There is a moment in the trajectory of every significant friendship, often arriving unannounced, that is more clarifying than a thousand shared laughs before it.
It is the moment your success becomes a mirror. You announce a promotion, a new love, a personal breakthrough, and as you watch your friendās face go lighter, looking back at it all you find yourself asking a silent, searing question: Really, are you happy for me?
The hesitation in their smile, the slight flicker in their eyes, the perfunctory nature of their congratulationsāin that fractional space, a lifetime of unspoken contracts is illuminated. It is the sudden, cold realization that a ledger may have been kept, an invisible accounting of favors given and debts owed. Nobody is truly your friend, but rather a party to a complex, unwritten contract of mutual utility.
I have always argued that friendships are an unnecessary phenomenon because they are more reciprocal than a means of filling the gaps or voids in one's life and vice versa. I want to explore the possibility that friendship is a fallacy that should not have existed in the first place. I will be using Kendrick Lamar's discography to discuss some of these topics.
Coerced Loyalty
To understand our modern cynicism about friendship, we must first recognize that for much of human history, loyalty was not a choice but a currency of survival, often coerced under the most brutal of circumstances. The purest distillation of this is the institution of chattel slavery.
Within the master-slave dynamic, any semblance of a relationship was built upon a foundation of absolute power asymmetry. An act of "kindness" from a masterāa slightly larger food portion, a less strenuous taskāwas not a gift but a tool of control, a strategic investment to ensure productivity and quell rebellion. For the enslaved person, displaying "loyalty" or gratitude was not an expression of affection but a calculated performance necessary for survival. This created a deep, generational trauma around the very concept of reciprocity. If the most fundamental human interactions are predicated on ownership and debt, how can one ever trust an act of kindness to be free of a hidden price?
This master-slave paradigm is the most extreme example, but its logic can be seen through other historical power structures like feudalism and patronage systems. The serf's loyalty to his lord, or the artist's devotion to his patron, was inextricably linked to subsistence. This history has left an indelible scar on our collective psyche. It has taught us to be suspicious of altruism, to subconsciously scan for the power dynamic in every interaction, and to ask of every gift, "What will this cost me later?" Our modern discomfort with unreciprocated favors and our suspicion of others' motives are not merely personal flaws; they are the ghosts of a history where transactional relationships were the only relationships possible for the vast majority of people. The question "What do you want from me?" is a defense mechanism learned over centuries of exploitation.
Perhaps no artist has wrestled with the corrosion of loyalty more profoundly than Kendrick Lamar. His work is a masterclass in the anxiety of success. His discography serves as a chronicle of a man trying to find authentic connection in a world that sees him as a commodity. This is a theme that he has held up throughout all of his albumns and a bunch of singles.
Fuck you and all your expectations
I don't even want your congratulations
The Survivor's Guilt
To Pimp a Buttefly is one of Kendrick Lamar's best pieces of work. This album is a sprawling, jazz-infused exploration of what it means to "make it out." On the harrowing track "u," Lamar performs a devastating self-interrogation, screaming at his reflection in a hotel room: "Lovin' you is complicated."
A central theme of this complication is his failure to be there for his friends and family still trapped in the struggles he escaped. His success is not a pure joy but a source of immense guilt, a debt he feels he owes to those left behind. The loyalty he craves from them is mirrored by the loyalty he feels he has failed to provide. The album posits that success doesn't sever old bonds; it simply recasts them in the transactional language of survivor's guilt. Are his old friends happy for him, or do they see him as a resource, a savior who has failed in his duty?
If TPAB explored the external pressures on loyalty, the Pulitzer Prize-winning DAMN. turns inward to examine its very essence. The album is structured as a battle between wickedness and weakness, with loyalty as the central, unstable element. On "LOYALTY. FEAT. RIHANNA.," the refrain is a desperate plea disguised as a demand: "All I'm askin' is 100 percent loyalty." The song "FEEL." is a paranoid cry from the mountaintop of fame: "Ain't nobody prayin' for me / I feel like I'm boxin' demons."
He is surrounded by people, yet feels utterly alone, suspicious of everyone's motives. This is the crux of the friendship fallacy: the proximity of others does not guarantee genuine connection. In fact, for Lamar, fame has only amplified his isolation, turning every relationship into a potential transaction and every friend into a potential leech.
United in Grief
After One-thousand eight-hundred and fifty-five days Kendrick Lamar released Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, this raw, therapeutic album is where Kendrick systematically dismantles the transactional expectations placed upon him. On "Savior," he is explicit: he cannot be the moral compass for his community, his friends, or his listeners. He is flawed, traumatized, and working through his own issues. The song is a radical act of boundary-setting. He rejects the idea that his success creates a debt that he must repay through endless emotional or financial support. He understands that the "loyalty" people demand of him is often a demand for a savior, a role he is unwilling and unable to play. This album is his declaration of independence from the transactional nature of fame-era friendships. He is no longer asking if they are happy for him; he is stating that his well-being cannot be dependent on their validation or demands.
Forest Hills Drive
Where Kendrickās exploration is a turbulent storm of paranoia and guilt, J. Coleās is a slow, simmering meditation on the same theme among other things, this can be attributed to their close backgrounds. Coleās work is obsessed with authenticity and the struggle to maintain it as the world around him changes.
On 2014 Forest Hills Drive, the track "No Role Modelz" covers the lack of genuine connection in a world of superficial relationships, particularly in Los Angeles. His retreat to his childhood home in North Carolina is a physical manifestation of his search for something real.
In "'03 Adolescence," he recounts a pivotal conversation with a friend who is selling drugs. His friend, instead of asking for a handout, gives Cole encouragement, telling him to pursue his rap dreams because Cole is their "only way out." It's a moment of seemingly pure, altruistic friendship, yet it's still framed by the language of utility. Cole's success is not just for him; it's a proxy for the success of his friends. This complicates the bond: Is it pure love, or is it a long-term investment?
Cole's music is suffused with this duality. He champions loyalty to one's roots while simultaneously documenting the jealousy and entitlement that his success engenders from those same roots. He wants to believe in the fallacy, in the purity of the bonds forged before fame, but he is too self-aware to ignore the transactional currents that run beneath them.
The truth is that you can never fully know if someone is happy for you. You can only choose to trust that they are, or to live with the suspicion that they are not.