There was also a certain amount of tension.
Evelyn Ngugi: When we’re singing “We gon’ be alright,” it has a very different meaning for us than we saw in the entire space. So they’re just saying it like, “We’re gonna be alright,” and I’m like, “Be alright from what?” When me and my friend were singing it, we’re singing it with like our whole bodies and you know, when less melanated people who might be singing it, it’s kind of just like a song. … So that was a weird moment.
Reggie Coby: I really feel like that song captures that feeling, it’s like, yeah, we know (expletive’s) (expletive) up, we know the police ain’t rocking with us like that, they never have, but you know what? We survivors. We overcomers. We make it through everything we’ve been through, so just know that we gon’ be alright. So I feel like that’s perfect.
Joah Spearman: That song is so powerful that it doesn’t just speak to the black people in the audience — it speaks to everyone. So it’s the people who do use the hashtag black lives matter and it’s also for the people who are trying to understand what it means to those people.
Jonathan “Chaka” Mahone: Lamar was in a place as a leader. He has something deeper to give beyond music. I also felt that, for at least that moment, we all believed, and felt a unity that is hard to achieve outside of spaces that are not “religious.”
Joah Spearman: To have an album like his performed in a city like Austin, which isn’t necessarily a bastion of diversity, I think it was a special moment … I think for Austin to be the place that a special show like that happened is pretty powerful.
Terry Lickona: It was definitely one of the most historic shows that we’ve done. … It was by far my favorite show from last year, but it’s gonna resonate for a long time. And be kind of a benchmark in a way. Certainly one of those milestones, and hopefully it’s going to open the door to do more hip-hop and urban music at the show.
Andre Van Buren (artist relations, KLRU): The hip-hop show was live because at that time we hadn’t done anything like that. The last hip-hop show that they had was at the old theater. So having it at the Moody was just priceless, especially with Kendrick’s new album being as hot as it was at the time.
Joah Spearman: Someone like Kendrick Lamar 10 years ago, I don’t think he’d have the audience. He would just be known as an underground rapper, but I think because of what’s happening, I think his messages are so powerful and they transcend the hip-hop genre. … It went from OK, we’re talking about the plight of black people or police brutality or whatever to the status of the world today.
Amitiss Mahvash: (It’s) what we need and what the world needs.
Corey Baum: I went in like this guy is on fire right now and I watched that and was like this dude’s on fire, that wasn’t like a trick of the camera on TV, that was an incredible performer.
Susannah Haddad: I remember as we were walking outside the door there was a group of some friends that we knew who were hanging out kind of, you know, in the back. And we see each other, like Joah goes up to one of them and we all started jumping up and down, like, “That show was so good!”
Reggie Coby: (I was) super inspired … almost buzzing kind of, vibrating … like I had witnessed something, like I was a part of moment.
V. Marc Fortress: I didn’t know it would be life-changing, and it was for me personally… I think a lot of people left that concert either going home to start a new hip-hop act or trying to figure out another way they can make a change in the world. I doubt that I’m the only person that left that concert feeling inspired to figure out a way to make America alright.
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