Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp A Butterfly (2015)

"I remember you was conflicted..." omg this is such a tedious, flow-wrecking thru line

but he was conflicted

"King Kunta" peaked at #29 on the rap/R&B airplay chart and dropped the last couple weeks, will be bummed if it never blossoms into a proper hit. they'd be dumb not to release "Alright" as the next single, i've heard that one out and people lose their shit to it. would love to hear "You Ain't Gotta Lie" on the radio eventually too.

i would've been shocked if this album had gotten popular even as much as good kid did... it's a wonky dense and weird piece of work, not really built for mass consumption

seems like its success will be album-level, not single-level.

yeah i think that's self-evident. but just because it probably won't have three top 10 heavy rotation rap radio singles like GKMC doesn't mean it can't have one or two.

I'm really curious how he's going to play this to festival crowds. I imagine the big crowd-pleasers will still be the GKMC hits. Wonder if he'll maintain any of the album sequencing or just mix it all up.

"King Kunta" peaked at #29 on the rap/R&B airplay chart and dropped the last couple weeks, will be bummed if it never blossoms into a proper hit. they'd be dumb not to release "Alright" as the next single, i've heard that one out and people lose their shit to it. would love to hear "You Ain't Gotta Lie" on the radio eventually too.

― some dude, Friday, May 15, 2015 11:44 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, "Alright" was the one I started playing out immediately when the album dropped although I've gotten good reactions to "King Kunta" too. Haven't tried anything else tho.

I'd be surprised if he didn't confine the bulk of his touring to europe; i think there's more money and exposure opportunities for "non-commercial" black artists over there

he's kind of huge over here tho?

Yeah -- only person besides Taylor Swift to have the #1 album for more than one week so far this year. Not exactly noncommercial.

wow what that's crazy

ime tour bookers tend not to put a lot of faith in black artists who put out highly acclaimed albums but not much in the way of au currant singles to tentpole festivals and arena tours, c.f. d'angelo, jazmine, miguel...
joey bada$$ for instance is doing as many or more dates overseas than in the states: http://theproera.com/tour/
i guess i'm saying noncommercial means something different when the stakes get raised high enough

and to be clear, i don't really agree with that logic and think it's pre-itunes thinking.

Yeah I mean he's obviously not Drake, e.g., in terms of the mainstream. But he's also obviously a pretty big star. I was going to compare him to OutKast ca. Stankonia, but Stankonia had a #1 single on it so maybe not. (Maybe Aquemini?)

Kendrick could hole himself away into a 'acclaimed cult artist with no radio presence' niche in the next 5-10 years but he's pretty huge right now. i mean J. Cole's album is selling in the same range (and its biggest single was about as big as "i") and he's touring arenas and amphitheatres this year.

"You Ain't Gotta Lie" and "Alright" have been the songs I've played most; hope his people see the light.

In an AP quiz I gave in April one of the questions was, Kendrick Lamar's Swimming Pool got a lot of airplay; 12 out of 16 students put quotation marks around "Swimming Pool."

Kendrick played at the second biggest stage at Roskilde a few years back, and it was packed as it's rarely been packed before. Like, once or twice in 40 years. This year, he's playing main stage, for tens of thousands of Danes. He is definitely huge over here, though I don't know what his sales are like.

so 75% of them undersotood title conventions?

Yeah, I guess I taught'em well :)

undersotood

yeah, what Frederik said: he might be able to sell out MSG on the mainstage with a ton of support but that's a pretty risky booking
but put him in denmark...

again, J. Cole sold out MSG. Kendrick hasn't headlined MSG yet that i know of but that's not a "risky booking" by any stretch of the imagination.

j cole sold out msg with big sean, NB "ton of support". black hippy could probably sell out a few dates at msg at this point. you also missed the headline again: there's more money and larger audiences overseas so it wouldn't surprise me if he tours there primarily.

eh, Eminem and Jay-Z types tour the world...maybe the touring business is set up where Europe is more lucrative but TPAB debuted outside the top 10 in most countries in mainland Europe. just because a hugely popular rapper dropped a jazzy album with few radio smashes doesn't magically turn him into a Sun Ra making all his show money overseas.

okay, you clearly know much more about the live music industry than i do, keep the faith

i've been hearing "king kunta" on the radio station here some but before they started playing that they were playing "alright" as part of their requests countdown and on regular programming... but i haven't heard as much of either recently.

i dunno, you just seem very confident that Kendrick will "confine the bulk of his touring to Europe" and i have a hard time imagining that he'll be doing substantially more overseas dates vs. US concerts relative to any of his peers (his actual peers, not Joey Bada$$ and Jazmine Sullivan). we'll see in a few years or by the end of this album cycle, i suppose, it just doesn't seem like this obvious given.

was listening today and thought 'this album is pretttty much a fiery furnaces album'

http://www.kappit.com/img/pics/201502_1037_aefia_sm.png

Well then http://www.stereogum.com/1804259/kendrick-lamar-performed-at-sasquatch-and-only-did-one-song-from-to-pimp-a-butterfly/news/

I'll be bummed if that's true at Bonnaroo -- I'll be happy to hear some GKMC tracks, but what I really want is the new stuff. Especially since he played Bonnaroo on the actual GKMC tour. A rehash would be kinda lame for a headlining slot.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/09/nyregion/kendrick-lamar-rapper-who-inspired-a-teacher-visits-a-high-school-that-embraces-his-work.htm

The Bonnaroo set was sort of odd. He was good, the songs individually were good, but the sequencing was bad and he kept killing his own vibe. First two-thirds was all GKMC stuff, plus "Fuckin' Problems." This was fine, but people were obviously waiting for the new stuff. He did "m.A.A.d. city" twice in a row, which as far as I could tell no one in the crowd was asking for. By the time he hit "Sing About Me," which slowed everything to a crawl for five minutes, a lot of people gave up on hearing new material and started streaming out. So when he actually got to the new stuff, he'd lost about a third of the audience. The new stuff was all good -- "i," "These Walls," "King Kunta" and "Alright," back to back. I just don't think he should've taken 50 minutes or so to get to it.

One thing that struck me is that he's still relatively new to working stages that big, and he doesn't quite have the showman chops yet to really build momentum and sustain it. He was friendly and wanted to work the crowd, but he kept letting the energy dissipate.

On the other hand, when he and Chance did cameos an hour later during Earth, Wind and Fire's set, they were both on fire.

literally?

a serpentine fire

It was the baptismal boogie fire of EWF.

(Who definitely do know how to work a big stage.)

He kept killing his own vibe

Bitch Don't Kill My Vibe (I'll Do it Myself)

it really is weird how slow he's been to add TPAB songs to his set. he did so many shows in support of GKMC that by the end of the album cycle it kind of became a joke how many times he did the same basic set in the same markets, you'd think he'd be chomping at the bit to change things up. almost makes me wonder if he has issues with memorizing new lyrics.

I heard he wants to do the new stuff properly with a full band. Makes sense. I don't know what set-up he's using now but if it's still just him and a DJ I can see why he feels it's not worth going in hard on the new album.

He had a full band at Bonnaroo. But yeah, it may be that they're just learning the new material a song at a time. They're up to four.

*takes long drag off vape pen*

used to be ILM would be all over it when a music video from a potential album of the year dropped

no-one's even revived the bigbang thread in the past two days

tbh i can't think of many times a video generated a lot of discussion on ilm, even a video that was generating discussion elsewhere

i think there have been times they've generated a lot of posts

from the nine seconds of it i saw a coworker watch it's not like it's a huge extension to kendrick's ~brand~ u kno

great video

*sigh*

http://pitchfork.com/news/60227-kendrick-lamar-to-fox-news-how-can-you-take-a-song-thats-about-hope-and-turn-it-into-hatred/