May 16, 2016 If anything hes actually turning into that goat and transcending hip hop. He has experimented fusing jazz and funk sound with his rap. Perhaps leaving some fans of simple hip hop who don't like that, but that doesn't make his last album any less great. If anything, he's actually evolving and progressing as an artist.
May 16, 2016 with gkmc, kendrick showed to the rap community that he could make a classic album. With tpab, kendrick showed to the music community that he could make a classic album. Tpab is literally the only reason I consider him a potential goat.
May 16, 2016 he had jazz influence on section.80 too, there's just more accessible ways to go about it. this is my personal opinion, so please don't cite any reviews or metacritic scores or tweets by DJ quik: section.80 and GKMC are two of the best albums ever made. i can't say the same about TPAB, which is an album i may never play top down again.
May 16, 2016 You've just proved that accessibility =/= quality. S80 had generic jazz influenced production. The only reason why someone would actually consider it as more accessible is because it was generic.
May 16, 2016 i didn't really prove anything, please don't put words in my mouth. all i'm saying is i miss the man who made music like this:
May 16, 2016 And for the record, I never quote critics to prove my point. However, saying "he could have been goat if he made an album that I enjoyed" doesn't make any sense. Your opinion is never gonna make an artist goat or woat, it's all about his legacy and it's fair to say that kendrick's legacy is only getting better.
May 16, 2016 I never contribute to these drake vs kendrick stan wars. They're 2 of my favorite artists and I've always said that TPAB was one of the greatest albums of all time.
May 16, 2016 Okay, if you want to make this more serious than it is, then let us. Objectively from an artistic stand point, what did you think of Kendrick using an unreleased Tupac interview to tie together the entire album.
May 16, 2016 Also @crlk, please elaborate on what makes TPAB a musical masterpiece, and try to make a more compelling case than "he fuses jazz and hiphop".
May 16, 2016 Again, what makes the experimenting sound of fused soul & funk with rap objectively better than say extremely ambient and smooth Barter 6 with advanced rapping on top of it?
May 16, 2016 From an artistic standpoint, the album's strenght is the music: the composition, the production, kendrick's ability to incorporate variations forms of classic music in his rap (only pharoahe monch doing that, and now young thug). I know some old heads listen to jazz-poetry, but I'm not one of them. However, Kendrick really went back to the various stages of black music and the poem was part of it. This album features both the rhythmic spoken word & classic/traditional poetry that were both used outside of mainstream jazz music few decades ago. Despite not being used by white artists trying to popularize jazz in the mainstream, these aspects of jazz music still influenced early hip hop. This album can really be described as a "black" album, all of it, and it was done extraordiry well imo
May 16, 2016 I'd add that the tpab's acclaim doesn't come from its experimentation of sounds because the album is definitely not experimental, it comes from the successful attempt at incorporating all the best aspects/elements of the different stages of black music, without compromising anything. In that regard, you could say it's more of a safe than experimental album and that doesn't make it any less great considering the fact that very few artists can do that. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not giving kendrick all the credits as if he was the only mastermind behind this work - I know the album had 71 contributors.
