One Liner: One of the top rappers today
Wikipedia Genre: Hip hop, progressive rap, West Coast hip hop, conscious hip hop, jazz rapHome: Compton
Poster Position: Headliner!
Both Weekends.
Poster Position: Headliner!
Both Weekends.
Friday.
Thoughts: Holy crap. He was last here in 2016? I could have sworn it was way more recently than 2016. 2013 was the year he had that sorta side stage, but was one of the biggest things going on and everyone had flags with things like "bitch don't kill my vibe" or "DRANK" on them. 2016 was when he rocked the full-on AmEx stage at the peak of his powers.
Speaking of that, you need to go look at what it looked like a decade ago when he played a tiny room for SXSW.
Before his debut album, he had two big mixtapes that are also available to stream, 2011's Section.80 and 2010's Overly Dedicated. The biggest track from either of those two is "A.D.H.D." from Section.80. 357.3 million streams.
That second verse is from Lamar, although it's the brutal verse from Q at the end, ripping into the people who filmed Alton Brown's murder, that sticks with that track.
So, this album does not have an obvious storyline like GKMC did, but a few tracks immediately stand out with rock solid beats and lyrics. Maybe it does have a storyline, just reading the song titles in order, with BLOOD and DNA starting it off, followed by YAH, ELEMENT, and FEEL. LOYALTY, PRIDE, and HUMBLE. Then the LUST, LOVE, and XXX trilogy comes along before FEAR and GOD. I don't know what that story says, but I'd say the themes of this album are the fact that no one is praying for Lamar, that police are scary, that Fox News sucks, and that Lamar has a lot of fears.
"DNA" and "HUMBLE" are the easy hits, I think, and that has held up with the streaming numbers. The beat on "DNA" is dope as hell and the lyric on "HUMBLE" where he is bagging on photoshop and says he wants to see some stretchmarks, that is perfect. That track was released before the rest of the album, so it got a head-start, but even since then you hear it all the time six years later. 1.9 Billion streams. His most streamed track overall.
One thing I definitely don't like on here are the DJ shoutouts that keep happening, like this is some low rent mixtape. "NEW SHIT! NEW KUNG FU KENNY!" Lame. But one thing I do like is how this album shifts back and forth between the more traditional rap beats as he used on GKMC (see "DNA" or "ELEMENT") and the more jazz-influenced sound he used on To Pimp a Butterfly (see "FEEL" or "FEAR").
The final song is awesome as well, "DUCKWORTH." This is apparently the story of the founder of Lamar's label, Top Dawg Entertainment, and how that dude was going to hold up the KFC where Lamar's father (Ducky) worked, but Ducky hooked him up with free chicken and extra biscuits, so Tiffith let him live. Its a cool story, the thought that TDE and Kendrick could just not be here today if things had gone differently at that KFC 20 years ago.
Oh yeah, and U2 appears on this album. Which sounds weird as crap, but actually works really well. It isn't a sample, it isn't some terrible thing of Bono trying to rap or Mullen trying to replicate a rap beat with his drums, its just an interlude in the midst of an already busily shapeshifting song, where drum, bass, and piano combine to form a new beat and Bono sings a hook before Lamar continues a diatribe against the current America. Pretty cool.
It is a good album. I don't think it is as interesting as either GKMC or TPAB, but that may just be the effect of listening for years to those others. I'd really like to go back to bumping it a little more and see if I unpack anything else.
This guy is a badass. If you watched his Grammy performance several years ago, then you know what we could be in for here. A no holds barred, brutally powerful trip through some of the best rap made in the 2010s, plus some newer stuff too. I'm looking forward to it.
Bro. Straight goosebumps. All the energy. That room is on fire. I want to be that dude in front who HAD to remove his t-shirt when the first YAK YAK YAK kicked in. Damn.
I feel like I've already written quite a bit about Kendrick. His 2015 album To Pimp a Butterfly was great and made most people's top ten (if not number one) album of the year lists. Here is my review of it. The funny thing, as great as I thought it was, I really haven't gone back to it to hear it again, other than "King Kunta." For a long time, that was his top track on Spotify by quite a bit, but it has been lapped repeatedly by now. 541.2 million streams.
He also did that Untitled Unmastered "album" in 2016, which I also reviewed. My favorite track, mainly because of the sweet beat, was #7.
m.A.A.d city is my favorite disc of his for sure. When Kendrick was here in 2013, GKMC was all the rage. I swear at least 10% of the flags and signs people were carrying at the festival that year had some play on either "Bitch, Don't Kill My Vibe" or "Swimming Pools (Drank)." One of the great things about that album is the running story line through the whole album, told through the raps as well as the interludes created as voice mails on young Kendrick's cell phone. The dad/step-dad/boyfriend wanting his dominoes always gets me grinning. Not that it is a happy story or anything. Surprisingly, neither of those two tracks is the most listened to track from that album on Spotify. Instead, that honor goes to "Money Trees" at 1.1 billion (WITH A B!).
Sometimes you just want to bump a song, right? And a lot of the rest of this album is just so powerful and bleak and, like, important, it just makes it hard to want to jam it. However, "i" is also a pretty fun jam from that album. The top streamer is "Alright," which became a sort of anthem for Black Lives Matter a few years back.
He also did that Untitled Unmastered "album" in 2016, which I also reviewed. My favorite track, mainly because of the sweet beat, was #7.
That smeary, woozy opening, kicking into a vaguely asian flavored trap beat, it sounds menacing and tough and awesome. Not sure that I comprehend the lyrics, but I still dig jamming the tune. There were some good moments on this mixtape, but nothing nearly so good as the best parts of TPAB or his first real album, 2012's good kid, m.A.A.d. city.
m.A.A.d city is my favorite disc of his for sure. When Kendrick was here in 2013, GKMC was all the rage. I swear at least 10% of the flags and signs people were carrying at the festival that year had some play on either "Bitch, Don't Kill My Vibe" or "Swimming Pools (Drank)." One of the great things about that album is the running story line through the whole album, told through the raps as well as the interludes created as voice mails on young Kendrick's cell phone. The dad/step-dad/boyfriend wanting his dominoes always gets me grinning. Not that it is a happy story or anything. Surprisingly, neither of those two tracks is the most listened to track from that album on Spotify. Instead, that honor goes to "Money Trees" at 1.1 billion (WITH A B!).
Which is a great track, for sure. The beat is dope, the flow is perfection, the laconic pace just makes me want to groove. But I thought "m.A.A.d. City" was going to be the one still holding down the top spot, being that it is the one with the iconic YAK YAK YAK YAK YAK! Tight ass song. 665 million streams. I love the change in beats in the middle of the track and the full on change in feeling right there. The great thing about Kendrick is that his lyrics sound cool, and if you take some time to listen, he actually says stuff too. Unlike half the dorks making rap these days.
But that is the album that I keep going back to because it rules. SO FREAKING GOOD. Seriously, go listen again to the opening track ("Sherane a.k.a Master Splinter's Daughter"), which is not the hot hit from the album, but is such a top-notch fantastic bit of story-telling that perfectly sets up the rest of the album. The naive lust on the track, plus the little details, and then the way it dovetails into that first voice mail, it's just so freaking great.
Before his debut album, he had two big mixtapes that are also available to stream, 2011's Section.80 and 2010's Overly Dedicated. The biggest track from either of those two is "A.D.H.D." from Section.80. 357.3 million streams.
And also, before all the fame, well, and I guess now during it, he has been part of the Black Hippy collective, which includes Schoolboy Q, Ab-Soul, and Jay Rock. So they appear on each other's tracks here and there, and then every once in a while do a remix of each others' songs, like the bad ass remix of Schoolboy's "That Part," which drops Kanye's verse ("This ain't Chipotle!") and hands the mic to the Hippy guys for some verses.
I've taken a meandering path through his music, and I'm sorry for the lack of clarity. After the opening mixtapes, GKMC, the Pulitzer Prize-winning TPAB, and the weird untitled thing, you get to the surprisingly strange DAMN., from 2017, and then the fascinating Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers from 2022.
DAMN. was wild to me because by now, the dude had won a fucking Pulitzer. He was the most followed rapper alive. Every website everywhere immediately wrote a ten thousand word dissection of every song. Literally, right after this album came out I read one that was talking about the significance of this being scheduled for release on April 7 and how that somehow tied into an important thing connected to a verse in the Bible. People are crazy.
So, this album does not have an obvious storyline like GKMC did, but a few tracks immediately stand out with rock solid beats and lyrics. Maybe it does have a storyline, just reading the song titles in order, with BLOOD and DNA starting it off, followed by YAH, ELEMENT, and FEEL. LOYALTY, PRIDE, and HUMBLE. Then the LUST, LOVE, and XXX trilogy comes along before FEAR and GOD. I don't know what that story says, but I'd say the themes of this album are the fact that no one is praying for Lamar, that police are scary, that Fox News sucks, and that Lamar has a lot of fears.
"DNA" and "HUMBLE" are the easy hits, I think, and that has held up with the streaming numbers. The beat on "DNA" is dope as hell and the lyric on "HUMBLE" where he is bagging on photoshop and says he wants to see some stretchmarks, that is perfect. That track was released before the rest of the album, so it got a head-start, but even since then you hear it all the time six years later. 1.9 Billion streams. His most streamed track overall.
Another 929 million views on YouTube. My question about the track is whether he is talking to himself (my theory) or to his competition. The Genius song annotation makes the argument that this is a message to his competition, telling them to sit down and shut up and be humble. I guess I see that, since he is calling himself the Sandman and telling people to get off the stage. But my thought in listening the first few times is that he is talking to himself - the first verse is his rags to riches story, eating syrup sandwiches to being able to buy the world with his paystub, but then the end of the verse hard stops into saying to sit down and be humble. I like that version of the story much more than the one that is Kendrick bragging about how everyone else should be humble in front of his amazingness. I don't know, I like to think of Kendrick Lamar as being above that kind of petty little beef garbage and on a higher level.
One thing I definitely don't like on here are the DJ shoutouts that keep happening, like this is some low rent mixtape. "NEW SHIT! NEW KUNG FU KENNY!" Lame. But one thing I do like is how this album shifts back and forth between the more traditional rap beats as he used on GKMC (see "DNA" or "ELEMENT") and the more jazz-influenced sound he used on To Pimp a Butterfly (see "FEEL" or "FEAR").
The final song is awesome as well, "DUCKWORTH." This is apparently the story of the founder of Lamar's label, Top Dawg Entertainment, and how that dude was going to hold up the KFC where Lamar's father (Ducky) worked, but Ducky hooked him up with free chicken and extra biscuits, so Tiffith let him live. Its a cool story, the thought that TDE and Kendrick could just not be here today if things had gone differently at that KFC 20 years ago.
Oh yeah, and U2 appears on this album. Which sounds weird as crap, but actually works really well. It isn't a sample, it isn't some terrible thing of Bono trying to rap or Mullen trying to replicate a rap beat with his drums, its just an interlude in the midst of an already busily shapeshifting song, where drum, bass, and piano combine to form a new beat and Bono sings a hook before Lamar continues a diatribe against the current America. Pretty cool.
It is a good album. I don't think it is as interesting as either GKMC or TPAB, but that may just be the effect of listening for years to those others. I'd really like to go back to bumping it a little more and see if I unpack anything else.
Finally, the album that I am definitely least familiar with. 2022's Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers. It came out while I was writing up the 2022 ACL Fest, so I ignored it for months. When I finally dove back in to it, I was just underwhelmed. It is an extremely interesting album. I would not say that it is very fun - very few things on here are going to get you dancing or hype - maybe "N95" or "Silent Hill" - "Count Me Out" has a great beat though - but there are some tracks on here that go deeper than any other rapper is willing to go. "Auntie Diaries" is amazing, and I can't think of any other main-stream rapper who would have the balls to make a rap track about trans folks changing genders in this way.
Although, I'm not sure it is all as deep as it seems on first blush. And so, you end up with a very important seeming album, full of knotty issues and smooth narratives about tough ideas, but it feels like watching a documentary on slavery when you'd rather watch Django Unchained. "We Cry Together" is like watching a shocking one act play that is going to get a theater director fired - and it definitely breaks the mood of the surrounding songs. Just a bunch of jarring screaming among these otherwise chill-sounding tracks. But it also kind of rules - like, it is a real-deal visceral interlude that feels awful to listen in on and yet piques the interest. "N95" is the top streamer with 322 million. Only one other track breaks 200m.
I dig the vibe of the song, even if the lyrics are a little more opaque than many of these tracks. Are we talking about N95 masks when saying to "take it off" and is this some sort of commentary about COVID response and being on lockdown? "You're back outside, but they still lied" sure makes it seem like that is the idea? But then it's going into designer labels and the "cop with the eyepatch?" Seems like he is diving deep into his own mind here, but I'm not sure what he is getting at. The album is also freaking long at an hour and thirteen minutes. A little bit of this on the cutting room floor could have made for a tighter package that hit harder. Disc two has much fewer streams, seems like the fans got enough of the vibe before they made it to the second half. Like much of the Kendrick discography, this is a thinking-man's version of rap. It is good, and it is valuable, and it is worthwhile to listen to it. But it sure isn't going to get you hype.
Which is the big thing that I was complaining about with Kendrick being the big headliner. When people go to the Festival to bump rap, at least in my opinion, they want to get stupid and have fun. They want Brockhampton going crazy, or Travis Scott lighting the stage on fire and starting a riot, or Jay-Z getting the crowd moving. They really aren't looking for someone to rap about his mother's favorite poet over a loop of jazz saxophone. I'm probably being unfair, but in the two times I have seen him now, it feels like he gives the crowd what they want for about 4 songs, and then provides a history lesson for the rest of the night. But at the same time, maybe I am a moron! This was at the VMAs after DAMN. came out.
On the one hand, that goes really freaking hard. On the other hand, the celebrities in the audience are just sitting still and sorta nodding. Jared Leto looks bored to death. It is only the kids who are told that they'd better dance or get kicked out who are jumping around. I hope he brings the fire ninjas with him to Zilker!
Oh, and I forgot about the Black Panther Soundtrack. This soundtrack has been "curated" by Kendrick Lamar, which apparently means that he just got all of the Top Dawg Entertainment artists to give him a track and slapped them all together to make the album. Not really that blatant, but you definitely have SZA, Schoolboy Q, Jay Rock, Ab-Soul, and many others on here who might be part of TDE. There are a few good tracks on here, but I'd say that it is very uneven. I also don't much care for SZA or The Weeknd (which says a lot about me, and not their skills), and those two artists bookend the album with Kendrick collaborations that are alternative R&B stuff I don't really need to hear anymore... But, of course, the rest of the world loves SZA with passion right now, so that track is the top one on here by a million miles. 1.3 Billion streams for "All the Stars."
Not a bad song - SZA's voice is good, Kendrick's verse is good, but nothing in it sticks with me and feels like it will matter tomorrow. I kind of liked the sound of Khalid's track, until Swae Lee started auto-crooning. "X" sounds pretty solid and I always enjoy a good Anderson.Paak thing, like "Bloody Waters" with Ab-Soul. My first three or so listens were unimpressed, but I kept at it and came around a little. Still not on board with the Zacari songs or the Jorja Smith tune. That being said, the vibe is all over the place, but it actually kind of works.
This guy is a badass. If you watched his Grammy performance several years ago, then you know what we could be in for here. A no holds barred, brutally powerful trip through some of the best rap made in the 2010s, plus some newer stuff too. I'm looking forward to it.
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