Kendrick Lamar and The Handmaids Tale.

In Margaret Atwoods’s The Handmaid’s Tale, the first twenty chapters introduce readers to the rigid, suffocating world of Gilead, a theocracy that polices women’s bodies,identities and memories. Offread, the narrator, survives by holding onto language, memory and humor. Even though music isn’t shown from Gilead’s official culture, I wanted to put together a Kendrick Lamar playlist to represent Gilead. Kendrick is like Gilead because they both show oppression, survival, and identity just like The Handmaid’s own experiences. Five Songs that really stick out to me are “Alright”, “DNA”,” “The Blacker the Berry”, “HUMBLE” and “Swimming Pools(Drank). It serves as an echo of Offred’s voice, showing how her inner resistance grows against the attempts to silence her.

When Offred discovers the Latin phrase that was scratched into the wall (Nolite te bastardes carborundorum) she sees it as a lifeline. She admits, “It pleases me to ponder this message. It pleases me to think I am communicating with her, this unknown woman”(Page 52). The phrase becomes a way of asserting that she can survive even in secrecy. Kendrick Lamar’s “Alright” echoes this mood of hope. In the song he repeatedly says “We gon be alright.” Like Offred, it is a line that offers survival against all odds, not by denying any struggles or hardships but by naming it and pushing forward anyway. Both the song and the line scratched in the line shows despair through a rhythm and repetition, a beat, a phrase, and sign of persistence.

One of Gilead’s most cruel tactics is stripping women of their names and replacing them with nicknames (like Offred). Yet Offred insists on remembering who she once was: a mother, a wife, a friend. She recalls her daughter’s smile, her friend Moria’s daring and every small detail of her old life.” I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance”(Page 39). Kendrick Lamar’s DNA shows identity that can’t be erased. “I got loyalty, got royalty inside my DNA.” The lyrics show that no matter what the outside attempts to define or confine him, For Offred, her memories function as her DNA Gilead can rename her, but not memories of her past, her Luke, her Maria or her daughter can’t be erased. In both the novel and song, the inner theme is Identity.

In Chapter 13, the Handlaids attend a grotesque “Testifying” where a woman named Janine is forced to recount being gang-raped. Instead of sympathy, Aunt Lynda instructs the Handmaids to chant “Her Fault, her fault,her fault”(Page 72). This moment symbolizes the system’s cruelty and how women are dehumanized and reduced to their sexual functions. Kendrick Lamar’s “The Blacker the Berry” voices raw anger at systematic oppression. “You hate me, don’t you? You have my people, your plan is to terminate my culture.9 The intensity of the song resonates with the Handmaids reality. Just as Kendrick Lamar exposes the hypocrisy of a society that blames and punishes marginalized people for their suffering, Atwood shows a regime where women are blamed for the violence committed against them. Both works demand recognition of systematic brutality.

“Blessed are the meek,” Aunt Lyndua tells the handmaids,twisting scripture into a weapon(Page 33) Offred notes that the incompleteness of the command “she didn’t say anything about inheriting the earth.” Meekness in Gilead is not voluntary; it is enforced through punishment,surveillance, and ritual. Kendrick Lamar’s “HUMBLE” becomes ironic in this setting. The song “Sit down, be humble” mirrors the way Gilead insists on silencing women. While Kendrick uses it as a provocation, in Gilead, in Gilead the phrase becomes a demand for total submission. Read against Aunt Lyndua’s sermons, the track underscores the performance of humility that the Handmaids are forced to embody.

Offred normally retreats into her memories of life before Gilead, even when they pain her. When she recalls Luke or her daughter, she admits, “When I think about having sex with Luke, I remember feeling, not love so much as relief”(Page 68). These mental escapes are her form of intoxication: they show the constant terror of her present. Kendrick Lamar’s “Swimming Pools(Drank)” explores the temptation of drowning one’s pain in alcohol: “Why you babysitting only two or three shots? Ima show you how to turn it up a notch.” While Offred has no actual alcohol, her imagination and memory function as her coping mechanism, her drink. Like Kendrick, she recognizes both the relief and danger of this form of escape

Together, both Kendrick Lamar and The handmaid’s tail remind us that even in the darkest systems, rhythms and resistance endure, there are always survival ways and survival strategies.

Kendrick Lamar Songs Names Alright DNA. HUMBLE. Swimming Pools (Drank) The Blacker the Berry