Season 1 Episode 15 of the Dissect podcast analyzed Kendrick Lamar’s song “The Blacker The Berry” off of his album To Pimp A Butterfly. Cole Cuchna, the host of Dissect, is a 33 year old, white, American from Sacramento, California. Having analyzed albums such as IGOR, good kid, m.A.A.d city, and To Pimp A Butterfly, racial divide, nativism, police brutality, and wealth inequality became inescapable topics to discuss. Consequently, Cuchna has rhetorically developed many methods to analyze and discuss sensitive topics in an academic way. 

In the analysis of “The Blacker The Berry” Cuchna focuses on police brutality, intra-racial disputes, and Kendrick’s perspective on blackness. Cuchna, a white American citizen, discusses these topics in a very neutral, non-opinionated way. He uses ‘n-word’ when applicable and avoids using any words such as good, bad, and feel. Additionally, he speaks in the third person to further disassociate himself from the analysis of song. The overall structure of the analysis is of an academic essay making for a formal, academic podcast that has points that logically follow each other.

Cuchna, as mentioned, discussing heavy topics avoids any form of comedy and strictly sticks to analytical discussion in an essay format. The combination of it being a Spotify podcast and an academic, analytical discussion subsequently places it in an academic commonplace. There isn’t really anything objectively pleasurable about listening to it as it does not invoke any kind of laughter or direct emotion, rather it seeks to be a neutral analytical piece.

Dissect appears to know its audience and does not appear to seek growth outside of its established academic commonplace. Cuchna tries his best to acknowledge, and mitigate, his inherent bias associated with his identity in an attempt to create an objective, and historical, analysis of the artist at hand’s work.