Christopher M. Driscoll is Assistant Professor of Religion, Africana, and American Studies at Lehigh University. Driscoll is also cofounder and former chair of the Critical Approaches to Hip Hop and Religion group at the American Academy of Religion. Much of his work attends to hip hop culture, including editing a 2011 special issue of the Bulletin for the Study of Religion on the topic, he is coauthor of Breaking Bread, Breaking Beats: Churches and Hip Hop - A Guide to Key Issues (Fortress, 2014), and more. Driscoll is also author of White Lies: Race & Uncertainty in the Twilight of American Religion (Routledge, 2015), and coauthor (with Monica R. Miller) of Method as Identity: Manufacturing Distance in the Academic Study of Religion (Lexington, 2018).

Monica R. Miller is Associate Professor of Religion, Africana Studies, and Director of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Lehigh University, USA. Miller is the author of Religion and Hip Hop (Routledge, 2012), The Hip Hop and Religion Reader, coedited with Anthony B. Pinn (Routledge, 2014), Religion in Hip Hop: Mapping the New Terrain in the US, coedited with Anthony B. Pinn and Bernard "Bun B" Freeman (Bloomsbury, 2015), Claiming Identity in the Study of Religion: Social and Rhetorical Techniques Examined ed. (Equinox, 2016), and Humanism in a Non-Humanist World ed. (Palgrave Macmillan) among other books, numerous essays, and book chapters on the topic. Miller is cofounder and current cochair of the Critical Approaches to hip hop and Religion group at the American Academy of Religion and has presented nationally on the topic over the past ten years.

Anthony B. Pinn is Agnes Cullen Arnold Professor of Humanities and Professor of Religious Studies at Rice University. He is also the founding Director of Rice's Certer for Engaged Research and Collaborative Learning. Pinn is also the Director of Research for the Institute for Humanist Studies (Washington, DC). In addition to courses on African American religious thought, liberation theologies, and religious aesthetics, Pinn co-teaches with Bernard "Bun B" Freeman a popular course on religion and hip hop culture. The course received media coverage from a variety of outlets including MTV. He is the author/editor of over 30 books, including Noise and Spirit: Rap Music's Religious and Spiritual Sensibilities (NYU Press, 2003); The Religion and Hip Hop Reader, coedited with Monica R. Miller (Routledge, 2014); and Religion in Hip Hop: Mapping the New Terrain in the US, coedited with Monica R. Miller and Bernard "Bun B" Freeman (Bloomsbury, 2015).

Acknowledgements; Introduction: K.Dotting the American Cultural Landscape with Black Meaning- Anthony B. Pinn and Christopher M. Driscoll; Part I: Section.80 (2011); 1 Kendrick Lamar's Section.80: Reagan Era Blues- Ralph Bristout; 2 Can I be Both?: Blackness and the Negotiation of Binary Categories in Kendrick Lamar's Section.80- Margarita Simon Guillory; 3 Hol' Up: Post-Civil Rights Black Theology within Kendrick Lamar's Section.80 Album - Daniel White Hodge; 4 Sensibility in Section.80: Kendrick Lamar's Poetics of Problems- Michael L. Thomas; Part II: good kid, m.A.A.d. city (2012); 5 The Good, the m.A.A.d., and the Holy: Kendrick Lamar's Meditations on Sin and Moral Agency in the Post-Gangsta Era- Juan M. Floyd-Thomas; 6 'Real is Responsibility': Revelations in White through the Filter of Black Realness on good kid, m.A.A.d. city- Rob Peach; 7 'Black Meaning' Out of Urban Mud: good kid, m.A.A.d city as Compton Griot-Riff at the Crossroads of Climate-Apocalypse- James W. Perkinson; 8 Rap as Ragnarök: Kendrick Lamar, Eminem, and the Value of Competition- Christopher M. Driscoll: Part III: To Pimp a Butterfly (2015) ; 9 Can Dead Homies Speak? The Spirit and Flesh of Black Meaning- Monica R. Miller; 10 Loving [You] is Complicated: Black Self-Love and Affirmation in the Rap Music of Kendrick Lamar- Darrius D. Hills; 11 From 'Blackness' to Afrofuture to 'Impasse': The Figura of the Jimi Hendrix/Richie Havens Identity Revolution as Faintly Evidenced by the work of Kendrick Lamar and More than a Head Nod to Lupe Fiasco- Jon Gill; 12 Beyond Flight and Containment: Kendrick Lamar, Black Study, and an Ethics of the Wound- Joseph Winters; Part IV: DAMN. (2017); 13 'Real Nigga Conditions': Kendrick Lamar, Grotesque Realism, and the Open Body-Anthony B. Pinn; 14 DAMNed to the Earth: Kendrick Lamar, De/colonial Violence,and Earthbound Salvation- Ben Lewellyn-Taylor and Melanie C. Jones; 15 Kendrick Lamar's DAMN. as an Aesthetic Genealogy- Dominik Hammer; 16 'I'm an Israelite': Kendrick Lamar's Spiritual Search, Hebrew Israelite Religion, and the Politics of Celebrity Encounter- Sam Kestenbaum: 17 Damnation, Identity, and Truth: Vocabularies of Suffering in Kendrick Lamar's DAMN.- André E. Key; 18 Hebrew Israelite Covenantal Theology and Kendrick Lamar's Constructive Project in DAMN.- Spencer Dew; Conclusion: KENosis: The Meaning of Kendrick Lamar- Monica R. Miller; References ; Contributors