Paranoia, Delusion, and Doubt: A Lacanian Analysis of Race, Hip-Hop, and Kendrick Lamar

This article applies Lacanian psychoanalysis to explore race as a psychotic structure, marked by delusion, paranoia, and symbolic failure. Focusing on the hip-hop genre, and the music of Kendrick Lamar, it examines how Lamar’s music exposes and unsettles racial certainties by emphasizing lack and doubt. Through an analysis of “Mortal Man”, and Lamar’s imagined interview with Tupac Shakur, the article highlights how silence and absence disrupt fixed racial meanings. It argues that dismantling racism requires confronting the libidinal and ideological investments in race, while positioning Lamar’s work as a vital for a radical, anti-racist critique grounded in psychoanalytic theory.