19. Kendrick Lamar, "To Pimp a Butterfly"
Upon relistening to this brilliant, utterly captovating album, I thought "One day this will be rightfully placed among the Sgt. Pepperses and the Pet Soundses and the like" and then I realized you know what? Today is that day. Or two years ago was, I guess, whenever this list came out. I realize that I'm still in the thrall of this amazing document after listening to it maybe three or four times over the course of a weekend, but it more than lives up to the hype and I firmly believe it will remain in upper echelon of recorded American music for years and decades to come.
It's a hip hop album, sure, but it's not just a hip hop album, not by a long shot. Lamar is clearly conversant with the long, rich history of African-American music and it all shows up, in some form or another, on this album. There's a heavy jazz influence; "For Free?," for example, sounds like a Black beatnik spitting rapidfire rhymes at the Village Vanguard at the end of the world, set off by a band playing free jazz:
More divorce courts and portion
My check with less endorsement left me dormant
Dusted, doomed, disgusted, forced with
Fuck you think is in more shit?
Porcelain pipes pressure, bust 'em twice
Choice is devastated, decapitated the horseman
Oh America, you bad bitch, I picked cotton and made you rich
Now my dick ain't free
The next song, "King Kunta," is a funk/rap mashup, an absolute tear that's a blast to listen to with a head-nodding beat and anotjer impressive rap by Lamar. As with most or all of the songs on the album, it deals directly with the Black experience in America, and alludes to Malcolm X, Michael Jackson, and Parliament. These themes are made explicit in "The Blacker the Berry," one of the few straight-ahead hip hop songs on the record, pulling no punches about the continuing realities of racism and discrimination:
Jealous of my wisdom and cards I dealt
Watchin' me as I pull up, fill up my tank, then peel out
Muscle cars like pull-ups, show you what these big wheels 'bout, ah
Black and successful, this black man meant to be special
Katzkins on my radar, bitch, how can I help you?
How can I tell you I'm making a killin'?
You made me a killer, emancipation of a real nigga
"Blacker" was released the day after Kendrick won a Grammy for "i," the 15th track on this album, a funk/rap bop that draws heavily from the Isley Brothers' "That Lady" (fun fact: Kendrick had to go to St. Louis and get Ronald Isley's permission in person to use the song; it was granted). The song scans as joyful, with its "I love myself" chorus hook, but like the rest of the album (and the Black experience in America), there's always pain lurking around the corner:
With an automatic weapon, don't nobody call a medic
I'ma do it 'til I get it right (Oh no)
I went to war last night (Night, night, night, night)
I've been dealing with depression ever since an adolescent
This passage expertly contrasts the war on the streets with the war in Kendrick's head, and the song later explicitly deals with gang violence and Kendrick's urge for an end to the internecine warfare.
The album's concerns bled into real life when "Alright" became an anthem of Black Lives Matter protests. The song itself, a jazz-rap reassurance that, in spite of structural inequality, the African-American community would continue to persevere, is a masterful statement, and given its explicit references to police violence, it's not surprising that it would be adopted by the BLM as an anthem and a balm.
"How Much a Dollar Cost," another strongly jazz-inflected song, is a story about a time when Kendrick was approached in Johannesburg by a homeless man at a gas station and the conflicted feelings it produced in him. The rap is, of course, impeccable, and the music is just melancholy enough to set the right tone. Ronald Isley appears in person this time to sing the outro.
It's a good album.
Is this album in my personal Top 100? No, but largely because my list was mostly set before this album came out in 2015.
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