Conference Agenda
The Online Program of events for the 2026 AMS Annual Meeting appears below. This program is subject to change. The final program will be published in early November.
Use the "Filter by Track or Type of Session" or "Filter by Session Topic" dropdown to limit results by type. Some of the sessions are also color-coded: purple indicates performances, grey indicates paper forums, and orange indicates sessions which have been organized by one of the regional associations of IMS (ARLAC or IMSEA). (Sessions which are both IMS sessions and performances are only colored orange.)
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Please note that all times are shown in the time zone of the conference. The current conference time is: 1st Sept 2026, 02:58:00am EDT
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Daily Overview |
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Time and History in Black Musical Thought Session Chair: Pheaross Graham Discussant: Guilherme Feitosa de Almeida | |
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Looking for "Euphoria" in Kendrick Lamar's GNX (2024) Vassar College In February 2012, before the release of good kid, m.A.A.d city, a scrapped track titled “Cartoon & Cereal” leaked online, introducing “euphoria” as a guiding covenant: “Not to worry, every warrior will come and see euphoria / And that’s a covenant I put on every tribe.” Though never officially released, the concept accrues meaning across Kendrick Lamar’s oeuvre, reaching its most explicit articulation in his 2024 diss track “euphoria," directed at Drake. I argue that Lamar’s conception of euphoria represents what I term Afrofuturist space: a liminal, fluid reality generated by the tensions of Black identity, enabling bricolage, teleological experimentation, and identity play (Weheliye 2002; Eshun 1998; Womack 2013, 2025). To demonstrate this, I analyze Lamar’s compositional choices, including sample interpolation (Adams 2009), metric tension and release (Ohriner 2019; Mattesich 2019; Wadsworth and Needle 2022), and vocality, across his musical output, establishing his formal norms and personas (Bungert 2019). Over time, the notion accrues a meaning closer to personal and communal spiritual transcendence, which I trace through all references to “euphoria” across Lamar’s work, plotting its musical and semantic evolution from 2012 to GNX (2024). My analysis will show the compositional and production techniques that signal Lamar’s auteur status and largely define his work up until GNX are subdued in favor of a straightforward West Coast G-funk sound world (Keyes 2002) inhabited by his most essentialized gangster persona to date. I interpret these choices as an act of sonic “disidentification” (Muñoz 1999; Harrison 2015). With this frame, the feud with Drake becomes an arena for showcasing his authenticity by casting Drake as his natural foil. By performing an authentic version of a Compton rapper that mostly eschews the complex sonic signifiers that initially gave him auteur status, Lamar simultaneously rejects the savior narrative imposed upon him (Linder 2018) while unapologetically claiming its rewards. Ultimately, the paper argues that Lamar reframes escape as return, locating liberation in tradition and collective memory rather than flight (Gilroy 1993; Nelson 2002). Where earlier Afrofuturist practitioners mobilize transcendence as departure from material reality, GNX attains euphoria through sonic departure to facilitate a radical, personal homecoming. | |