Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp A Butterfly (2015)

no i'm keeping a respectful distance from writing about rap right now, let alone rapping

I think the point is that it's nice to know something about the author - for any site - if that person isn't a regular contributor and the piece is basically an op-ed. Like if I read the NYT and a writer on the editorial page isn't a columnist it's nice to know where the writer is coming from.

for the record, ALL i've ever written has been about music. everything. i've never written about anything else. ever. so, you know, it's a thing. music writing.

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lol whatever scott the point is there if you wanna get it

yeah i don't want to go get it. i don't get it. it doesn't matter.

my main problem w/ the pitch piece is that it sets kendrick up against rap more broadly & suggests the entire genre is easy to write off while kendrick is not, which is kinda fucked up

It's also kinda what the album suggests too, though?

Not the genre. Contemporary (non-killer mike) rap.

i dont hear that exactly. i hear someone taking rap in a direction no one else is, but kendrick is not the only rapper with an honest perspective

The whole thing about his massive struggle to resist temptation and stereotyping seems to suggest that most of his peers are giving in to "Lucy" though. In a sms this is the first Christian rap album proper. He's writing like st jerome.

Not in a sms, lol. "It's almost like"

i hear a personal struggle, not an elitist one

I like this album a lot. that is my thinkpiece on it.

i doubt many people will follow in his footsteps. more of an idiosyncratic anomaly (though way more popular than most!). there have been a lot of those in rap. respected but not necessarily emulated. there have been so many great recent albums though that follow that idiosyncratic path. it's a great time to be a rap fan. in my opinion.

His approach of doing very much his own thing relatively guest-free on his albums and dropping in to do (mostly) killer guest verses on everyone else's albums suits him v well imo

has he done a bad guest verse? I guess that one on the latest eminem record ain't too hot, but consider the setting.

I don't envy anyone the task of reviewing this record and I commend the few who've done at least a decent job of summarizing the impact of something so genuinely complex.

I like this album a lot. that is my thinkpiece on it.
--akm

otm

In a sms this is the first Christian rap album proper. He's writing like st jerome.

Don't know about the first. I heard Good Kid as a Christian rap album, and I'm sure others came before. Kendrick's preacherly tendencies are the source of the only reservation I have regarding his art at this point. I don't mind the Christian content, necessarily. I love gospel and many other types of explicitly religious music. It's the delivery that sometimes (very slightly) bothers me. I occasionally catch the vibe of a too floridly battle-scarred recovery meeting sermon, one that seems almost desperate to ground its spiritual teachings in accounts of just how bad things got before God made them good.

That minor quibble aside, this album is fantastic. I'm only just beginning to sort it out, having listened for the first time last night and twice more this afternoon. Happy to find the ILM response so overwhelmingly positive, the odd noon auk notwithstanding (especially after so many of you were so catastrophically RONG about "i").

I enjoyed reading the Carvell Wallace piece linked a little ways up. And Clover Hope's Jezebel review, "Overwhelming Blackness" and all. The album practically demands a personal response.

i doubt many people will follow in his footsteps. more of an idiosyncratic anomaly

Yeah, and not just because nobody else matches Kendrick's ambition, but also because nobody else can. No way is he my favorite MC, but he's more a "musician" in a conventional sense than any other popular rapper at the moment. And with the caveat that I don't really listen to contemporary jazz or classical, I'll note that TPAB is the most technically accomplished new record I've heard in any genre in years. Sure the "half a jazz band" that plays on every track deserves its props. But it was Kendrick who heard Thundercat here and Robert Glasper there, and it was Kendrick who devised a way to flow over it.

GKMC was definitely also a Christian rap album but this one is far more desperate in its quest for salvation.

Aside from Islamic influences in hip hop, I guess I see pretty much all blues/gospel/jazz/r&b as being in a generally Christian tradition

I mean how many black church preachers samples or skits are there

Also there are probably like a million Christian rappers we don't know who like secretly outsell j Cole

Is Kendrick actually particularly religious or does he use religion as a kind of moral anchor device?

he's serious about it

yeah he got baptized between the last album and this one

Also it's not that different than murder was the case, other rappers dealing w salvation vs damnation that shits been around forever

Something like the lyrics of How Much a Dollar Cost? seems pretty unique to me. Also: Awful.

King Kunta is a proper jam

I mean I guess I'm just not understanding like the whole crossroads mythos is like one of the most iconic things in the history of black music

the wrestling-with-guilt thing is the least interesting part of kendrick's music imo - it's much more powerful when he looks outward (on eg "complexion")

Yes. And more Rapsody, plz!

Right, it's just at times the whole guilt trip can come crashing back into even the best of songs, ie. the conclusion of The Blacker the Berry.

And... yeah, it might very well be that something like Kendrick being visited by the Messiah in the form of a homeless man isn't so much unique as it's kitchy and old-fashioned? It seems like a story that old friend from middle school would very earnestdly link to on facebook.

i don't think the guilt stuff drags his material down, it's just not as interesting - it's actually a testament to his talent that he goes so so close to glibness re: the homeless man, respectability politics elsewhere etc, but never quite tips over the edge. his politics are ragged too but he's such an emotional and convincing performer that it doesn't matter. like you'd never call TPAB a manifesto or something you'd entirely agree with but it's something he makes you feel.

i mean, maybe i'll have changed my mind when it eventually sinks in, idk.

Isn't part of his skill that he manages to make these fairly hackneyed tropes genuinely emotionally affecting?

Yeah, to me he tips over the edge into glibness several times, and it mars an otherwise great album. Also because he is so great at building up tracks. When Kanye says something stupid it's as an aside, it's gone in a second and you think 'wtf'? But Kendrick builds up to these moments of stupidity over long stretches, such as mentioning how hypocritical he is throughout Blacker the Berry, intensifying the story of the homeless man until the stupid conclusion, and bringing Wesley's Theory back into the 'shit hits the fan is you still a fan' on Mortal Man, and then concluding it with defending Michael Jackson. I get caught up, carried along, and then at the end, I get annoyed.

Since Kendrick is so brilliant it becomes even more annoying when he waste it on stupidity. imo.

it's OK if the album isn't great, guys.

"good" is fine

"realest negus alive" - ty kendrick for looking out for me with your ancient history puns

maybe it's "nagus" and he really likes star trek ds9

it's OK if the album isn't great, guys

also okay to not agree with everything being expressed on a great album :)

The giddy R&B show band swagger of King Junta and i remind me of Son of Bazerk

Lol kunta autocorrect

hah!

really liked greg tate's review in RS! feel like such a sourpuss about some of those other pieces had to say something nice. that's some good old school Tate right there.

http://www.spin.com/reviews/kendrick-lamar-to-pimp-a-butterfly/

That Tate review is good thanks for the tip, didn't know Robert Glasper played on this.... Freestyle Fellowship is also a good touchstone I haven't seen brought up

people have brought them up in relation to kendrick before just bc of the good life vibe

damn, that's another good one. that's like old school Spin! don't know that guy too well.

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