Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp A Butterfly |OT| It's The American Dream

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I am falling in love with this album. Favorite track at this point is Hood Politics. If you do not really give this album a few listens and try to really understand the message it conveys, well, then you just boo boo.
 
spindashing said:
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Lol
phanphare said:
tpab is Kendrick's soul
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Yea that's how i feel, gkmc was just touching the surface compared to this.
 
Tom Penny said:
It makes for an album that will quickly be forgotten and it will be.
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there are a lot of angles to not like this album from but the "longevity" one is both 1) impossible to predict and 2) factually wrong the way you're framing it. Records with wall-to-wall in-the-moment "bangers" or pop hits are, across history, not remembered as well as adventurous or ambitious records.
 
hughesta said:
Honestly I just don't understand how GKMC and Yeezus scored higher. Just confusing to me, that's all. Not angry or anything, just surprised.
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I tried finding the reddit thread where a dude was accurately predicting pitchfork scores, and giving his reasoning behind it. Unfortunately he deleted all the comments. Basically...take their scores with a grain of salt.

edit: found it on internet archive:

Nah I just have no life right now. I probably can't predict too much, but this one seemed easy to crack. I think Yamantaka // Sonic Titan might get an 8.4 on Friday though.

My reasoning for Reflektor is that LCD Soundsystem received two 9.2s before, and so with James Murphy being a huge part of Reflektor's production, it's fitting. Vampire Weekend with their grandiosely-titled "Modern Vampires of the City" are basically at their most ripe. They might win the alternative grammy this winter (they aren't competing with Arcade Fire's album as it was released in October and thus will be in 2015's show), and as a business Pitchfork needs to balance their indie rock/pop buzz with everything else they cover, so they gave them an obligatory 9.3. They're going to give them AOTY because it's "their turn" this year and to make this believable Arcade Fire had to be lower than 9.3, though they still wanted to give it a high score. (Kanye West, despite getting a 9.5 this year, probably because of some deal or just Schreiber's love of the new album, will be #2 or #3 on the list)

I think Bon Iver's 9.5 was basically make-up scoring (and certainly influenced by him being on Kanye's 10-scored album). They wanted to give his debut album higher than an 8.1 but because he was self-released and not yet a stable contributor to the music economy, they waited it out. They were honest and didn't overhype the Blood Bank EP though. Justin Vernon was headed for the Grammys anyway though because of Kanye and his crossover appeal. But the 9.5 probably sealed the deal.

I think Pitchfork does have much power, even today. I do think that if they want to, they could give a new artist or band a 9.6 or higher. They would just have to be careful, and make sure it seems justifiable to them. The album would have to blatantly be a masterpiece, lest they get called out for a review blunder. Funeral is not my favorite album by any means, but for people who love indie rock, I can easily see that being worth a 9.7. It is a genuine classic. The band was on Merge though. If they were self-released this wouldn't have happened, and they might not have gotten covered at all.

These days 9.5 is their safe high score. It's a score high enough to be buzzed and for it to be considered for album of the year, but at the same time they don't claim it's perfect. As 'indie' merges completely with the rest of the industry, Pitchfork's web traffic may have increased its reliance on people caring about mainstream artists, and so the last three 9.5s have been awarded to Frank Ocean (Channel Orange), Kendrick Lamar (GKMC), and Kanye West (Yeezus). The last 9.6 was for Animal Collective, for whom it was 'their turn' as they were their critical darlings for several years.

We are entering a post-indie landscape now, and new stars need to be made. 2004 is the year of Kanye's debut, of Arcade Fire's debut, of Animal Collective's breakout album. All of them are 'old' now. Deerhunter may be on the decline, and Local Natives didn't get BNM this time around. Girls broke up, and Fleet Foxes is moving pretty slowly and already cashed in on their P4K cred.

So they BNM'd Mutual Benefit and compared him to The Microphones, Sufjan Stevens, etc, a lot of particular one-decade-ago folk-ish music, to potentially try to develop a new star. Vampire Weekend's buzz is being stretched to its maximum.

They are all growing old in the public eye. 'Indie', if it is to survive, needs new blood, and new stars as we go deeper into the decade.

If there are no albums worth giving 9+ scores to, Pitchfork will simply make it up, or emphasize electropop/mainstream hip-hop and R&B in order to perpetuate their legitimacy as a website. Beach House and/or Grizzly Bear may be next in line for the "big career-validating statement that gets AOTY" but I'm not sure if either will release anything next year. They will both be approaching their fifth albums.

Anyway, basically, 'indie' is over and things are changing.
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Still surprised they didn't give it a 10, since this is basically a "fuck the mainstream, I do what I want" album. Figured those motherfuckers would eat that shit up.
 
EloquentM said:
The album is literally Kendrick high on his own concepts. There's no subtlety to speak of. It's constantly bashing you over the head with it's own pretentiousness up until the very last conversation with tupac which becomes corny after the very first listen.
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Listened to it a few times. Absolutely incredible. At first, I thought maybe it was just a little too self-aware (and maybe it still is), but I forgot that Kendrick loves to assume other characters and also rap to himself. There's a lot of conscious rap out there, but I feel like Kendrick always offers introspection, and it makes a huge difference.

The only part I'm not really digging is the Tupac interview at the end. I get the point and how it ties together, it just feels a little goofy to me somehow. I kinda lol at the end when Kendrick is like aight lemme read you this poem that I wrote and somewhere in the middle Tupac is probably just like naw fuck this I'm just a ghost I'm out.
 
Pitchfork's review for this album was so fucking shallow. It barely touched on any points of the album and just felt like a summary. Kinda sad especially when a youtube reviewer (Anthony Fantano) makes a way better review in the same time-span.

Could care less about the score though.
 
Will the needle drop score make it into metacritic?

I think anthony fantano is one of the best critics around and his review just hits the nail on the head and adress all the points made on the album
 
Upon more listens this is growing on me more and more. Definitely different than GKMC for sure but in a good. Not so many bangers but instead some really cool funkier stuff and great storytelling.

King Kunta, Hood Politics, How Much a Dollar Cost, The Blacker the Berry, i & Mortal Man are my favorites.
 
Yeezus is an overwrought mess and half the people that gushed over it will look back in 5 years time and wonder how they got suckered into the hype of such a try hard, shallow bit of avant garde pretension. TPAB is a logical follow up to the thoughtfulness and intellectual musings of GKMC, Yeezus is Kanye having an artistic temper tantrum.
 
theignoramus said:
Yeezus is an overwrought mess and half the people that gushed over it will look back in 5 years time and wonder how they got suckered into the hype of such a try hard, shallow bit of avant garde pretension. TPAB is a logical follow up to the thoughtfulness and intellectual musings of GKMC, Yeezus is Kanye having an artistic temper tantrum.
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Yeah, but I liked listening to Yeezus, and I have no desire to listen to TPAB again after hearing it once. Nothing about it hooked me in.
 
My favourite tracks after a few days of listening to it:-

Wesley's Theory
For Free
King Kunta
Institutionalized
These Walls
Alright
For Sale
How Much a Dollar Cost
Complexion
The Blacker the Berry
I
Mortal Man.


12 hot tracks (IMO). Insane number and the sign of a fantastic album!


Looking back on Day 1, I made the foolish FOOLISH mistake of listening to this album for the first time during work without properly paying attention to it or even reading the song titles and then I spoiled the 2pac at the end after stupidly entering this thread after Mortal Man ended before the interview. At first I wasn't feeling it. The songs sounded great but I just wasn't feeling it. Went in with one mindset and - coupled with getting distracted at work - I approached the album with high expectations but wasn't willing to fully take it in.

But like GKMC, the more you listen to it. The more you understand and pick up the message he's portraying. The song themes connect with my understandings coupled with the track names. This is one deep album and I'm highly impressed. Going to re-listen to it in its entirety in a quiet room during the weekend.
 
10+ times of listening to it and still love it on so many levels.
I can vibe on it on a musical level and it's diverse enough to not get boring for a long time, but when I start to concentrate on the lyrics it has an even bigger emotional impact.
Classic.
 
Goddamn this album, goddamn.

We're in a new golden age of Rap aren't we? Like, a ton of fucking watershed rap albums this decade. The bar keeps getting set higher and higher, it's amazing.
 
Odrion said:
Goddamn this album, goddamn.

We're in a new golden age of Rap aren't we? Like, a ton of fucking watershed rap albums this decade.
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We damn sure arent, we're still heavily in the bling era and the rap albums that deviate from that shit stand the fuck out. Look at the kind of albums nominated for awards in the mid to late 90s versus the middling shit up for awards today.
 
oh man just another level of brilliance on this album. I'm listening to it again after watching fantano's review and he mentions the poem. Sections of it are recited before and after some of the tracks. The part of the poem describes the track or summarises it. I never noticed it until that review and fuck me its genius. How has no other critic mentioned or noticed this until now.

Mind blown
 
Odrion said:
Goddamn this album, goddamn.

We're in a new golden age of Rap aren't we? Like, a ton of fucking watershed rap albums this decade. The bar keeps getting set higher and higher, it's amazing.
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We definitely are. There's so many quality rappers releasing such a variety of music, it's incredible.
 
Thornton Reed said:
oh man just another level of brilliance on this album. I'm listening to it again after watching fantano's review and he mentions the poem. Sections of it are recited before and after some of the tracks. The part of the poem describes the track or summarises it. I never noticed it until that review and fuck me its genius. How has no other critic mentioned or noticed this until now.

Mind blown
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I took it as summarising the album up until that point. He mentions it at the end of Hood Politics and ends on him saying he's entering a new war. It's where the album shifts focus, from addressing his own struggles to the exploration and criticism of the issues that surround the life he sees the people around him living. You hear the rest of it in mortal man and the last few verses of it pretty much cover the other songs.

I also take it as the point where Kendrick becomes the 'butterfly' as it were.
 
I dont get the J Cole hate is thia thread.

Let me remind ya Kendrick respects him, really Liked his new album and will possibly make a collab with him. Maybe you guys will like his stuff then.
 
I really liked Cole's mixtapes but feel his albums have been disappointing. Forest Hills is definitely his best album though. It starts strong but tapers off though.

I just wish he'd do something different. All three albums feel very similar sonically, I wish he would expand/work with better producers.
 
I'm not gonna lie, Mortal Man got me feeling things I've never felt before in a hip hop album.
Odrion said:
Goddamn this album, goddamn.

We're in a new golden age of Rap aren't we? Like, a ton of fucking watershed rap albums this decade. The bar keeps getting set higher and higher, it's amazing.
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RTJ2, Tetsuo and Youth, So It Goes, If There's a Hell Below, TPAB, oh yeah we in it.
 
Cerity said:
I took it as summarising the album up until that point. He mentions it at the end of Hood Politics and ends on him saying he's entering a new war. It's where the album shifts focus, from addressing his own struggles to the exploration and criticism of the issues that surround the life he sees the people around him living. You hear the rest of it in mortal man and the last few verses of it pretty much cover the other songs.

I also take it as the point where Kendrick becomes the 'butterfly' as it were.
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i think we are talking about different poem's

there are 2 in the album. There is the one he tells tupac and the one about the butterfly. I'm talking about the poem that is told to tupac which sections of it are played throughout the album
 
Fry said:
I dont get the J Cole hate is thia thread.

Let me remind ya Kendrick respects him, really Liked his new album and will possibly make a collab with him. Maybe you guys will like his stuff then.
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Just because someone cosigns another rapper doesn't mean we should automatically like him.

But I did like Cole's mixtapes before he, no pun intended, blew up.
 
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