Creativity Quote by Kendrick Lamar

It’s a provocation disguised as a question, the kind that forces the listener to pick a side even if they’d rather hide behind “misunderstanding.” Kendrick’s “You hate me don’t you?” isn’t pleading for reassurance; it’s baiting a confession. The second line escalates from personal grievance to collective indictment: the “me” becomes “my people,” then “my culture.” In three steps, he maps how prejudice scales up from attitude to policy, from a look to a system.

The genius is in the phrase “your plan.” He’s not describing random bigotry or individual ignorance. He’s calling out intentionality, the quiet coordination of institutions that can erase a culture without ever saying the quiet part out loud. “Terminate” is clinical, bureaucratic language - the kind that shows up in paperwork, budgets, sentencing guidelines, school board decisions, algorithms. It frames cultural destruction as something administered, not merely felt.

Contextually, Kendrick is writing from a Black American tradition where art doubles as testimony: the rapper as witness, historian, and defendant all at once. The lines echo a long-running tension in American pop culture: Black creativity is consumed, sampled, monetized - while Black life is policed, discounted, and surveilled. So the accusation lands in two directions: at overt racists, and at the polite audience that loves the music but flinches at the politics. The question isn’t “Do you hate me?” It’s “What are you benefiting from pretending you don’t?”