Like kindred musicians Janelle Monae, Flying Lotus and D’Angelo, Lamar is thinking in big picture ideas, the kinds that connect artists as far afield as Sun Ra, Miles Davis, Alice Coltrane, Curtis Mayfield, Lauren Hill and Nas. He’s not the only one tapping this spirit, but he’s the most verbal. Dre G-Funk sounds as a springboard - while simultaneously hinting at Prince’s stubbornly exploratory double-album “Sign o’ the Times.” Lamar and producers including Terrace Martin, Rhaki, Sounwave, Knxwledge, Boi-1da and Taz Martin employ classic Dr.
Free-floating brass and drum tones suggestive of beatmaker Flying Lotus, who co-produced opening song “Wesley’s Theory,” permeate the record. Musically, it loosens its structures until they’re nearly liquid, tapping into a certain Southern California vibe that mixes the smooth, rolling beats with loose John Coltrane-style jazz. ” the new record mixes up external and internal realities and features conceptually linked lines and interludes. He suffers a claustrophobic near-breakdown in “u” and conducts a mock interview with the late Tupac Shakur on the 12-minute album closer “Mortal Man.” The record depicts Lamar running from the devil (who takes the form of a character named Lucy – short for Lucifer), tracing life “from Compton to Congress,” chiding judges, the LAPD and the rap world’s relentless quest for money. This third record is less readily catchy than its predecessor, dwells within a bottom-end bass zone created by session-man and co-producer Thundercat. He varies the speed and tempo of his lines like Miles Davis lost inside a solo one second he’s stretching a few syllables through a four-measure phrase, the next he’s dividing and cramming syllables into quarter, eighth and sixteenth notes. He heaves with feigned breakdown, pinches his throat to move into high-pitched whine. He plays with his voice, dramatizing the tone of an old man here, trading barbs with himself there. This record is so expansive that it’s tough to wrestle into shape, even as it overflows with wit, smarts and a masterful skill of the language and phrasing. Throughout it, Lamar, 27, delivers lyrics filled with a similar experiential honesty and self-critique that propelled him to recognition with his debut album “Section.80" and its five-time Grammy-nominated follow-up “Good Kid.”įrom the start, his ambition has been astounding. As she passes you in the hallway or on the street, she’s contemplating a parable about caterpillars and cocoons, connecting “To Pimp a Butterfly” and “To Kill a Mockingbird,” wondering on the artist’s messages and pondering Lamar’s inclusion of the posthumous prediction of the late rapper Tupac Shakur regarding the tone and texture of the next revolution.Ī thematically linked record teeming with brass, strings, funk, hip hop, Vocoder nods to Parliament-Funkadelic, and a collection of ideas worthy of operatic adaptation, Lamar’s third studio album is a realm away from his breakout 2012 album “Good Kid, M.A.A.D City,” equally rich and way, way further gone. If you see a kid with earbuds on, chances are she’s working to figure out whether Kendrick’s new Afro-futuristic direction on the record’s first half is cool with her, or whether the more traditional second half, filled with jams like “Hood Politics” and “How Much a Dollar Cost,” is her speed.
It was the most anticipated rap album of the year, delivered by a mature voice born in Chicago and raised in Compton, one who ditched gangland Los Angeles for a shot at hip hop glory. “I know you hate me, don’t you? You hate my people.”Īnd unbeknownst to most people over 40, in these early days many in a young generation have been doing some extracurricular homework: absorbing every syllable and rhyme of “To Pimp a Butterfly’s” 16 tracks, reveling in Lamar’s cadence and the way he so dexterously rolls through his well-crafted verses. “I got a bone to pick!” “I went to war last night.” The bounced-beat chants of “King Kunta!” “Obama say what it do?” The dance hall hook in “The Blacker the Berry” the revelatory last verse of “For Free.” The frantic strangeness of “u,” which features a raw-throated performance worthy of Martin Sheen’s hotel meltdown in “Apocalypse Now.” “Like a Chevy in quicksand.” “We want the funk!” “What’s the yams?” “I’m black as the heart of a.
So soon after it was unexpectedly issued late Sunday, “To Pimp a Butterfly,” the new record by Compton-raised rapper and lyricist Kendrick Lamar, is still settling in, less a voluminous whole than a germinal swirl of phrases, grooves, bass lines and themes both personal and political working to find purchase.