Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp A Butterfly (2015)

it's an impressive and admirable track but...i don't want to listen to it ever

i feel like this album is actually revealing itself in a pretty organic and relaxed way now that i've got past the stressful What Does It Mean frenzy of the first week and can just ENJOY it

yeah upthread I said "u" was the only track besides the Tupac dialogue I skip.

As one of the few albums this year I own on CD, it really does benefit from playing in the background while doing housework.

"u" is probably the song I play the most (along with "The Blacker The Berry" and "Alright")

i feel like this album is actually revealing itself in a pretty organic and relaxed way now that i've got past the stressful What Does It Mean frenzy of the first week and can just ENJOY it

― lex pretend, Wednesday, April 15, 2015 8:28 AM (58 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, i feel this way about a lot of albums now. i like to give em a rest a bit and then come back in a month when it's all died down.

thirded. have recently rediscovered the joy in returning to recent albums several months or a year after they come out. so tempting to always try and keep on top of everything that sometimes you forget about what you actually enjoy.

hey guys remember Black Messiah

u is essential to me, esp since I'm dealing with some depression. It sounds like the self loathing internal monologue I can't shut off and then alright comes on and I'm sobbing basically.

hey guys remember Black Messiah

Only one blickity black blacker than black album can exist in the public conscience at a time iirc

Also I don't really care that much about D'Angelo

we're here to help when you're ready

"Only one blickity black blacker than black album can exist in the public conscience at a time iirc"

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/apr/05/young-fathers-white-men-black-men-too-review

young fathers album is pretty dope on two listens; looking forward to seeing them live in a few months.

Will also be seeing them next month but the sentiment behind their new album is by definition not blickity black blacker than black.

can we get a list of albums that qualify as blickity black blacker than black plz

http://www.revolvermag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/metallica-metallica.jpg

I only brought up Black Messiah because it generated what feels like a similar critical feeding frenzy (plus it's "dense", uh has a b&w cover etc.) and it's just been intense to have two of these cycles about "important"/"serious" records practically back-to-back.

fwiw Black Messiah has a totally different, more confident, more joyful vibe than TPAB imo

I have a rolling playlist on my phone that I add songs to regularly and shuffle. There are a bunch of tracks from both Black Messiah and TPAB on there, and sometimes they segue into each other. They work well together!

hey guys remember Black Messiah
Only one blickity black blacker than black album can exist in the public conscience at a time iirc

― tsrobodo, Wednesday, April 15, 2015 7:23 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

and it will never be the jazmine sullivan album, sigh

funny (i.e. annoying) that erykah's nu-amerykah never got the same level of think-piece reaction.

I didn't even hear of that album until years later when it won some ILM poll

the media werent ready back then. its a brand new day in 2015. am expecting sister souljah to make a comeback in this current climate.

xxp the thinkpiece-industrial complex wasn't quite mature when she released those albums

Souljah's busy working for Diddy iirc

xps
It figures that every other review of the TPAB featured a throwaway callback to BM, but I'm not sure there is any genuine dialogue to be discerned between the two mostly because BM ain't really saying too much.

Most of the critical frenzy revolved around D'Angelo's story as a singular black man, consciousness towards the situation in Ferguson and the supposed absence and return of the protest album.

Obvs not a coincidence that black women haven't been elevated as spokespeople and storytellers despite there being so many awesome examples. Sullivan's Mascara speaks to contentious cultural phenomena as well as anything else yet nobody has anything to say about it.

theesatisfaction have gotten some credit, though i dont like their music that much - theyre pretty direct about issues to do with blackness though

hey guys remember Black Messiah
Only one blickity black blacker than black album can exist in the public conscience at a time iirc

― tsrobodo, Wednesday, April 15, 2015 7:23 PM

and it will never be the jazmine sullivan album, sigh

― lex pretend, Wednesday, April 15, 2015 8:44 PM

I feel like the jazmine album would be a really natural comparison point for the kendrick album, given how much of it also pivots around media narratives of blackness and radical self-love. (And maybe dawn/d'angelo in terms of virtuoso self-expression?)

the Sullivan album is exactly the kind of modest triumph that is guaranteed not to inspire one think piece.

"u" is too real for the average ILMer

fwiw, I'm a black person who has spent large chunks of time in Montana. Jokes on you, Tanuki.

― The Reverend, Tuesday, April 14, 2015 4:22 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Montana's only black person, posts on ILM, thus proving my point ILM is the whitest board on the web.

tell us more about Montana and your very personal experiences with it and other less white parts of America

whats a dawn richard song that will convince me shes as good as people on here seem to think? (or as good as either BM or TPAB)

Swim Free from Blackheart.

It's the song that finally got me to understand why people love her on here so much. Her new album is a massive step up from her other solo albums in my opinion.

Dawn's whole thing is palpably different from Kendrick and D'Angelo and it's kind of silly to compare her to them IMO. That said, I love:

Black Lipstick
Change
Heaven
Save Me From U
Automatic
Pretty Wicked Things
86
Return of a Queen
Calypso
Adderall/Sold (Outerlude)
Swim Free
Phoenix

the way that i'm comparing them is that they're all making amazing joyous complex brilliant music right now that's being either crit-ted to death or ignored
Adderall/Sold is the song that I'm using off the new album to sway people to the light

Her new album is a massive step up from her other solo albums in my opinion.

― Kitchen Person,

^^

Amazed that people are down on 'u' - the moment at the very beginning of that track, where the lights abruptly go out, is one of my favourite single moments on the album. Institutionalized is the only track I feel compelled to skip, although I can see myself tiring for For Free after a while.

This album doesn't strike me as the kind where you can skip tracks

yeah i think part of the reason im taking a break from it is that im not sure it really works unless you sit through the whole thing.

even the most "listen to this all the way through" albums - even dawn richard! - end up having skippable tracks because most people's time isn't conveniently divided up into album lengths

though actually i think the middle section of TPAB isn't particularly like that; "wesley's theory" through to "king kunta" and "hood politics" through to "i" work incredibly well as suites but the songs work better as individual songs than you'd think

i skip 'these walls' but this album is full of huge jams.

'u' is some real scarface introspective rap shit. fuck 'sad boys' 2015

If I worked at Sears Portrait Studio, I would not want to hear sexy music while proofing pictures of people with their dogs. This is the only situation where skipping 'these walls' makes sense to me.

u is essential to me, esp since I'm dealing with some depression. It sounds like the self loathing internal monologue I can't shut off

This is p much my experience as well.

Also, it's funny that Black Messiah and Blackheart have been mentioned since those two and TPAB are really the only new music I'm fucking with rn

the songs work better as individual songs than you'd think

I confirmed this by listening on shuffle. Made me hear the songs individually, and they almost all work as just standalone pieces. (I mean, there are still some I like more than others, but the parts aren't entirely dependent on the whole.)

if you're skipping "u" you're not equipped to be listening to this album. end.

the songs work better as individual songs than you'd think

hooks and awesome sonic details everywhere.

these are otm. Definitely a capital-A album, but the songs definitely stand on their own.

"u" goes down as a top 10 hip hop song of all time.

slow down gandhi