Kendrick Lamar shifted Hip Hop culture with the release of To Pimp A Butterfly in 2015, though one of the album’s standout singles and its accompanying music video has been stirring up a frenzy in Northeast United States over the past few years.
On Tuesday (June 4), town council members in Vernon, Connecticut unanimously approved a $100,000 lawsuit settlement to cover the damages pertaining to a case filed two years ago.
In 2020, a social studies teacher at Vernon Center Middle School showed his eighth-grade classroom the documentary Hip Hop: Songs That Shook America. Among the subversive material birthed by the longstanding tradition of rap, the film features the visual for K. Dot’s “Alright,” which tackles police brutality and racism.
According to a lawsuit filed in 2022, the instructor was aware that one of his students was the son of a law-enforcement official. It also argued that “the video depicted officers as murderers and contained other shockingly violent scenes and controversial statements about police officers.”
Because the boy in question had a diagnosed learning disorder and individualized education plan, the plaintiff claimed that the incident caused him emotional and psychological distress.
According to the New Haven Register, this includes “post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression, shock, confusion, sadness, feeling unsafe, and social withdrawal, some or all of which necessitate psychological treatment and counseling and if unresolved, pose the risk of severe mental illness.
“Along with physical manifestations that include nausea, headaches, and malaise, the student is also alleged to have been stigmatized for being the child of a police officer, which caused friends and others to disassociate with him, according to the lawsuit.”
Additionally, legal documents claim that “some or all of the aforementioned injuries necessitated (the student) change schools, as a result of which he has suffered loss and damages.”
The Board of Education will most likely finalize the settlement next week considering Superintendent Joseph Macary was at the aforementioned council meeting.
“We always do what’s in the best interest of students, and each student is different so each decision is different, but it’s always what’s best for the kids,” he said about the ongoing matter.
Despite this spot of controversy, Kendrick Lamar’s “Alright” has otherwise been showered with acclaim, thanks in part to it becoming the unofficial anthem of the Black Lives Matter movement.
The accolades continued to roll in last month when Spotify crowned it the greatest Hip Hop song of the streaming era (2015–present), beating out smash hits like Cardi B‘s “Bodak Yellow” and Drake‘s “God Plan.”
