I don't think there is another album/movie/TV show/play/book that addresses these concerns with that level of artistry and popularity. Like maybe the only competition is Lemonade, and a lot of that was subtext and readings as opposed to the more explicit politics of TPAB
― SSN Lucci (Whiney G. Weingarten), 19. april 2017 20:05 (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
I think perhaps Ta-nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me will be a contender. No, not as many has read that as has heard King Kunta, but Guernica wasn't the smash hit poster of 37 either.
― Frederik B, Thursday, 20 April 2017 07:54 (seven years ago) link
I phrased it as a question bc you gotta respect DL and wondered if I was missing something.
obv this is full of bars but it's the hooks I'm struck by on this, the soft subtle inflections to kendrick's voice, the measured woozy slowness. he has a good ear for voices; love the sample of RAT BOY on lust. the relative downbeatness of this suits me just fine
― ogmor, Thursday, 20 April 2017 09:45 (seven years ago) link
Picasso was kind of a rock star in his day.
― octobeard, Thursday, 20 April 2017 13:17 (seven years ago) link
He had a life
― imago, Thursday, 20 April 2017 13:41 (seven years ago) link
"Lamar's greatness and virtuosity got shoved down everybody's throat to the point that sometimes it's hard to enjoy as a piece of music"
you just have to ignore everything that people write about him. it's the worst. just listen to him instead.
― scott seward, Thursday, 20 April 2017 13:42 (seven years ago) link
i liked this. just listening this morning while playing resogun. it's not my favorite paranoid jesus album but it has a lot of competition for that title. some really good songs though. more good ones than bad ones. and the good ones definitely invigorating/exciting in that way that he has of invigorating/exciting.
― scott seward, Thursday, 20 April 2017 15:14 (seven years ago) link
(and the bad not really bad just not as good as the good...)
― scott seward, Thursday, 20 April 2017 15:16 (seven years ago) link
sure, but can you really do that? let's say you've never heard anything about Kendrick and you listen to DAMN - there's still a lot to enjoy musically but I feel like you'd have trouble interpreting stuff on this album if you weren't aware of the status he's gotten after To Pimp a Butterfly. it just often feels like he actually embraces what people say about him and says things that only make sense or feel important when spoken from a man in his position (i.e. who actually would give a shit about this Pride/Humble juxtaposition if it wasn't image of a man being called the best rapper alive fighting his sins). and it's obviously true and I am not going to argue otherwise - K. Dot at this point is more than a rapper but it's really suffocating when a record is being considered important more than enjoyable
― piramjida, Thursday, 20 April 2017 16:22 (seven years ago) link
Why?
By which I mean, even granting the fact that it is nigh impossible to enjoy something in a vacuum divorced from other people's opinions, particularly when it comes to one of the most popular artists currently on the scene, why should other people's opinions on a particular album's position in the Official Canon of Music(TM) inhibit you from interacting with the album on your own terms?
― Rachel Luther Queen (DJP), Thursday, 20 April 2017 16:27 (seven years ago) link
tbf, this is probably Kendrick's least "important" record since 2011 AND his most "enjoyable" probably ever
― SSN Lucci (Whiney G. Weingarten), Thursday, 20 April 2017 16:40 (seven years ago) link
something about this album is making certain people think in thoughtpiecesit's just a really really good album
― Bobson Dugnutt (ulysses), Thursday, 20 April 2017 16:43 (seven years ago) link
i kept reading too much about Get Out and then i never went and saw it. i got sick of it a little. and everyone's "take". that was my fault though. i was gonna go see it the first day and didn't. kendrick the get out of rappers! so i didn't read about the new one. just fired up the spotify on the PS4 and enjoyed the experience. and almost beat my record on resongun: demolition mode too. (21st in the world, by the way...)
― scott seward, Thursday, 20 April 2017 16:43 (seven years ago) link
yeah, it is definitely an album for simpletons like me.
― scott seward, Thursday, 20 April 2017 16:44 (seven years ago) link
though there is still a lot going on.
love that rihanna one by the way.
If the album is as timeless as everyone will claim there's nothing wrong with waiting out the avalanche of discussion & going back to it when the air has cleared
― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Thursday, 20 April 2017 16:50 (seven years ago) link
something about this album is making certain people think in thoughtpieces
lol that something is "released by Kendrick Lamar"
― Rachel Luther Queen (DJP), Thursday, 20 April 2017 16:51 (seven years ago) link
the new Actress album is really not good for playing Resogun though. so boring. i quickly found a Perlon mix to listen to and everything was okay again.
― scott seward, Thursday, 20 April 2017 16:58 (seven years ago) link
swerve swerve swerve swerve deeper now
― johnny crunch, Thursday, 20 April 2017 16:58 (seven years ago) link
"Feel"'s production, the kinda watery synth pad and the ghostly processed voice almost reminds me of a hip hop version of early Burial
― blonde redheads have more fun (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, 20 April 2017 17:01 (seven years ago) link
― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Thursday, April 20, 2017 12:50 PM (thirty-five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
obv nothing wrong w/ doing this even for albums that aren't "timeless"
― marcos, Thursday, 20 April 2017 17:28 (seven years ago) link
hot take: albums can't be "timeless"
― blonde redheads have more fun (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, 20 April 2017 17:29 (seven years ago) link
agree
― marcos, Thursday, 20 April 2017 17:29 (seven years ago) link
except for Goldie
― Rachel Luther Queen (DJP), Thursday, 20 April 2017 17:29 (seven years ago) link
Harvard archive curated by 9th Wonder, everybody in my town pretty proud about that
― People like Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr, and (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Thursday, 20 April 2017 17:35 (seven years ago) link
minidiscs can be timeless
― Bobson Dugnutt (ulysses), Thursday, 20 April 2017 17:43 (seven years ago) link
some records exist mainly as an expression of a buzz cycle at the time & others will sustain past it
i think its fair to say that fewer ppl care about i.e. shamir now than did when he first arrived and got fucking new yorker features written about him, for example.
― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Thursday, 20 April 2017 18:25 (seven years ago) link
obviously nothing is timeless—as we all die & memory of minor cultural contributions will be eventually wiped from history
― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Thursday, 20 April 2017 18:26 (seven years ago) link
your keef tweets excepted obv
― blonde redheads have more fun (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, 20 April 2017 18:46 (seven years ago) link
keef is not timeless, he is the very essence of time
― Bobson Dugnutt (ulysses), Thursday, 20 April 2017 18:46 (seven years ago) link
i was reading an old interview with jim from jesus & mary chain after psychocandy came out and he actually talked about how after they made the album they thought it would be one of those timeless records that people would listen to for years. and he didn't say it in a smug way. he seemed surprised that they had done that. he also couldn't imagine the band existing for another five years. that felt like an endless amount of time to him. he had no idea that his band would also be forever.
― scott seward, Thursday, 20 April 2017 18:50 (seven years ago) link
Why?By which I mean, even granting the fact that it is nigh impossible to enjoy something in a vacuum divorced from other people's opinions, particularly when it comes to one of the most popular artists currently on the scene, why should other people's opinions on a particular album's position in the Official Canon of Music(TM) inhibit you from interacting with the album on your own terms?
― piramjida, Thursday, 20 April 2017 18:55 (seven years ago) link
a lot of stuff has this "this is Kendrick Lamar speaking" vibe attached to it
not trying to troll just trying to understand what you mean, because p much every rap album ever has a "this is XX speaking" vibe? (to me at least?)
also off-topic
On "Pride" his flow is so obviously influenced by a lot of Q-Tip's verses on the latest Tribe album
― blonde redheads have more fun (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, 20 April 2017 18:57 (seven years ago) link
i dont see timeless as some kind of metric by which to measure the worthiness of an album or something, but obv some stuff gets slept on & some stuff gets overhyped & some stuff gets the right amt of attention
― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Thursday, 20 April 2017 19:09 (seven years ago) link
as determined by whom, kemosabe
― Bobson Dugnutt (ulysses), Thursday, 20 April 2017 19:14 (seven years ago) link
xxxp:
I think people in general are granting special status to Kendrick almost solely because he is Kendrick. Any artist is going to have context behind their work, whether they are being held up as the top of the current field or a niche artist with a self-limiting, insular fanbase unlikely to expand into mainstream success. There's just as much context/baggage going into an ANHONI or Bjork or Justin Bieber or Miranda Lambert or Amanda Forsyth or Future Islands or anyone you can think of recording as there is going into a Kendrick recording; the main difference is that everyone has decided that that context/baggage is a major conversation point and worth engaging with and dissecting. Very few people are going to spend a ton of time going into the context behind the music of The Chainsmokers, and those who do are going to be accused of overthinking things because The Chainsmokers haven't fallen into a box where they're tagged as Important Music. People are interested in the motivations behind Important music; the million-dollar question is "what makes this music Important?" and for Kendrick, it's mostly because a lot of people said "because it is" (partially because there's no universal definition of "Important Music" and everyone is bringing slightly different criteria to the table when evaluating it; part of what's happening here IMO is that Kendrick is doing so many things that he's ticking off a lot of boxes that appear on people's personal "Important Music" checklists, giving him in aggregate the categorization).
― Rachel Luther Queen (DJP), Thursday, 20 April 2017 19:16 (seven years ago) link
for everyone who complains about a lot kendrick's content only being relevant if you care about kendrick or it being about his ego, i mean i find that he uses a lot of his "personal issues" content as a way to speak to wider issues that are actually relevant and important, and some critics i've read who complain about him sound a lot like people who don't want to hear about the problems of certain other people.
however i'm not necessarily saying that about anyone here.
― nomar, Thursday, 20 April 2017 19:22 (seven years ago) link
what I'm saying is you could take Section.80 or probably also GKMC, listen to it front to back and just enjoy it as it is without needing any outside explanation of who is the guy delivering the message. I feel like same thing can't necessarily be said about Damn, here you have this image of Kendrick as some kind of messiah or martyr reaching out to human beings, you have HUMBLE, you have this thing where he responds to Geraldo Rivera and in my opinion to understand those things and why he portrays himself this way requires you to understand the context of what happened after TPAB.
― piramjida, Thursday, 20 April 2017 19:29 (seven years ago) link
Rachel Luther Queen, yeah, fully agreed
DJP otm
― Carlotta's Portrait (Ross), Thursday, 20 April 2017 19:32 (seven years ago) link
― piramjida, Thursday, April 20, 2017 2:29 PM (eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
maybe you did enjoy GKMC or Section.80 w/out context but context helps understanding both of those projects a lot.
― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Thursday, 20 April 2017 19:38 (seven years ago) link
I feel like Kendrick was sort of like Nas in that it felt like he was tabbed as being a big deal right away
― blonde redheads have more fun (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, 20 April 2017 19:51 (seven years ago) link
he stood out. i am a very old person and i heard one song pre-gkmc and immediately looked for every scrap of video/audio on youtube that i could find.
― scott seward, Thursday, 20 April 2017 19:58 (seven years ago) link
also, it should be noted, i hadn't read a word about him.
― scott seward, Thursday, 20 April 2017 20:02 (seven years ago) link
I first heard about him the same time Odd Future was getting a lot of initial buzz, Black Hippy being the *other* au currant LA rap collective, but I didn't like Section .80 at all and as a result didn't give GKMC a listen until way after it had already been declared a classic.
― Οὖτις, Thursday, 20 April 2017 20:04 (seven years ago) link
also, I'm not sure if that's Larry Mullen Jr. and Adam Clayton playing but I really love the slinky bassline & drum beat that comes in when Bono starts singing is pretty great actually
― blonde redheads have more fun (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, 20 April 2017 20:06 (seven years ago) link
i didn't really listen to butterfly much. i thought it was impressive though. but more something i admired than something i needed to hear a lot. like a scott walker album.
― scott seward, Thursday, 20 April 2017 20:06 (seven years ago) link
Overly Dedicated is the only Kendrick release I haven't worn out. Dude speaks to me.
― Rachel Luther Queen (DJP), Thursday, 20 April 2017 20:23 (seven years ago) link
same. and i like overly dedicated a lot too!
― Bobson Dugnutt (ulysses), Thursday, 20 April 2017 20:42 (seven years ago) link
is it heresy to say that tpab might have benefited from a very slight resequencing*
this album, i wouldn't want anything changed
still unsure which i prefer
*obvious low-key deep cut 'institutionalized' in a banger sandwich at the front of the album, basically. idk maybe it's a deliberate pacing check. my main point is that damn is sequenced so fucking perfectly
― imago, Thursday, 20 April 2017 21:06 (seven years ago) link