In an interview with MTV News, Lamar said it was inspired by his trip to South Africa, witnessing other people's problems in the country: "their struggle was ten times harder." The track opens with lines from Alice Walker's The Color Purple, "Alls my life, I had to fight". The hook, "We gon' be alright!" allowed Lamar to use the symbolism inherent to spur the rest of the song's lyrics that eventually resonated with an entire movement. Originally, Pharrell Williams created the beat and only six months later, Williams came up with a hook that inspired Lamar to find the right lyrics. In 2019, it was named the best rap song of the 2010s by Pitchfork. The song was associated with Black Lives Matter after several youth-led protests were heard chanting the chorus, with some publications calling "Alright" the "unifying soundtrack" of the movement. "Alright" received four nominations at the 58th Grammy Awards: Song of the Year, Best Music Video, Best Rap Performance and Best Rap Song, winning the latter two. Most music publications considered it among the best songs and videos of the year, highlighting their message in the social context of the time. "Alright" was released to radio stations as the album's fourth single on June 30, 2015. Lyrically a festive song about hope, it features uncredited vocals from the song's co-producer Pharrell Williams during the chorus. This device doubly serves as a visual expression of feeling uplifted, away from your past struggles as well as a (perhaps unconscious) Christian symbol, which has him rising in a saintly manner away from temptation and sin. Then comes the finale, culminating in the strongest form of Christian symbolism around: that of tragic martyrdom." Alright" is a song by American rapper Kendrick Lamar, taken from his third album To Pimp a Butterfly (2015). And the hopeful feeling Lamar is trying to capture is expressed in the exhilirating sequences where he's physically rising above the ground. It begins with an intro exploring inner-city violence and subsequent police brutality, paired with his monologue shedding light on his past struggles with growing up in a ghetto, as well as his subsequent ethical struggles with becoming an influential figure.
But despite that, Lamar supplies irrepressibly positive energy. We are immersed into Kendrick Lamar's hyperreal world, which casts the city as a bitterly oppressive environment that leads its residents to a life of vice, hussle and the pursuit of hope. It's an epic, nearly seven-minute long piece, featuring the exceptional cinematographic eyes of two DoPs - Rob Witt and Corey Jennings – and thrillingly high energy shots involving street parties, burning cars and joyrides of reckless abandon. Colin Tilley has created one of the videos of the year for Kendrick Lamar's Alright, a landmark work for the summer of 2015.
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