What insightful messages does Kendrick Llamar communicate in the song?
Swimming pool represents the dangers of peer pressure and gang mentality through the lens of drinking and alcohol and drug abuse. The fact that alcohol is unhealthy and not a solution to one's problems is demonstrated and evident throughout the song.
Yet the song reflects how drinking is encouraged and seen as the normal or "cool" thing to do, most evident in the chorus line "Nigga why you babysittin' only two or three shots? I'ma show you how to turn it up a notch First you get a swimming pool full of liquor, then you dive in it". In fact, alcohol has become so normalized that people start to behave like herd animals "I wave a few bottles, then I watch 'em all flock", with little to no independence.
Through this way the song represents the real underlying issue: peer pressure. Towards the end of the song, there is the sense that K'Dot, the persona caricaturing Kendrick's old self, that is being dragged along with no agency, despite the warnings issued by his conscience, into a "swimming pool of liquor", to drown out his morality and guilt of his mind.
Discuss tonal shifts in the song and how they impact the listener.
However, the melody suddenly cuts off, when the song cuts to a dialogue segment where one of Kendrick's friends is killed. This traumatizing event represents the start of him recognizing that in fact alcohol and drug abuse is not "normal", even if it is what everyone else is doing.
What unique images stand for you in this song?
The image that everyone is using alcohol as an ineffective coping mechanism only because its been passed down to them or because they've been introduced to it by others is one that I feel is still reflected to some extent today in modern society.
"Some people like the way it feels
Some people wanna kill their sorrows
Some people wanna fit in with the popular, that was my problem"
Special Line
"All I, all I, all I, all I have in life is my new appetite for failure"
And I got Hunger pain that grow insane, tell me do that sound familiar?"
Hunger and appetite are used as symbols for morality and consciousness going against peer pressure and passing down of gang culture and violence through generations. "Failure" in this case represents not joining a gang, breaking the generational cycle and seeming like an outcast in a community where everyone tries to conform.
"Appetite" is used to represent the desire for something better than the life he has now, as "failure" would represent breaking away from gang life.
The "hunger pain" represents the continuous reminders from his conscience that he could be living a more fulfilling life and that this isn't the right path, as they are compared to an ache or pain.
Annotations
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WnhnKO44vJrzIa83l2KPKiO9ybFVcRwgB8RkbNJFrIk/edit?usp=sharing