Mar 15, 2016 Just got the vinyl few days ago as well. Man, that album is a f---ing experience, I feel like this album combines the best of what jazz, funk and even classic rnb (from the 70s bro) have to offer. Definitely more than a rap album.
Mar 15, 2016 One of the most complete albums we have heard in hip hop in recent years. With that being said, it's more for those who are familiar with music from the african diaspora. Kendrick brought us through the streets in GKMC, but TPAB does something even more impressive...With strong influences of soul, bebop jazz, r&b, p-funk, and all sub-categories of hip-hop, Kendrick has essentially made an amalgam of the beautiful art to be created throughout African-American history. It is a love letter to Black Culture and where it is today.
Mar 15, 2016 Not gonna lie, it took me a few listens before fully enjoying it. I fell in love with it when I started to fall in love with funkadelik. Now I regularly play it front to back and its non-skippable. This is an album for music lovers tbh
Mar 15, 2016 I never expected a rap album to influence herbie hancock, david bowie, chuck d and more in the same year, s--- is crazy. You know you have something special in your hands when a rap album features some of the best jazz and funk music of the decade.
Mar 15, 2016 First listens were underwhelming for me, few weeks later I was completely sold on this...Amazing album.
Mar 15, 2016 Let me set the tone for this piece right off the bat: To p---- A Butterfly is the greatest rap album of all time. Now, I know a lot of rap albums, and practically study them over and over through playing them not just all the way through in one take, but also on multiple mixes and playlists. For instance, one single song — “How We Do” — occupies 4 different playlists on my computer (a swag one, a Top 10 Dre Beats one, a workout one, and another playlist.) In fact, iTunes tells me that I’ve listened to Cam’ron’s song “Dip-Set Forever” 95 times, which is about 4 minutes long. That works out to 372.4 minutes, or about 6.2 hours. That’s almost a week’s total of listening to only that single song, and that play count doesn’t even take into account how many times I’ve listened to “Dip-Set Forever” elsewhere, like on my iPhone. I mention all of this for two reasons: 1.) To show that I can judge Kendrick’s TPAB against a lot of other rap albums, and 2.) To show what kind of listening treatment To p---- A Butterfly got from me. One of the contexts I want to judge TPAB against is the format of the rap album throughout the genre. Now, for me, the format of rap albums breaks down into two basic categories that really describe a spectrum. First, there are rap albums where every track has a completely different sound from the next one. On the other side are rap albums where every track leads in a very unified manner from one to the next. In the first category falls a lot of the mega-albums, like Lil Wayne’s The Carter III. “A Milli,” by Bangladesh, has an electronic, chopped and screwed sound. Meanwhile, Kanye’s beat “Let The Beat Build” has a soul sample that sets it completely apart from Bangladesh’s production. The fact that these albums sound so different from one track to the next is primarily a result of the fact that there are different producers for every track. But then there are albums that largely have only one sound world, and each track then works to explore and expand out that sound world. A great example of that album is Dr. Dre’s Chronic: 2001.It’s no surprise, then, that Dr. Dre produced every song on that album. His ability to guide the album in a single direction means that all the songs sound similar, without ever being repetitive. For example, many of the songs use the minor scale, which gives the album that dark feel, as between “Forgot About Dre” and“Let’s Get High." Kendrick’s TPAB, then, is an album that falls into the latter category. It has an incredibly unified sound, even though there are many different producers on it. For example, we have Pharrell, Flyin Lotus, and Boi-1da as credited producers. But it’s actually Sounwave who appears the most on tracks, a total of 7 times. But every track except 1 has more than 1 producer listed in the credits on Wikipedia. In fact, “Complexion (A Zulu Love)” has a grand total of 4 producers listed! But somehow, overall, Kendrick managed to pick beats that all sound related. Jay-Z probably has one of the best ears for a beat in the game — discovering Kanye, discovering 9th Wonder — but Kendrick is right behind him. The difference is Jay-Z follows the sound of his time, while Kendrick, like Kanye,is currently defining it. What I think is interesting about Kendrick’s own unique type of unification is that it doesn’t consist primarily of subgenres of rap, or the sounds of his songs; it actually consists of strictly musical aspects, like harmony. For instance, there are tons of jazzy chords on “For Free?”. On this song, triadic (3-note) chords are replaced and extended to have lots of notes (into chords that include 4 or even 5 notes.) These extended, spacy chords are reflected all over the album, as on“Institutionalized,” or the opening of “Hood Politics.” Jazz has been in rap for a while, as on Tribe Called Quest’s songs. But those were always samples. TPAB sometimes comes across as a live performance of a jazz quartet where the lead singer just happens to be rapping. But, of course, most of those aesthetic choices were made by session musicians, not Kendrick himself, who almost definitely doesn’t know any harmonic music theory. In this way, then, Kendrick shows the ability to guide his unofficial artistic collective as well as RZA did Wu-Tang, or Dr. Dre did Aftermath records. RZA coached all 9 members of his clan to huge success, making all of their beats and business decisions (such as what label each group member, like Raekwon, would sign with.) Dr. Dre, meanwhile, also obviously made beats for Snoop Dogg, N.W.A., and others, but he also launched Aftermath Records, which directly or indirectly discovered Eminem, 50 Cent, and Game. Kendrick, in picking unified beats and session musicians that worked great together, displays the same kind of foresight and genius. I’ve always thought it interesting that rap is almost inherently a collaborative process. No one blinks twice when a producer makes a beat and then gives it to a rapper, with almost no interaction or aesthetic discussion between the two. In fact, 50 Cent wrote the raps for “In Da Club” without ever having heard the beat. This would make almost no sense in other arts, or musical arts. For instance, classical composers write their own complete music, and then give it to musicians to play. Kendrick seems to be an excellent mediator of this relationship. In fact, I wanted to pitch an article to one of my freelance media outlets, WatchLoud or Pigeons and Planes, that would be a complete review of To p---- A Butterfly without ever mentioning Kendrick Lamar once. That’s how essential part I think the session musicians and unheralded or unnamed contributors are to this project. As for Kendrick’s rap itself, this album continues a general theme in Kendrick’s music. Since Section.80, and down through good kid, m.A.A.d city on to To p---- A Butterfly, Kendrick has slowly simplified his technical style. Since “Rigamortis” on Section.80, Kendrick hasn’t ever utilized a musical motive to the same complex, sophisticated extent, an idea that I covered for Pigeons and Planes here. But, somehow, this doesn’t really matter to me. That’s because his poetic message is so strong. There are some interesting musical aspects to it though. But he does do something melodically (strictly musically) that I’ve only heard once before, from Pharoahe Monch. I want to compare Kendrick’s own rap verses and the variations form in classical music. In classical music, variations is a form where a composer takes a small idea and creates a series of somewhat different sections of music that places that small idea in extremely different contexts. The idea is to show that the composer can come up with a great melodic idea that is flexible and inventive enough to appear in tons of different places, like an imitative canon, or a dance. Such an example is the “Variations On A Shaker Melody” form Aaron Copeland’s masterful 1944 piece “Appalachian Spring,” which you can hear here. If you listen closely, you can tell that sometimes the opening musical idea is played quickly, sometimes slowly, sometimes in by one group of instruments, sometimes by another, and so on. In this way, the entire piece is unified, and Copeland displays his versatility and originality. I noticed on TPAB that Kendrick does something similar. On the opening song “Wesley’s Theory”, he raps these words: What you want? You a house or a car? Forty acres and a mule, a piano, a guitar? Anythin', see, my name is Uncle Sam, I'm your dog MFer, you can live at the mall… This song “Wesley’s Theory” has a musical speed of 120 Beats Per Minute (BPM.) This speed is quite fast for a rap song. Later on in the album, on the song “Alright”, Kendrick actually raps an extremely, unmistakably similar verse: “What you want, you a house, you a car? 40 acres and a mule, a piano, a guitar? Anything, see my name is Lucy, I'm your dog MFer, you can live at the mall…” But the speed of “Alright” is actually much slower than when that same exact verse is rapped on “Wesley’s Theory.” The speed of “Alright” is 56 BPM, much less than the 112 BPM of “Alright.” It’s also important to mention that the musical rhythms from one song to the next on those bars are also the same, allowing the astute listener to recognize them as the same melodic idea. In this way, then — by placing the same melodic idea in a new musical context — Kendrick is engaging with the variations form in a way that rappers often don’t. So, yes. That whole 1500 page article is actually only a small, small part of why I think To p---- A Butterflyis the greatest rap album of all time. Be a Fan http://www.rapanalysis.com/2015/07/kendrick-lamar-to-p-----butterfly-review.html
Mar 15, 2016 When people copy/paste martin connor's articles to prove their favorite artists are great...and then make an article on tpab saying its the greatest rap album of all time (in his opinion) GOAT CONNOR
Mar 15, 2016 You can tell he was definitely way more invested in this album than GKMC. I finally can decipher the production and its cathartic nature. Kendrick, Rapsody, Assassin, pretty much everyone on this album has incredible presence. No one is wasted save Pharrell delivering a lazy Swizz Beats-style chorus on "Alright". A near flawless album. Even though kendrick was great on this, the highlight is definitely the music, the composition, the atmospheric and expressive production, it's apart of this category of albums that seems to embrace the African American musical heritage. There's no denying that he owes the musical brilliance to his team but let's say kendrick was smart enough to get kamasi washington, thundercat, terrance, flylo, robert glasper and bilal in his circle.
Mar 15, 2016 I streamed the f--- outta TPAB when it first came out... Alright, u, i, These Walls and Mortal Man instantly became my favorite tracks while it took me about a week to get into the rest of the album....the jazz really took me by surprise but it was groovy AF to dance to. Then the CD release came out around the time my nephew was born, so this was a special time for me.
Mar 15, 2016 btw, going back to ktt while listening to this classic pm me if u wanna talk, I'll get notifications via emails.
Mar 15, 2016 What makes this album so great is the production that accentuates the ideas Kendrick is trying to get across. It's like you can literally visualize what hes gonna say just by listening to the beats.
Mar 15, 2016 I don't know where to begin. I can perfectly remember which room I was in, the time of day, what clothes I was wearing, and the state of mind I was in when I first listened to this album. I instantly fell in love with this album after my first listen. I certainly didn't understand most of it at the time because there was so much to take in, but I was completely amazed by it. It was breathtaking and probably the most creative album I'd heard. With more listens I loved and appreciated it more and more and still continue to. Everything about this album from the instrumentation, the rapping, the concepts, the content is outstanding and I absolutely love it. I still pick up on new details or notice something that I didn't pick up on before with each listen too. It warms my heart just writing about it. This is such an important body of work and I'm just so happy that I was able to witness the release of this album first hand as soon as it was released. There is no way that this album won't go down in history as an essential piece of music, which I can say I was there to witness. TPAB is so special to me.
