Kendrick Lamarr
- Thread starter Woebot
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rubberdingyrapids
Well-known member
good kid is the better album. but pimp is just a prog album. like prog rap albums in the 90s. overblown, overstuffed, and all the rest of it. kind of thing someone on quannum might have made.
musically, its a bit old hat. he has a lot of great players on there but its mostly a sort of proggy version of what questlove and co were doing around 2000. which is not such a bad thing, when you consider trap is dominating so much right now, so having thundercat doing ridiculous bass runs all over the place is going against the grain, but even then, i dont really need a reiteration of like water for chocolate, etc.
lyrically/vocally, i would say its worth attention, even if i have not and cant actually be bothered to listen to it (i dont like the sermonising heaviness of it). dissensus doesnt strike me as a particularly rapper-interested place. its more a rap-sonics place. (then again, ive not really been that amazed by his lyrics, i just like *how* he raps - i dont really 'feel' kendrick as a rapper, i just think hes brilliant at it, hes very theatrical, like eminem, but eminem at least made you feel something with his voice)
i do wonder though if a lot of people are put off by it not being esp aggressive (like ice cube or PE for instance), or radical sounding. ie the music, which while being a bit bland at times, is just the kind of thing most rock/pop critics didnt really care that much about in the late 90s/early 00s, def not in the UK.
its also not a 'fun' album like good kid was, but does it have to be?
(FWIW i dont listen to it cos im too old to be preached to)
musically, its a bit old hat. he has a lot of great players on there but its mostly a sort of proggy version of what questlove and co were doing around 2000. which is not such a bad thing, when you consider trap is dominating so much right now, so having thundercat doing ridiculous bass runs all over the place is going against the grain, but even then, i dont really need a reiteration of like water for chocolate, etc.
lyrically/vocally, i would say its worth attention, even if i have not and cant actually be bothered to listen to it (i dont like the sermonising heaviness of it). dissensus doesnt strike me as a particularly rapper-interested place. its more a rap-sonics place. (then again, ive not really been that amazed by his lyrics, i just like *how* he raps - i dont really 'feel' kendrick as a rapper, i just think hes brilliant at it, hes very theatrical, like eminem, but eminem at least made you feel something with his voice)
i do wonder though if a lot of people are put off by it not being esp aggressive (like ice cube or PE for instance), or radical sounding. ie the music, which while being a bit bland at times, is just the kind of thing most rock/pop critics didnt really care that much about in the late 90s/early 00s, def not in the UK.
its also not a 'fun' album like good kid was, but does it have to be?
(FWIW i dont listen to it cos im too old to be preached to)
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rubberdingyrapids
Well-known member
its actually amazing to me how such a cerebral, theatrical, not exactly accessible, DIFFICULT rapper is so popular right now. if he had more beats like alright, i think the album would be better.
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Corpsey
bandz ahoy
Following the luka listening method, I see.
rubberdingyrapids
Well-known member
i listened to it quite a lot when it came out, but i found it heavy going, like i was listening to a zeitegeisty novel by jonathan franzen or someone, it was so demagoguey, and on top of that, heavy going musically, so i thought i would use the limited headspace i have to listen to other things. i felt i could never just listen to it in chunks, but as a whole thing, which is why i decided to leave it alone. i should give it another listen, as all the hype has died down now.
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CrowleyHead
Well-known member
Funny, is he... difficult?
I think of stuff Noz rushes out of the closet all bags under his eyes and 6 day old crumbs embedded in his shirt, like Divine Styler's Spiral Walls... That's difficult. Kendrick does what other rappers have done, IF you know about them b/c you're a rap nerd and all that.
Even so, Kendrick doesn't make radical breaks to me.
rubberdingyrapids
Well-known member
cmon, in terms of flow, in the league hes in, who else raps like him? last person i think of his stature was eminem (i love how the 'blackest' album of recent memory is by the person who reminds most like eminem). theres lupe obv, but kendrick is a virtuoso MC. or at least, hes the most rappity-rappity-rap rapper in the charts right now. i can name a dozen guys who he reminds me OF, but id never say he was derivative. im not saying hes making some divine styler-type abstract weird-rap masterpiece, but listening to kendrick, the TPAB album at least, is a demanding experience. it requires more than background focus to get something out of it.
rubberdingyrapids
Well-known member
obv young thug is challening too
but more in the adult swim cartoon challenging than great american novel kind of challenging
but more in the adult swim cartoon challenging than great american novel kind of challenging
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
Perhaps, ironically, Kendrick and Thug's popularity could be partially put down to people not caring about lyrics so much anymore. I think what Kendrick has going for him in terms of mainstream appeal is his talent for catchy hooks. He definitely has that pop potential, in a weird way, which was obviously more evident on GKMC ('Poetic Justice' with Drake).
Lyrically he's quite exceptional in that his lyrics don't make good quote material. He doesn't do witty punchlines or even quotable 'do the knowledge' style quotes. I've noticed he tends to word things awkwardly (perhaps because, like Eminem, in thrall to rhyme schemes). The complexity of his lyrics, for me, is more detectable when you listen to a whole album of his.
Lyrically he's quite exceptional in that his lyrics don't make good quote material. He doesn't do witty punchlines or even quotable 'do the knowledge' style quotes. I've noticed he tends to word things awkwardly (perhaps because, like Eminem, in thrall to rhyme schemes). The complexity of his lyrics, for me, is more detectable when you listen to a whole album of his.
rubberdingyrapids
Well-known member
re: coltrane, im waiting for kendrick to steer rap towards a 'free-rap' phase
kendrick doesnt do the usual rap punchline kind of rapping, he doesnt have obvious quoteables (again, who does these days?, except maybe weezy?), hes about providing a big dense offloading of verbiage. i dont think you could say it wasnt well written/conceptualised though. hes quite self consciously approaching rap lyrics from a higher brow, more literary position. im more impressed by how it all sounds though than what hes saying. hes an incredible performer. a lot of what he does made sense to me when i saw the grammys performance. the whole thing was incredibly paced and staged.
kendrick doesnt do the usual rap punchline kind of rapping, he doesnt have obvious quoteables (again, who does these days?, except maybe weezy?), hes about providing a big dense offloading of verbiage. i dont think you could say it wasnt well written/conceptualised though. hes quite self consciously approaching rap lyrics from a higher brow, more literary position. im more impressed by how it all sounds though than what hes saying. hes an incredible performer. a lot of what he does made sense to me when i saw the grammys performance. the whole thing was incredibly paced and staged.
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Corpsey
bandz ahoy
rubberdingyrapids
Well-known member
its like blackalicious' revenge
rubberdingyrapids
Well-known member
yeah eminem is/was obv a total backpack virtuoso too
but i see kendrick as being like the mainstream figurehead/product of all that underground west coast stuff over the years, solesides, pharcyde, heiroglyphics, etc etc, hes like the culmination of it all, like a superhumanly brilliant product of that lineage
esp delicious/ironic/interesting that its on aftermath, which was obv the flipside of all that stuff
but i see kendrick as being like the mainstream figurehead/product of all that underground west coast stuff over the years, solesides, pharcyde, heiroglyphics, etc etc, hes like the culmination of it all, like a superhumanly brilliant product of that lineage
esp delicious/ironic/interesting that its on aftermath, which was obv the flipside of all that stuff