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Escobar305 wrote:Much appreciated Versive.

Kendrick Lamar‘s third album is an incredibly self-indulgent ride on the Mothership which has already been hailed as the most important hip-hop album of the century by the internet. In comparison to endless Migos clones it certainly sounds new and original, but on closer inspection To Pimp A Butterfly owes a heavy debt to groups like The Coup from Oakland, who were cooking up exotic Funk Rap gumbo since the early 90′s. Musically, it drifts between some tight, intriguing riffs and messy, chaotic-for-the-sake-of-being-chaotic dirges that sound like the work of someone who bought a ‘Best of P-Funk’ box set a week ago.

There are moments that begin like a clever parody but then you realize that maybe he’s actually being serious, such as the ‘For Free’ interlude which seems like a gag on the Last Poets style but then it keeps going and you begin to think, ‘Wait up, is this guy is actually trying to get his modern-day griot on here?’ The frustrating thing is that when Kendrick isn’t rapping in Gremlin voices and trying to be extra experimental, he can be very effective, as ‘How Much A Dollar Cost’ and ‘Alright’ demonstrate.

‘Complexion (A Zulu Love)’ gives us a glimpse of Kendrick really hitting his stride, as the loop stays in the pocket and flips into a brilliant beat change for Rapsody’s section while they both address the ever-poignant issue of identity, before sliding into the driving force of ‘The Blacker The Berry’, which features some of the most potent vocals of the entire album. But before we know it we’re back into some Erykah Badu-lite nonsense for ‘You Ain’t Gotta Lie (Momma Said)’ and an overly-ambitious attempt at channeling Sly Stone on ‘i’ before we hit ‘Mortal Man’ (aka the song no one will ever play in their car on account of the seven minutes of poetry and fake Tupac interviews that follow the actual song). ‘Mortal Man’ is Kendrick’s way of saying ‘Good luck with making your own iTunes version of my album, dickheads!’ since you’d have to fuck around and split the file up to get rid of that spoken world action. Bonus points for trolling, sir.

While I respect Lamar’s ambition here, To Pimp A Butterfly is let-down in the execution. He clearly has a lot on his mind and addresses a number of topics worthy of discussion, in particular the allegations of hypocrisy that have been leveled at any rapper who hasn’t conveniently fit into a box marked ‘conscious’ or ‘ignorant’ since KRS-One stormed the stage of that PM Dawn show in 1993. The problem is the music, which often sounds amateurish when compared to the sophisticated reinterpretations of P-Funk previously achieved by Above The Law, Dr. Dre and DJ Quik.

For all that is compelling about this record on paper, much of it is simply a drag to listen to to anyone who’s familiar with the source material and the how much better the same thing was done twenty years ago (albeit without the same level of lyrical mastery). On the five songs where him and his production team get it right, Kendrick nails it. But when the music falters, so does the the listeners attention span, making what could have been an amazing EP into a frustrating cosmic slop of an album.

By early Tuesday, Lamar had broken the record for most Spotify streams in a single day: 9.6 million times all the way through the album

According to calculations based on Spotify’s formula for royalty payments, the site said Lamar raked in between $921,600 and $1,290,240 from the Spotify streams in a single day. It’s proof that artists can make serious money from Spotify, even though it has been critiqued by artists for providing paltry royalties.

ackbar wrote:it's crazy how influential flying lotus (via dilla) has become

Captin Planit wrote:

ackbar wrote:it's crazy how influential flying lotus (via dilla) has become

I think this is one of the most cemented observations to come from this record and everything that's happened in the past few years. There is this widening gap between the further exploration of this lo-fidelity, jazz-influenced, no-holds-barred approach to production and the pop-friendly, southern-influenced, everyone's-from-Atlanta trap boom, and it's like everything falls somewhere on the ph scale that's got its bookends entrenched in either of those sounds. There's room for little else to succeed. I can't tell if that's because this is the answer nowadays to avoiding sampling royalties altogether or if it's because that's all people want nowadays.

Captin Planit wrote:There is this widening gap between the further exploration of this lo-fidelity, jazz-influenced, no-holds-barred approach to production and the pop-friendly, southern-influenced, everyone's-from-Atlanta trap boom, and it's like everything falls somewhere on the ph scale that's got its bookends entrenched in either of those sounds.

drizzle wrote:

Captin Planit wrote:There is this widening gap between the further exploration of this lo-fidelity, jazz-influenced, no-holds-barred approach to production and the pop-friendly, southern-influenced, everyone's-from-Atlanta trap boom, and it's like everything falls somewhere on the ph scale that's got its bookends entrenched in either of those sounds.

this is a false binary, plenty of rap out there has nothing to do with either

intuition wrote:but which acts would you consider truly "commercially successful" that are using beat scene style beats? (TPAB aside)

intuition wrote:edit: i forgot what i was arguing as i was typing it...
thread way off track, my bad. kendrick is the biggest rapper thus far to have flylo / thundercat / beat scene music on his album.

ackbar wrote:i like it more than GKMC personally. which is weird considering my usual listening habits.. but i was ready for something different & kendrick going in on #bars isn't my fave because i feel other people do that better

EMCEE DARTH MALEK wrote:kendrick writes with a purpose. he writes about stuff. it's never about bars.