Kendrick’s criticisms, as they did on good kid, come with powerful, self-imposed challenges.
#BEST KENDRICK LAMAR ALBUMS FREE#
Kendrick refuses to dole out blame without accepting any, however, and on the chaotic free jazz excursion "u" he turns a mirror on himself, screaming "Loving you is complicated!" and suggesting his fame hasn’t helped his loved ones back home. It turns out Kendrick’s new direction was every direction at once.ĭespite all this, he’s still toying with a narrative on the sly: Just beneath the surface lies a messianic yarn about avoiding the wiles of a sultry girl named Lucy who’s secretly a physical manifestation of the devil. The rapper’s branching out, too, exploding into spastic slam poetry on "For Free?", switching from shouty gymnastics to drunken sobs on "u" and even effecting the lilt of a caring mother on "You Ain’t Gotta Lie (Momma Said)". There’s half a jazz band present at all times pianist Robert Glasper, producer/sax player Terrace Martin and bass wizard Thundercat give Butterfly a loose, fluid undertow every bit as tempestuous and unpredictable as the army of flows at Kendrick’s disposal. The music, meanwhile, follows a long line of genre-busting freakouts ( The Roots’ Phrenology, Common’s Electric Circus, Q-Tip’s Kamaal the Abstract, André 3000’s The Love Below) in kicking at the confines of rap music presentation. The mood is wry, theatrical, chaotic, ironic, and mournful, often all at once: On "For Free? (Interlude)" an impatient woman ticks off a laundry list of material demands before Kendrick snaps back that "This dick ain’t free!" and thunders through a history of black oppression, spoken-word style, as if to say, "This money you crave, it’s blood money." The album is dotted with surreal grace notes, like a parable: God appears in the guise of a homeless man in "How Much a Dollar Cost", and closer "Mortal Man" ends on a lengthy, unnerving fever-dream interview with the ghost of 2Pac. Snoop drops by on "Institutionalized" Dre himself phones in on "Wesley". The opener, "Wesley’s Theory", turns the downfall of action-star-turned-convicted-tax-dodger Wesley Snipes into a kind of Faustian parable.
#BEST KENDRICK LAMAR ALBUMS MOVIE#
Lamar’s new album, To Pimp a Butterfly, doesn’t explicitly bill itself as a movie like good kid, m.A.A.d city did, but the network of interlocking dramas explored here feels filmic nonetheless, and a variety of characters appear across the album’s expanse. Lamar’s records, while crowded with conflicting ideas and arguing voices, have a similar sense of a guiding hand at work. In these moments, you could feel the director speaking to you directly through his characters and their trajectories. Mookie’s climactic window smash in 1989’s Do the Right Thing plunged its characters into fiery bedlam, quietly prophesying the coming L.A. The "Good and Bad Hair" musical routine from Lee’s 1988 feature School Daze depicted black women grappling with colorism and exclusionary standards of American beauty. In both artists’ worlds, the stakes are unbearably high, the characters’ motives are unclear, and morality is knotty, but there is a central force you can feel steering every moment.
Just giving GKMC it’s proper respect.Kendrick Lamar’s major-label albums play out like Spike Lee films in miniature. But in that category, he should have won IMO, And that’s taking nothing away from The Heist. I’m honored and completely blown away to win anything much less 4 Grammys. In the caption to the Instagram post, Macklemore added more context: “My text to Kendrick after the show. Appreciate you as an artist and as a friend. Then the music started playing during my speech, and I froze,” he continued.
You should have,” Macklemore wrote in a text message that he sent to Lamar, screencapped and then posted to his Instagram account. And that, according to Macklemore was a crime. As it happens, Lamar did not win a single award last night, also losing Best New Artist to Macklemore. City, which also contended for Album Of The Year. Their album, which produced chart topping singles like “Thrift Shop,” “White Walls” and equality anthem “Same Love,” managed to best excellent albums by Kanye West, Jay Z, Drake and Kendrick Lamar’s incredible Good Kid, m.A.A.d.
0 kommentar(er)
