“My auntie is a man now,” Kendrick raps in “Auntie Diaries.”

And just like that our interest piqued — “Where is he going with this?” “Is his aunt really trans?” “If she is, wouldn’t he be his uncle?“

We ask questions to help guide us through the first round of the mental gymnastics that we play with ourselves while we grasp the legitimacy of that very first line — “My Auntie is a man now.”

What are we even supposed to do with this info? How do we grasp what he’s saying and who is he talking to? The song needs more than one session and so most of us take the time to dissect it, again.

This time, we sat up straight and we listened with the intent of hearing the words clearly. Praying for clarity the second time around, but instead, we hear what we missed the first time.

“Demetrius is Maryann now,” the rapper says over the track.

And the discomfort sets in. Folks in the transgender and gender-nonconforming community start to settle in their seats. Family members with a history of intolerance buckle up and sit with shallow breaths as Kendrick lets off the F-word like an automatic rifle. 

To many, this feels like an unwarranted attack. To the vast majority, it’s confusing, to say the least, and the rest of us are here — stuck in between being upset and entertained, contemplating what our thought pieces would be under the pictures we would post as Twitter lost itself in a battle of “To be Woke, Or Godly.”

Some of us asked ourselves, “Why?” Others thanked him for saying what needed to be said.

This brings me to my initial reflection — who the f**k was this for? What were we supposed to gain from this, or was there never really a purpose at all? Was this a hot ticket item, or a way to communicate the hypocrisy of Black folks on issues of transness in a way that only a black man who’s proven himself the ultimate heterosexual could do?