Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp A Butterfly (2015)

I took a bite, finding it as sweet and hot as any I'd ever had, an
d was overcome with such a surge of homesickness that I turned away
to keep my control. I walked along, munching the yam, just as suddenly
overcome by an intense feeling of freedom -- simply because I was eating while walking along the street. It was exhilarating. I no longer had to worry about who saw me or about what was proper. To hell with all that, and as sweet as the yam actually was, it became like nectar with the thought. If only someone who had known me at school or at home would come along and see me now. How shocked they'd be! I'd push them into a side street and smear their faces with the peel. What a group of people we were, I thought. Why, you could cause us the greatest humiliation simply by confronting us with
something we liked...
This is all very wild and childish, I thought, but to hell with
being ashamed of what you liked. No more of that for me. I am what I am! I wolfed down the yam and ran back to the old man and handed him twe
nty cents, "Give me two more," I said.
"Sho, all you want, long as I got 'em. I can see you a serious yam
eater, young fellow. You eating them right away?"
"As soon as you give them to me," I said.
"You want 'em buttered?"
"Please."
"Sho, that way you can get the most out of 'em. Yessuh," he said
, handing over the yams, "I can see you one of these old-fashion
ed yam eaters."
"They're my birthmark," I said. "I yam what I am!"

scuse the fucked up formatting, but the first thing i thought of was this scene from Invisible Man

I've lived with the album 10 days and still know, what, a half dozen lyrics? I'm having too much with the tracks.

achebe and ellison acknowledged and not to belabor the point or rapgenius this to death but yams are also
1) slang for drugs stored in balloons/condoms
2) an integral component of american soul food cooking and many traditional african culture's cuisines
so their usage on king kunta reads to me as a multi-faceted signifier of wealth and power and potential illicit activity and blackness

and yes, white critics discussing Kendrick lyrics shall forevermore be "yamsplainers"

http://food.malaysiamostwanted.com/photos/89249/yam-coin

I'm p stoked about thundercat's future

I got a yam to splain

― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Thursday, March 26, 2015 3:51 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark

Lmao

1) slang for drugs stored in balloons/condoms

ok I knew the food thing (duh) but this is news to me

Oh, I'm writing the most yamsplaining post on this album for my Danish language blog. He's just announced for Roskilde Festival, and I want press credentials, so I pretty much have to. It's gonna be so worthless and wrongheaded, you can't even imagine!

I read this track as "rap fandom's" relationship with KDot, but I can see how silly that seems in retrospect.

In the context of the album's narrative, I heard the intro spiel more like the voice of Compton (really his own queasy conscience), a self-doubting voice in his head that he amps himself up to fight against. With the sources of that doubt obviously sunk deep in race, history, economics, etc.

re: the last post & Raymond's post before it I think it's not a stretch to suggest that he's working in a layered meaning, that what DJP is describing is the real source tension but that it manifests itself in ways like KDot vs. his audience particularly, or KDot vs his neighborhood, etc ... like it doesn't have to be a concrete symbolic translation

sure! that's art!

so no one's gonna explain the yams thing to me

― Οὖτις, Thursday, March 26, 2015 2:47 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think Yams is the dead guy from the Aesop crew

cover of the album should have been something like...

http://images.sodahead.com/polls/001846587/942494372_InkBlot2_xlarge.gif

woah...come to think of it, why don't people have ink blot covers more often?

http://cdn.playbuzz.com/cdn/d4949f2c-f263-4b29-8c76-6131cc231f9e/1b2e18a4-2778-45ec-9b4d-1bc651889137_560_420.jpg

that last one is obviously batman coming out of my mom's head...

your mom is The Joker?

OK so after a lot of listening, current thoughts (which will keep changing as I listen more). Love this album. And contra my early comments about not-enough-fun, I think it's a lot of fun to listen to, it's just a different kind of fun (i.e. not pop-rush fun, though it has some of that -- more the fun of watching/listening to a virtuoso who can do so damn many things). I'm most ambivalent about the Devil and God tracks -- I don't really need to hear the narrative to "How Much a Dollar Cost" anymore, but would love to have the instrumental track. I love "Mortal Man," but I turn it off once the music stops.

I love "Mortal Man," but I turn it off once the music stops.

This is a mark of sanity IMO

Also, totally agree with above comments about the instant-classicness of "King Kunta." It's an all-time jam.

"Mortal Man" need be listened to just once.

The musical portion of "Mortal Man" is fantastic, though. And honestly, the 2Pac conversation is pretty easy to ignore if you're on the train reading Facebook.

basically any spoken word parts of almost any musical album can be skipped after a second listening if not sooner

The poem couplets sprinkled throughout the rest of the album and the "negus" poem at the end of "i" are great IMO

i can cope with the mellifluity of the throughline poem just fine but i've taken "i" (revised or otherwise) out of play

Yeah, I dig "Mortal Man" minus Pac. And I think the poem actually works really well, even though it's the most self-consciously "This Is Art Do You Get It" thing on the album. It helps that it's short.

By poem, I mean the through-poem. The "Negus" poem is good too, even though it kinda makes me go ...

http://i3.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/014/033/knowing.jpg

we need more words like "mellifluity" in this thread

after sitting with this all week, im now at the point where i wish the beats were maybe more interesting in places, and less like the kind of stuff i would have heard on an old common album (more LWFC than EC i think).

at the risk of further yamsplaining, an issue with kendrick's "negus" poem is that it's not really etymologically accurate.
"Nigger" is a fucked up word with an appropriately fucked up history; the roots are murky but tend to be directly attributed to the matter-of-fact Latin "niger", French "negro" or Spanish "negre": black.
Here's an excerpt from Randall Kennedy's brisk and readable book on the subject:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/nigger.htm
That said, Kendrick's point here obviously is one of reclamation, which is an idea that was old when Dick Gregory floated it in the '60's.
I'm wary of hearing K's take spouted as gospel by both lazy kids and racist apologists and the resultant blowback tainting the album.

hopefully this doesnt sound reductive, but i feel like this album is more interesting/important for the form, the technique, and the sheer writerliness of kendrick than the actual points being made - if youve been listening to rap/R&B for longer than 10 years, you are prob familiar with most of the concepts and ideas on the album regarding black politics/race. he def avoids black power cliches, but im not sure theres that many new ideas being proposed either. though as someone who liked git up git out, i feel like some of his comments about taking responsibility are not necessarily victim-blaming, more just recognition that always assigning power to someone else diminishes your own.

the negus thing is something i keep thinking i heard tupac say, though i might just be imagining that.

I don't think he's trying to claim the n word is literally derived from 'negus'.

I don't think so, either.

i don't either, hence "Kendrick's point here obviously is one of reclamation" but it certainly can (and i'd argue, inevitably will) be read that way:
"The history books overlooked the word and hide it / America tried to make it to a house divided / The homies don't recognize we be using it wrong"

yeesh guys the pac interview isn't that bad

xp then why the concern trolling?

xp

It's not that bad, but how many times do you want to listen to any interview, real or imaginary? The first time through, Kendrick's whole "our only hope is music" thing resonated, because he'd just spent 70-odd minutes proving it. But point made, I'd rather hear it demonstrated than articulated.

xp, "I'm wary of hearing K's take spouted as gospel by both lazy kids and racist apologists and the resultant blowback tainting the album"; if voicing a concern of a reasonable reading of the lyrics is concern trolling then i'm concern trolling i suppose. I was mostly responding/understanding tipsy mothra's "the more you know" star banner response as being a "oh that's where that word comes from" interp.

but how many times do you want to listen to any interview, real or imaginary?

my name is giovanni giorgio, but you can call me.... giorgio

I usually let the Pac interview run out when I'm listening to the album in full, skip it if I just want to hear Mortal Man by itself. That's usually my guiding principle when listening to rap albums with these interludes.

the negus thing is something i keep thinking i heard tupac say, though i might just be imagining that.

KRS-One no? He's brought it up in several discussions on rap.

didn't think albums like this were made anymore. it's great that its so popular.

If he knew how to write a hook/have even mildly insightful something to say other than pussy/money/his dick/ maybe his rapping skills could be put to some use. Usually his production is solid enough. The Art of Peer Pressure was pretty good, more focused. But he doesn't have enough verbal dexterity or technique to pull off his cliched lyrics.

― Raccoon Tanuki, Wednesday, September 24, 2014 3:52 AM (5 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that was the last album?

and you're the only person in the world who thought that album had nothing to say "other than pussy/money/his dick/ maybe his rapping skills"

I think he struggles a bit as an MC, he's a bit forced and unnatural,-Artic in part re this album upthread

So last album he had rapping skills, but on this one he struggles?

did we ever find out the age of this british travis scott-worshipping self-appointed rap expert who can never seem to keep his own opinions straight? he can't be older than 19, can he?

Album largely reminding me of Stankonia, slowed down. I talked about the production team being like Outkast's and the sound is too.

arctic noon bot