Tag Archives: kendrick lamar

Kendrick Lamar – GNX

12 Dec

I come not to bury Kendrick but to praise him.

GNX is another victory lap in what has become a year of victory laps for Kendrick. It’s not just that he won the highest profile rap battle in twenty years, it’s that he took down Drake. It is very, very easy to root against Drake and Kendrick didn’t just take him down, he eviscerated him. He made a song calling Drake a pedophile into the sound of the year.

This new Kendrick comes out strong right from the start of the album. When he pulls out Wayne’s flow to mock him in “wacced out murals,” it’s the return of the angry Kendrick that we want now. When he drags out “I did that” in “tv off” to remind you of “a minor” in “Not Like Us” that’s a celebration we can all get behind.

This is what makes “peekaboo” great. It’s a legitimately threatening track. Kendrick has remade himself into a truly scary dude in that beef. The chorus of “What they talkin’ ‘bout? They ain’t talkin’ ‘bout nothin’” repeated is a chant that you now know that Kendrick can back up.

This new image works well for him in the first half of “reincarnated”. This has him channeling Em for some compelling storytelling and hard rap with an excellent, propulsive beat behind him. The overarching narrative of Kendrick as the reincarnation of each of the figures doesn’t work but the music and the tone are very well done.

It falls apart in the second half of the song though. His Christianity just doesn’t work as well anymore. Firstly, they’re just not as much fun as the bangers and the takedowns that we now look for and secondly, I think we can now admit that his grasp on the Christianity was always fumbling, especially as we’ve seen how quick he was to drop it when the chance for a feud came up just as he was quick to pick up homophobia and misogyny for cheap points.

At least “reincarnated” is good music. This issue is worse in “luther” and “dodger blue.” These cuts were always questionable but now are nothing more than a waste of time. Similarly, I have less patience for “gloria” than I used to. “I Used to Love H.E.R.” is completely played out by now.

“heart pt. 6” is a nice walk down memory lane. It reminds me a lot of Jay in his look-how-far-I’ve-come mode and is a fresh style of victory lap for Kendrick but I trust him less now than I did before the beef and there’s no value in a biography when you can’t count on the honesty of the author.

GNX is still quite a solid album. Kendrick can absolutely deliver bangers when he needs to and he’s still in the post-beef glow. He’s going to get bored with those bangers soon though and while it’s still recent enough for him to continue his celebrations, it’s not clear what’s left for him when the party stops.

Part 2 – Drake

I come not to praise Drake but to bury him.

It’s not normal for a musician to have more haters than fans. Even the ones with haters for days like Bieber or Swift have a balance clearly skewed towards fans both in numbers and in passion. The only one that I can think of before now is Nickelback.

The beef made it very clear that Drake has more haters than fans. Like Nickelback, you understand it. It feels like the entire world is saturated with mediocre Drake music and he pumps out far too much of it. He’s also just unsavory. It’s not hard to not message teenagers, to not hide children, to just be normal. We all know that this feud isn’t going to end Drake’s career and honestly probably won’t even really dent him, but music would be better without him and the deluge he brings with him.

So, it’s no surprise how dishonest the discourse was during the beef. Until the knockout punches of “Meet the Grahams” and “Not Like Us” the exchanges were pretty much even, maybe shading towards Drake. This beef brought back some of his interest in rap after a long period of boredom. He had the strong flip, he had some barbs that landed and he had some solid rap in there. Kendrick finished the battle and did so decisively, but there was a battle being had.

The hate for Drake was also enough that we let Kendrick get away with a lot that I’m still not comfortable with. I thought the homophobia was lazy when Em pulled it out in “Killshot” in 2018. This is well beyond that and Kendrick dropped in a bunch of extra bigotry to boot. Kendrick admitted to the cheating in his own songs and there’s just so much dishonesty in his narratives.

You really cannot accuse Drake of jumping on trap for profit when it was him on that “Versace” remix, just as it was him recording tracks with Bad Bunny before he crossed over. This is the reality of the past decade of music, many of the biggest trends, including trap, kpop, afrobeats and reggaeton are sounds that Drake paved the way for.

The thing is that rap has taken over the place of rock. It is now the second genre in music and has been for a while. This has been in the cards for a while. The meld of singing and rap and the pop appeal of that fusion has been obvious for a long time. Had Ms. Lauryn Hill been a more consistent musician or Ye been able to actually sing it might have been either of them. Instead, it’s Drake who actually succeeded and in doing so probably made the most significant advance in rap history.

A lot of what Drake is hated for is the stuff that made rap approachable. He’s soft, he’s preoccupied with pettiness, he’s cringe and he memes, these are all things that take away the menace of rap, things that turned rap into mall music and things that made rap vastly more successful than it has ever been before.

There’s no hidden benefits to his laziness though. He’s the only musician of this level of success to never have had a truly classic album. All of his latest music, save for the feud, has been phoned in, padded garbage meant to keep other musicians in the shade. Should this battle have ended him, there would just be so much space for music to outgrow him.

Of course, kayfabe aside, this won’t end him. He won’t even feel the need to record his own MBDTF to flip his image. He’ll just brazen it out, release more mediocre music and continue to dominate the charts. Nevertheless, imagining this obituary does two things at once; show how much of Drake there is to praise and show how welcome an obituary would be.

Part 3 – Pop

The other thing the beef made clear is how much pop has eaten the rest of music. Quite likely you were plugged enough into rap discourse for the beef to have been big but outside of rap circles, it just didn’t seem to make waves. Except for “Not Like Us” there wasn’t much crossover and that was more as a banger than as a diss.

Pop is always going to be the largest genre in music. That’s the definition of popular music. I’ve just never seen it be so dominant before.

Maybe when we look back at this period, the battle will be the first thing we think of but, when it happened, the Taylor-Travis relationship was bigger news. Honestly, brat and Sabrina Carpenter probably were as well. It has been decades since the last time the two biggest names in rap went at each other but this time it’s nothing more than a sideshow to the main pop events of the year.

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Kendrick Lamar – Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers

13 Jun

I didn’t expect the maturity of Mr. Morale. It kind of feels not only that Kendrick is too big and too important for growth, but also too developed. When your second album is To Pimp a Butterfly, you no longer feel human enough for growth. We don’t expect the prophet on the mount to go to therapy.

This growth is most obvious in the music. Mr. Morale takes from Kendrick’s discography and builds on it. There are pieces of all of his major work here synthesized into a single album. You can see some of the storytelling of Good Kid in cuts like “Auntie Diaries,” the message of TPaB in ones like “Savior,” the bangers of DAMN in the earworm “Rich Spirit” and even the cinematography of Black Panther in songs like “Mr. Morale.” This is not a medley though, each of the songs show a variety of Kendrick’s strengths and all of these themes run strongly throughout the entire album

More memorably though, the entire album is themed on a message of growth. This idea comes in again and again and from a variety of angles. The opener “United In Grief” starts out with the emptiness of materialism as Kendrick details buying cars and watches he doesn’t care for, a theme later reinforced by the absolute banger “Rich Spirit”, in which he doesn’t even bother spending the money to replace a broken phone.

“Savior” is the strongest statement of this thesis and the one that most brings in the personal side. TPaB was an album with a message and an album that came at a very specific moment in time. “Alright” was an anthem for BLM and that combined with the clear intelligence of Kendrick Lamar makes it hard not to look to him for guidance. He takes this song and a few others to absolve himself of this responsibility and absolve ‘Bron and Cole and Future at the same time so as to highlight that the weight falls on you and no one else.

He does this with some excellent guest spots. It’s a fascinating song that brings in a lot of interesting pieces and uses them to underscore the message of the song. That chorus asking if you’re happy for him sells the core of the song and the album strongly. He’s got a lot of soft piano work and swirling backing in this album and it really lets his raps shine.

This thesis runs especially strong at both ends of the album. The opener “United In Grief” really drives home the emptiness he feels and uses intriguing, fluttering percussion at the back and a halting piano to texture Kendrick’s words. It’s neither him at his best rapping nor his most insightful thinking, but he does bring some really interesting musical shifts through the song.

On the other end, “Mirror” is a top-tier closer. It takes the cinematography and exultation of Black Panther and gets a clever, pulsating, beat going that fully underscores the repeated “I choose me, I’m sorry” of the chorus. It’s hard not to feel happy for Kendrick when you hear the glory in that statement. It’s not new to see how heavy is the head that wears the crown, Kendrick himself said this as far back as TPaB, but he takes that abdication and shows you the wonder in it and so dulls the sting of his ask underneath the message – that you take responsibility for yourself.

Some of the other tracks can’t quite make as strong a statement however. “Crown” speaks of not being able to please everybody, but is never much more than shallow. There are some very interesting swirls in the music and the whole feels almost Radiohead at points, but the song just doesn’t justify it’s runtime. It might have been something if trimmed but ends up just filler. “Die Hard” is another Black Panther-style song and never does more than act as filler here. It was exciting to hear this kind of song in the Black Panther album when it was a new sound and the album was focused on it but it doesn’t do anything much here.

There’s unfortunately quite a bit more filler than I would like. “Silent Hill” never gets to be anything more and Kodak Black brings in a supremely boring verse that in no way justifies his inclusion in the album. Seeing a trap cut was novel but just not interesting enough. “Worldwide Steppers” brings in some solid storytelling but has nothing interesting besides that. It doesn’t even have Kendrick rapping at his best. Baby Keem is just boring in “Savior – Interlude.” “Father Time” has some interesting story in there but nothing that memorable really and it’s even more forgettable as music. It’s not his best rap at all.

Even his filler is pretty good though. There’s some interesting work in K.’s trap and talking about racism through touring Denmark is a lot of fun. “Purple Hearts” might not do much for me but Ghostface brings in a nice old-school verse and the whole things is reminiscent of Graduation-era Kanye. These tracks are not really cause for complaint as much as a mild wish for more.

That’s why it helps a lot that he has a couple of real bangers in this album. “Rich Spirit” is just very good and that hook is nothing short of amazing. “N95” does indeed go hard. “Count Me Out” is similarly excellent. Kendrick does interesting things with the flows and sounds of the song. He builds up expectations just to throw you off, but it takes a while to get interesting.

“Mother I Sober” may not be the kind of track to bump with the top down but it is one of the best songs that Kendrick has ever made. It’s immediately attention grabbing and the mixture of Kendrick’s rapping and the Beth Gibbons chorus is heady. The haunting vocalizations that run through the track serve as great support for the storytelling too. It’s a very exciting song and a very honest one as well and one that links perfectly into “Mirror.”

The most interesting track though is “We Cry Together,” in which Kendrick and Taylour Page scream obscenities at each other for 5 minutes and 41 seconds. It’s an aggressive song. You notice when it starts to play. The directness of the swearing and the twin voices have shades of “Kim.” It may never get as violent but it is every bit as intense.

For all of that though, it doesn’t fully work out. It’s jsut not the best lyrics. The rhymes, especially the cross-rhymes, are weak. It’s a relief whenever the conversation switches to monologues as while having the two rappers overlap should be clever, the rhymes are so weak as to break it entirely, especially as their flows don’t mesh at all. Also, ending with them choosing sex is a weak choice, albeit one almost entirely redeemed by the tap dancing at the end.

The other track to note, “Auntie Diaries” is very strong storytelling with a hell of a stinger at the end. Kendrick is very sympathetic when talking about his trans family members and that sympathy is necessary for a sogn like this. He brings in some of his best lyricism here, especially when the chorus shifts with the subject and the rapping is compelling throughout. It’s a very strong song, but shallower than I would have liked. In his best work, tracks like “Sing About Me” or “The Art of Peer Pressure,” he brings in small, very lived-in details and brings more personality to his characters. Both Mary-Ann and Kendrick’s uncle feel two-dimensional and Kendrick standing up in church is a hackneyed image. The song lacks individuality and so sometimes falls into preachiness, albeit for a very worthy cause. It is a shame though that the most memorable part of the song comes from Kendrick touring. It would have been a better song had he centered it less on himself, even if it is still a great track.

That’s kind of where I end up with Mr. Morale, very good music with evident flaws. It’s not quite the storytelling of Good Kid, not quite the message of TPaB, not quite the rapping of DAMN but enough between the pieces to be only a bit behind the first two and about the level of the last. It doesn’t really bring in much that’s new and that’s a first for K.Dot, but it acts as something of a consolidation of what is already an all-time career in rap, and that’s more than enough to make for truly excellent music.

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Kendrick Lamar – Black Panther: The Album

16 Mar

Black Panther was both an excellent movie and a cultural milestone. The album doesn’t quite hold up to that standard on either axis or the standard that Kendrick has gotten us accustomed to, but there is still space below all those bars for it to be quite good.

First of all, the singles all do well. “All The Stars” is just a great Kendrick joint and SZA absolutely kills both the chorus and her own verse. The Weeknd is in his comfort zone with “Pray For Me” and while Kendrick’s verse doesn’t quite gel with the rest of the song, it’s still just very good. “King’s Dead” has a solid Jay Rock verse, some stellar work from Future and the memorable “Miss me with that bullshit” from Kendrick.

Additionally, a couple of the other songs punch well above their weight. SOB x RBE burn down their song and Yugen Blakrok simply overwhelms the rest of “Opps” until it there’s nothing else left. The rest of the album is unfortunately forgettable however. There are moments, but not enough to save it from a slight blandness. There are no actual misses here. There’s nothing so poor as to hurt. The album as a whole does feel a little deadened due to all the cotton wool packed in it though.

The entire album runs the afro-futurism of the movie quite well however. There are a lot of explicit call-outs to Wakanda, Killmonger and the Black Panther himself, but more importantly, the beats themselves strongly reinforce the theme. Hearing sounds like this from a confirmed A-lister like Kendrick in the context of an album of the magnitude of this one is both novel and important. Also, it’s just good music.

@murthynikhil

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The Top Five Albums of 2017

1 Jan

2017 has been a good year for returning legends and young upstarts alike. On the former front, Jay-Z released his side of the story behind the infamous elevator fight in 2014, following albums by his wife and sister-in-law in 2016. Spoon released yet another great album, and indie darlings LCD Soundsystem came back from self-imposed retirement with a surprise album.

As for the upstarts: we got some amazing debut albums from buzzy artists like Moses Sumney and Sampha, but we were also graced with surprisingly strong follow-up records from Lorde and Vince Staples. And of course, there was Kendrick Lamar, who simultaneously fits both categories (and, really, all categories) with his third major-label full-length album.

Read on for our take on the top five albums of the year past.

5. The OOZ – King Krule

the ooz_king krule

According to King Krule (the stage name of 23-year-old Archy Marshall), the “ooz” mentioned in the album’s title is an homage to the various solids and liquids that ooze out of the human body – the primordial “creations” that we make and refine to fit into society. The vowel is lopped off at the end as a tip of the hat to the backwards-form of Marshall’s previous avatar, Zoo Kid.

If all of this seems strange and circuitous, then we’ve given you an apt welcome to the world of King Krule. The OOZ lies somewhere along the spectrum between jazz, punk and grunge, and Marshall’s brilliance lies in elevating this sonic kaleidoscope into a seamless new genre.

“Dum Surfer” opens like a menacing surf-rock song, crisp guitar bouying Marshall’s half-remembered boozy stories. About a third of the way through, the song segues into a skillful jazz guitar solo, complete with backing brass, but the beat never changes – it’s the same song. “Czech One” is a heart-breaking jazz-R&B song, complete with melancholic saxophone. Two songs later, “Vidual” is the hypothetical output of the Libertines penning a ska song.

Aside from his obvious musical aptitude, King Krule also happens to be a pretty good writer. Specifically, his allure lies in his ability to shuttle between precise anecdotes and profound reflection without losing the overall plot. For example, on album opener “Biscuit Town”, Marshall transitions from plaintive young-adult angst (“I seem to sink lower, gazing in the rays of the solar / In fact, we made a pact, but now I think it’s over”) to name-dropping Coca-Cola and Chelsea player Zola in the same verse. Somehow, this mishmash of story structures deepens your investment in Marshall’s emotions – with the effect that you are left feeling sorrier for him than deserved for what is essentially a yearning post-break-up tune.

The OOZ is a unique, woozy picture of Archy Marshall’s wide-eyed sadness. If there is a flaw, it’s that 19 tracks is a bit too long, but that’s just our opinion. File this one next to Mac DeMarco, early Nirvana, jazz classics, or pretty much anywhere else on your shelf – it’ll work.

Best tracks: “Dum Surfer”, “Biscuit Town”, “The Locomotive”

4. Big Fish Theory – Vince Staples

Vince-Staples-Big-Fish-Theory-Album-cover-art

In direct contrast to current radio-reigning rap stars, Vince Staples is not boujee at all. He does have a lot of new money, but he certainly isn’t wasting it on stupid shit. In fact (just like a great man once warned), more money brought Vince more problems, in the way of an inability to be happy despite achieving everything he’s ever wanted. Vince battles the ennui by making more music, which in turn brings more money and – you guessed it – more problems. It’s a vicious cycle, but happily for us, it results in great music from Vince Staples.

Don’t get us wrong – Big Fish Theory is no sob-fest. Vince Staples’ lyrics may speak of an inner tedium (“Human issues too strong for tissues”) but damn, can he lay a strong boast over a sick beat when he needs to. On “Big Fish”, Vince describes his bad-ass self-control over a club-ready trap beat – not only is he good at getting rich, but he is damn good at staying rich. On “Yeah Right”, Vince sneers at the priorities of today’s rap stars – money, women and then musical fame – all over a sludgy, sexy beat that could replace any one of these stars on the charts.

Full review here.

(If you’re wondering where you’ve heard his music before, it’s probably “BagBak” on the soundtrack for the Black Panther trailers.)

Best tracks: “Big Fish”, “Yeah Right”, “BagBak”

3. Hot Thoughts – Spoon

Hot thoughts

There’s a certain consistency to Spoon. The beats are always crisp; the guitars alternate expertly between nervy energy and rock-star confidence; the lyrics are slightly peculiar, matched by Britt Daniels’ idiosyncrasies. That may sound like formulaic, but Spoon is anything but. The essence of the band remains constant – the Austin-y quirkiness especially – but Spoon is actually very adept at updating the rest of their sound with each subsequent album.

Hot Thoughts, the band’s ninth (!) album since their formation in the mid-90s, is no exception. Keeping with the times, the album gets an almost hip-hop treatment, most audible on the sly overconfidence of “Can I Sit Next to You”. Hot Thoughts also benefits from the guiding hand of Flaming Lips producer David Fridmann, resulting in the sonic dreamscapes on “Pink Up” and the free-jazz masterpiece of album closer “Us”.

The best tracks, though, are still the Spooniest ones. “Do I Have to Talk You Into It” is all big drums and Daniels confidence, and “Shotgun” could soundtrack a bar fight in your early 20s. It’s the kind of music that makes the Strokes seem frumpy.

Full review here.

Best tracks: “Do I Have to Talk You Into It”, “Can I Sit Next to You”, “Shotgun”

2. Melodrama – Lorde

Melodrama

Lorde started working on her debut album, Pure Heroine, when she was a 13-year-old in small-town New Zealand. The album, which released a few months before her 17th birthday, was set in suburbia, with a close set of friends and nothing really to do, and it was so good because the songs reflected those circumstances so well.

Melodrama is very different, because Lorde herself is very different. In between the two albums, Lorde became extremely famous, originally through her break-out track “Royals” but later supported by a slew of well-received singles. She moved from New Zealand; she made new friends. Fortunately, Lorde’s skill at transcribing the moods and phases of her life into song have grown with her. Melodrama is the result of spending an already melodramatic period of life – late teens – under the auspice of immense fame.

Every song on the album is a standalone story; a slice of Lorde’s life, shuttling between New York and New Zealand and everywhere else in the middle. On the whole, Melodrama is a break-up album – in a very real sense, from her New Zealand boyfriend James Lowe, and in a deeper sense, from the starry-eyed naivety of her late-teens.

Melodrama is a near-perfect, infinitely enjoyable pop album, and you’re losing out on a real musical treat if you haven’t given it a full listen.

Full review here.

Best songs: “Homemade Dynamite”, “Sober”, “Perfect Places”

1. DAMN. – Kendrick Lamar

Kendrick-Lamar-DAMN-album-cover-featured-827x620

As we speculated in May, it has basically become an assumption that a new Kendrick Lamar album will be the best album of the year. For the remaining seven months, we looked far and wide – from post-rock to punk-jazz, from hip-hop to pure pop – but nothing comes close.

Like its predecessors, DAMN. is a masterpiece because Kendrick Lamar is bigger than life. He is a born-again Christian, and genuinely believes that he has been put on this Earth with a greater purpose. His literally godlike self-confidence lets him do things that others simply cannot do. On “DNA.”, he explores black heritage from a blinding barrage of angles (“I got power, poison, pain and joy inside my DNA / I got hustle though, ambition flow inside my DNA”). Like many rap songs, “HUMBLE.” is boastful (“I blow cool from AC / Obama just paged me”); but by masterfully balancing the brags with too-real pictures of the very recent past, Kendrick keeps himself humble. “FEEL.” is a free-fall through Kendrick’s complex feelings on his newfound fame, delivered in a flow so fluid that the words almost become beats.

The hundreds of words in Kendrick’s verses are so full of wordplay, imagery and thematic elements that each song basically needs its own Cliffnotes. Kendrick Lamar is a masterful poet and storyteller who just happens to have the lucrative gift of making chart-topping hits. DAMN. is not even the best album of his career, but it’s still the best album of 2017.

Best songs: “HUMBLE.”, “ELEMENT.”, “DNA.”

 

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Vince Staples – Big Fish Theory

24 Sep

 

On the face of it, Big Fish Theory sounds great. On his second full-length album, Long Beach-native Vince Staples layers his poised and confident flow over reworked techno-house beats, and interludes these gems with often bizarre but invariably interesting spoken-word segments and collaborations. There are enough references to oceans and marine life to make the album title seem reasonable, and you’re left with a tidy hip-hop album, with a bow on top.

But dig a little deeper, and Big Fish Theory shines blackly with grimness and desolation. After the break-out success of his debut Summertime ’06 (2015) and his follow-up EP Prima Donna (2016), Staples has gotten really famous really quickly. With a rough past in the mean streets of North Long Beach, this is exactly what Staples should want – enough money, fame and women to catapult him into a different life. But the new life didn’t quite cut it. Staples is left with aching loneliness, and is often met with money-grubbing groupies and fair-weather friends when he tries to reach out for help. So he works on his music, harder and more focused, to exorcise his demons, all the while knowing that the “goal” he’s set himself won’t bring him happiness in the end.

It is this ominous pendulum of emotions that drives the entire album.

“Alyssa’s Interlude” sets the tone for the darker side of things, with a snippet of Amy Winehouse talking about her self-destructive nature being a major source of material for her music. On “Party People”, Vince shows his own streak of self-destruction – his fame pushes him into the spotlight, where he can’t hide his suicidal thoughts (“Please don’t look at me in my face, everybody might see my pain”). The fruit of his success threatens to undo him and, as Vince is finding out the hard way, money doesn’t fix everything anyway (“Couple problems my cash can’t help, human issues too strong for tissues”).

But it’s not just self-sabotage pushing him to the edge. On “745”, Vince is sitting in a swanky car with a beautiful woman – what he’s wanted all his life – but the dream cracks from the inside. His lady friend heads straight to the oyster bar, without regard to poor Vince who’s still out parking the car. “This thing called love’s hard for me,” he confesses, “This thing called love is a God to me.” Pity that he seems so far from it.

But the grim moods don’t last forever. Vince seems to pull himself out of depression by vowing to stay away from demons, within and without. Album opener “Crabs in a Bucket” uses house beats over an Azalea Banks-like off-kilter flow, to draw a mental image of Vince struggling to make it out of the “bucket” of his old neighborhood. (The song also marks the first appearance of Kilo Kish, who often adds a velvety, ethereal gloss over Vince’s hard-to-swallow bullets of truth throughout the album.)

“Crabs” is followed by the club-ready beats of the first single, “Big Fish” – the part where the intro melds into Vince’s almost taunt-like drawl still gives us chills after half a hundred listens. It’s fair to say that Vince doesn’t fit the mold of the typical hip-hop star – he’s a teetotaler and has never done drugs. We also find out from “Big Fish” that he’s really into saving his cash, wielding his bank balance as a protective float from his past misfortunes. “I was up late night ballin’, counting up hundreds by the thousands,” he boasts repeatedly, and it’s not tough to believe him when he says he’s taken the smart route out of his Ramona Park childhood. “Homage” gives us the same message, relayed over neat Gorillaz-style megaphone vocals – no doubt a nod to his recent collaborator Damon Albarn.

Beyond the pendulum between his self-destructive introspection and his drive to succeed, Big Fish Theory displays another overarching theme: Vince’s cynicism with the hip-hop game. He has repeatedly stated on interviews that he considers rapping to be his job, not a side hobby (“Last time I checked, my job was to make songs. All the other stuff is extra,” he stated bluntly in a recent Vulture interview). Over sludgy beats and tinny drums on “Yeah Right”, Vince sardonically questions the order of importance for many of today’s hip-hop stars. “Is your house big?”, “Is your girl fine?”, and almost as an after-thought, “If your song played, would they know that?” And of course, we would be remiss to not mention that the song also features a stand-out verse dropped by rap’s current king, Kendrick Lamar.

All in all, Big Fish Theory works on two levels. It is a great album to hear from start to finish even if you aren’t paying attention to the words; if you are paying attention, that’s a whole different level.

Best tracks: “Big Fish”, “Yeah Right”, “745”

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Kendrick Lamar – DAMN

26 May

At this point, it almost feels like a foregone conclusion that a new Kendrick album will be Album of the Year. The only real question is whether it is another classic. Personally, I don’t think DAMN is quite that strong. Kendrick Lamar has set an impossibly high bar for himself, and I think this is the album that finally fails to hurdle it. I’d be shocked if it there’s another album this year to touch it though.

There are so many strong parts to this album. I love the flow and the submerged beat of “FEEL.” “LOYALTY.” features an excellent Rihanna. The more rap that we get from her, the happier I will be. “FEAR.” is genuine in a way most confessionals aren’t. It’s eye-opening to hear Kendrick’s mother on the verse and to hear him speak about still being worried about money. His storytelling is still the best in the game. Also, these videos are the best of his career. TDE is doing really amazing work right now.

However, there are just more weak points to this album than to its predecessors. “YAH” is honestly weak, despite giving us the excellent nickname of Kung Fu Kenny and while the harmonizing of “LOVE” is interesting, it’s just not that good a song. Every Kendrick album has weak points, but this is the first one that seems to lack a purpose and so these faults feel exaggerrated. GKMC was his breakout and TPAB was breathlessly innovative but DAMN just doesn’t seem to have as strong a raison d’etre and so can’t help but feel a lesser album.

This is still a great album. This will almost certainly be Album of the Year. This is something you should listen to right now. Even if you’ve already had it on repeat all year, you should listen to it again. This is not quite a masterpiece, but is still close enough to deserve reverence. It’s a bold and innovating album that showcases a top-tier rapper at the top of his game. I highly recommend it.

– @murthynikhil

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The Top Five Albums of 2015: Nikhil’s List

1 Jan

2015 has been a good year. A lot of very good music has made it on to this list and lot more didn’t make it. One particular album killed everything else, as was expected, but we’ve had a lot of pleasant surprises as well. For instance:

5. Carrie and Lowell

Sufjan_Stevens_-_Carrie_&_Lowell

Given that this album is named after Sufjan Stevens’ mother and stepfather, it is no surprise that it is a deeply personal record. However, it handles its confessions with a deftness and tenderness that most could not manage. It frames its tales of depression, self-abuse, dissatisfaction and, for a brief moment in “Should Have Known Better”, happiness in gossamer threads of music to give the album a gentle, exploratory feel. This album slips ever so softly through the skin and straight to the heart. Carrie & Lowell distills a personal loss and acceptance and makes it a part of you.

4. Surf

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Hip-hop can actually be this fun. Chance the Rapper is nothing short of jubilant throughout. Chanting “I Don’t Wanna Be Cool” is freeing in the way that Kanye’s “Can’t Tell Me Nothing” is, but so much bouncier. The jazz solos are not the most engrossing and the album lacks a little punch, but all is forgiven when things are this upbeat. Surf puts a smile on your face and keeps it there as long as the album is playing.

3. No Cities To Love

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No Cities To Love is rock and roll. Anthemic, full of fight and always ready to go, this is music that burns away the mediocrity you didn’t realize you were tolerating. Primal but intelligent, raw but proficient, No Cities To Love is punk rock at its best.

2. The Epic

Kamasi Mike

This is 2015, we should not get a new Coltrane-era jazz album. That we did and that it is this good is unreal. At three hours, the album justifies the name handily. It draws from all across the jazz spectrum, picking up pieces of Miles, the fusion of Weather Report and even touches of Latin Jazz and gives each pieces its due before melding the whole into something entirely its own. This would be nothing without the passion and virtuosity of the band. Not a note falls out of place or lacks in energy. There have been enough jazz greats to make the term “classic” a high bar, but for an album of this caliber, nothing else will suffice.

1. To Pimp A Butterfly

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It took me something like a week when To Pimp A Butterfly came out to actually figure out if I liked it or not. As it turns out, I really did. good kid, m.A.A.d city was much more straightforward, you can see the brilliance in it immediately. To Pimp A Butterfly has singles, “King Kunta” will make you move, with or without your consent, and both “i” and “The Blacker The Berry” are the work of a craftsman at his peak, but “For Free” is almost spoken word poetry. I’ll accept that from Gil-Scott Heron, but it mystified me from Kendrick Lamar. Similarly, the funkiness of the album came out of nowhere and the lyrical content has no precedent.

Listening to it now, it’s hard to believe that there was ever a moment where I didn’t like it. It’s a struggle now to find what I once found questionable. The album justfits together so well. Ideas, both musical and lyrical, are layered deeply into this album and yet it flows seamlessly between them. The album manages to encompass contradictions like the self-castigating ‘u’ and the upbeat ‘i’ without blinking an eye. Similarly, the album holds the full musical spread of the near-funk of “Hood Politics” to the hip-hop clinic of “King Kunta”. At this point, there really is nothing that Kendrick Lamar cannot do.

I thought three years ago that good kid, m.A.A.d city was Kendrick at the top of the game and I thought the same when he dropped “Control”. I’m not going to make that claim after To Pimp A Butterfly, it’s clear that Kendrick is going to take us further still and I can’t wait to see where he goes. This is the greatest rapper of his generation and he has just gotten started.

– @murthynikhil

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Kendrick Lamar: To Pimp A Butterfly

13 Apr

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I really like To Pimp a Butterfly. It’s hard not to like Kendrick Lamar right now, good kid, m.A.A.d city was a classic and his work since then has been exceptional. While not quite the masterpiece that his previous album was, To Pimp a Butterfly can at least raise the question when it comes to sheer quality and most certainly surpasses its predecessor in innovation.

That’s part of what made the album so hard to evaluate. There is no doubt that this is a challenging album. It bends genre incessantly, “These Walls” could have come off a Prince album and “For Free” is more slam poetry than hip-hop. A jazz band backs the entire production. Yet, despite those things, this is a hip-hop album through and through. Songs like “King Kunta” or “The Blacker the Berry” are fire for even the most die-hard rap purist.

It challenges the listener with content as well though. The entire album has a running storyline of temptations from Lucifer and tests from God with Kendrick as a messiah. “u” tears deep into Kendrick showing him holding himself responsible for his failings and tears into the listener as a result. “Mortal Man” questions the listener’s dedication to him, but comes off as self-doubting instead of accusatory. For all of the lows though, there’s the positivity of songs like “i” and “Complexion (A Zulu Love)” both of which break up the intensity of the album very nicely while also just being very good music.

To Pimp a Butterfly is very simply what you should be listening to right now and what you will be listening to for a long time.

– @murthynikhil

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Kendrick Lamar: Section.80

2 Jun

Section.80 is the work of a very talented kid. This is Kendrick Lamar’s album before good kid, m.A.A.d city and before “Control.” This is back when he was just a guy with talent and not one of the biggest names in the rap industry. The inexperience shows, there some degree of searching for who exactly he is, but there is also enough identity to make a very good, very individual album.

There are some stellar cuts on this album. “A.D.H.D.” is an excellent tale of life in the poorer parts of L.A. “No Make-Up” is a positive track in the vein of Goodie Mob. “HiiiPower” is K.Dot’s take on “So Appalled” and “Keisha’s Song” is “Brenda’s Got A Baby” and both are exceptional themselves. However, the album has its share of weak points and lacks the consistency of a more experienced rapper. His flow is a pleasure to listen to, but his lyrics have moments of weakness amongst all the cleverness.

In summary, Section.80 is a little bit rough but well worth a listen, even three years and a sequel into its history.

– @murthynikhil

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The Top Five Songs of 2013: Nikhil’s List

26 Dec

2013 was a great year to be into music. It’s hard to think of the last time that things have been quite this interesting. There have been stellar debut albums and big name comebacks (including a return to Blue Note bandleader after no less than 43 years). There has been major rap release after major rap release after major rap release after major rap release (with a very refreshing minor rap release thrown in for good measure). We even managed to see the return of science fiction. It’s been a great year with great music and here is my take on its top tracks

Honorable Mention: “Valentine’s Day” by David Bowie

Adding an honorable mention to lists like this is cheating, but I couldn’t write this without touching on this song. “Valentine’s Day” was both heartfelt and topical. With barely anything at all, Bowie manages to paint a complex picture of the eponymous Valentine. His description of the planned school shooting is extremely personal and that lets you fill in what pushed Valentine this far. The song itself shifts from tender as he goes over his treasured plans and power trips to frenetic as he is about to take action. Frightening and remarkable, this song is David Bowie as good as he’s ever been.

You can read our full review of his album here

5. “5 AM in Toronto” by Drake

It’s easier to laugh at Drake than to like him. Nothing Was The Same did nothing but reinforce how soft he is. I mean, have you seen “Hold On, We’re Going Home“? It wasn’t actually a bad album though and that speaks volumes about his talent. “5 AM in Toronto” though is Drake going hard and is excellent. Look at this

The part I love most is they need me more than they hate me
So they never take shots, I got everybody on safety
I could load every gun with bullets that fire backwards
You probably wouldn’t lose a single rapper
Niggas make threats, can’t hear ’em over the laughter
Yeah, that’s cause I’m headed to the bank, nigga

Why he chose not to put this in Nothing Was The Same is beyond me, but album complaints aside, this is just really good rap. At the end of the day, this boy has talent.

You can read our review of his full album here.

4. “Lies” by CHVRCHES

So, CHVRCHES have finally arrived. Now that they’re here, I was disappointed by their album, but had a ton of fun at their concert. I like intelligent pop with female singers, and this covers that in spades. This song pulls off the same sound that made me fall in love The Knife and Lauren Mayberry’s voice is glorious. Besides, that chorus just can not be resisted.

This is dark, beautiful and glorious to listen to. Her story of self-confidence through control over her lover is splendid and made much more so by the motif of lies. This is perfect pop.

Again, album review here and concert review here.

3. “New Slaves” by Kanye West

When I first heard Yeezus, it was actually “Blood on the Leaves” that straight up convinced me that Kanye West was still on top of the game. It has been a while though and “New Slaves” is the song I most return to. The menace on that opening beat is palpable. You could cut a block out of it with a knife and use its inner fire to heat a home for a month. And that’s before Kanye opens his mouth.

This song is rage. This is pure in the way so few songs are. This is Kanye upset and rightfully so and calling out things that are wrong. You shouldn’t have to be a god to do this, but of all of the players this year, no one else has proven godhood as convincingly. Everything I’ve said until now though does nothing but diminish the song. Rage and menace is worthless if not as crafted as this song. It may have been forged in a crucible instead of handwoven on an ancestral loom, but this is masterwork nonetheless.

Album review, link. You’ve got this by now.

2. “She Will” by Savages

The Savages’ debut album was one of the most intense things that I heard this year. There are very few albums that affect me so deeply that I need to carefully monitor when and how much I listen to it. Silence Yourself acts on me the way Unknown Pleasures does, and that is a very high bar to reach. Songs like “She Will” can absolutely break me.

Jehnny Beth is scathing and confident in her takedown of gender roles. Although takedown is far too mild a word for this song. Evisceration is much more apt. Fay Milton’s drumming is primal and the guitar and bass work could be a song in themselves. These individual points are meaningless though because their sum is so much more. Everything fits in, everything works together and as a listener all you can do is what it says. This picks you up and hurls you where it wishes. That repeated refrain of the title at the song end is far to commanding to ignore.

This is the kind of song that you need to sit alone in perfect silence and breathe after. You can still hear it though. You’ll never really escape it.

1. “Control” by Big Sean (feat. Kendrick Lamar and Jay Electronica)

Let’s be clear about this. No matter what the title may say, this is K.Dot’s song. I haven’t seen a song been snatched quite so hard since a young Eminem killed Jay-Z in his prime on “Renegade“. The other verses are fine, but I’m not even going to go over them.

Kendrick Lamar has put it down with this song. Rap is going to change because of this and with it music and with that society. The world has moved and his verse is what did it. Let’s start with the easy part to talk about. He just claimed both coasts. With one hand, no less. He name-dropped everyone. Even people performing on this very song weren’t safe from him. Enough nice-guy rap, things are going to go hard again and Kendrick has brought the golden age back.

Now, let’s get to the song. Kendrick’s flow is still impossible. He rides this beat so hard it dies the moment he gets off it. Honestly, its heart probably stopped beating minutes before and K.Dot pushed it anyway. That moment when in the middle of calling out competition he takes a breath because the list is so long, that’s as much of a statement of confidence as wearing the crown. Don’t even talk to me about the replies. The mic was dropped with that verse and not even Thor has the ability to pick it back up. We’re done.

– @murthynikhil

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