Apr 18, 2017

GOD. is really good too, but i'm just lite skin so i gotta go with any simp anthem as a favourite lmao

and duckworth. is biggie re-incarnated

this album is wild. man took inspiration from all his favourite artists and crafted a kendrick album.

 

Apr 18, 2017

Life is one funny MFer, it’s true. “DUCKWORTH.,” the last song on Kendrick Lamar's fourth studio album d---., tells a winding story about Anthony from Compton and Ducky from Chicago, whose paths cross first over KFC biscuits, and again, 20 years later, when Ducky’s son records a song about the encounter for Anthony’s record label. It’s a precious origin story, the stuff of rock docs and hood DVDs, and it’s delivered with such precision, vivid detail, and masterful pacing that it can’t possibly be true. But it’s a tale too strange to be fiction, and too powerful not to believe in—just like its author. Kendrick Lamar has proven he’s a master storyteller, but he’s been saving his best plot twist this whole time, waiting until he was ready, or able, to pull it off.

Storytelling has been Lamar’s greatest skill and most primary mission, to put into (lots of) words what it's like to grow up as he did—to articulate, in human terms, the intimate specifics of daily self-defense from your surroundings. Somehow, he’s gotten better. The raps on his fourth studio album d---. jab mercilessly like a sewing machine. His boyish nasal instrument is distinct and inimitable as it slithers up and down in pitch on “PRIDE.” Even when Lamar sounds like Eminem, or Drake, or OutKast, he sounds like himself, and he arguably outpaces them all as a writer. On “FEAR.,” he relays daily threats from his mom (“I’ll beat your a---, keep talking back/I’ll beat your a---, who bought you that? You stole it”) and from his neighbors (“I’ll probably die because I ain’t know Demarcus was snitching/I’ll probably die at these house parties f---ing with b------s”) over low-slung blues stirred by The Alchemist. Lamar’s recitation is so effortless you wonder where he breathes, or if he does at all.

Kendrick is a relic of the mid-aughts rap blog era, where bedroom WordPress pages would post .zips of albums by amateurs. After years of such releases, Kendrick dropped a self-titled EP in 2009 that featured Big Pooh from Little Brother and elicited such Nah Right comments as “I like the beats on this” and “who da fu-?” Accolades swelled with each project; by 2011, he was considering signing with Dr. Dre; by 2013, he was playing SNL and touring with Kanye West. He came of age with his fans, and by 2015’s To p---- a Butterfly, he put to music their chest-clenched frustrations. Ever the curtain-puller, he released an album of untitled and unmastered drafts and grew his hair out. His short absence, even after lending Taylor Swift a verse, has been made to feel longer by his media shyness and a surging tide of new rappers shuttled out daily.

Throughout it all, he’s avoided the boxed-in fates of predecessors like Nas and peers like J. Cole through an electric originality and curiosity. He mastered rap not for mastery’s sake, but to use it as a form, undeterred by slow-eared fans who’ll only highlight his “simplest lines.” His best new trick is repetition; it offsets his density and drills his ideas, as enthralling as a Sunday sermon or pre-fight chirp session. There have been few threats committed to record as sincere as, “Let somebody touch my mama, touch my sister, touch my woman/Touch my daddy, touch my niece, touch my nephew, touch my brother”—you tick down the list along with him, slot in your own lifelong bonds with loved ones. Such internal processing plays out through the album’s Greek chorus, via the singer Bēkon, who speaks in riddles of balance throughout: “Is it wickedness, is it weakness;” “Love’s gonna get you killed, but pride’s gonna be the death of you;” “It was always me versus the world/Until I found it’s me versus me.”

d---. is best in these philosophical spaces. It lags slightly around the center, where the concept loosens: “LOYALTY.,” with Rihanna, has all the makings of a radio mainstay this summer, and is as low-stakes as the platform demands; it’s always fun to hear Rih rap, and her presence is its most interesting aspect. “LUST.” would sound better if it weren’t next to an ear-worm as tender as “LOVE.,” which slow-dances between Zacari falsettos and Lamar’s sheepish read of the girl who fills him up. Between the two tracks, it’s easy to tell which force is tugging at him harder.

The record’s few lulls succumb to what surrounds them. The springboard bounce of “HUMBLE.,” the war chant of “DNA.,” and hot steel of “---.” show Kendrick in his element, fast and lucid, like Eazy-E with college credits and Mike WiLL beats. The production is taut and clean, but schizophrenic, often splicing two or three loops into a track and swaying between tempos, closer in kin to good kid’s siren-synths than Butterfly’s brass solos. If he was “black as the moon” on his last album, he’s an “Israelite” here, refusing to identify himself by the shade of his skin but fluent in the contents of his D.N.A. Butterfly floated along to soften its scathing stance—”We hate po-po” sounds better over a smooth saxophone—but with so many “wack artists” in play, what’s the reward for upliftment? Kendrick is so alone at his altitude that when he acknowledges Fox News, let alone Donald Trump, it feels like a favor to them both.

Still, the album exists for “DUCKWORTH.” It’s the final piece of the TDE puzzle, a homegrown label of Compton natives that happened to deliver the best rapper of his generation. If we’re to believe the song’s last gunshot—and its seamless loop back to track one—much of d---. is written from the perspective of a Kendrick Lamar who grew up without a father to guide him away from the sinful temptations outside his home. He bobs in and out of this perspective, but the repeated pledges to loyalty and martyrdom evoke the life and mind of a young g--- member who carries his neighborhood flag because no one’s proved to him that he shouldn’t. These choices, Lamar suggests, aren’t pre-determined or innate, but in constant dialogue with and in reaction to their surrounding circumstances. They aren’t above or beneath anyone who can hear his voice. Success and failure choose their subjects at their whim; we’re as grateful as Kendrick for his fate.


http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/23147-d---/?mbid=social_twitter

 

Apr 18, 2017

if that man ever drops a good album again in his life, i will remove 3 ribs just so i can eat my own a--- and upload it to youtube

so long as koolo pays for the surgery

 

Apr 18, 2017

my only criticism for d---. is that he doesn't really take any artistic risks on this jawn. which isn't a bad thing, rappers don't need to re-invent the wheel to make a good project. but that's literally the only thing i can complain about.

TPAB, as much as I hate it, was a complete departure from what we expected from kendrick. on d---. he builds off the lead single, and delves in to a variety of sounds throughout, but there is nothing on here we haven't already heard from kendrick (or his peers) already.

but the execution is just astounding.

9.2 is a fair score. i would personally rate this album a 9/10, exactly what I give hndrxx.

however hndrxx still gets the edge as AOTY for me, but only by a hair. it's hndrxx and d---. fighting for top spot in 2017 right now, and i'm not mad at anyone who chooses either.

 

Apr 18, 2017

last point is that the drake comparisons are valid and fair, but the reason kendrick gets a pass from me (and all of us) is because inspiration does not equal imitation.

this is a drake immitator:


LOVE. is a song that is no doubt rooted in inspiration, but still a kendrick song in every way

 

Apr 18, 2017

i don't think he does better, but he does very, very good. LOVE. is my favourite song on the album, i wonder why lol

but if we're saying he does better than drake at this, that's a stretch. i'd accept that he does as good as drake (although it's not a great discussion to have based on just one song), but thing is drake does drake the best (obviously). teenage fever is a comparable imo.

both are 10/10 songs to me. hats off to kendrick for showing he has this type of range in him. love this song.

 

Apr 18, 2017

no doubt but when drake delves in to other sounds, it's still always drake too.

i think kendrick is a superior artist (and i agree with the review that he's a better writer than drake, eminem, and maybe andre as well) but i just feel like this is a baseless criticism. kendrick doesn't lose points for making a drake-inspired song with LOVE., drake doesn't lose points for making a chief keef-inspired song with still here to me.

the only time it bothers me is when it's used for a song like tory lanez - LA confidential



this is so blatantly a miguel song that if it was played for me in chipmunk, i would 100% say it's miguel singing (and i'm a miguel stan).

tl;dr - kendrick gets a pass for borrowing from other artists on this because it's still always kendrick. but the same is true for drake. at least for me.

 

Apr 18, 2017

I guess for me, 'Love' didn't scream Drake when I heard it the way 'Still Here' screamed Chief Keef for me, from the repetition and cadence of the chorus down to the Young Chop-type synths. But I agree, I don't think he loses points for making Still Here -- the sing-songy flow on the verses are 100% Drake. It's probs my favorite song on Views.

I think people have more of an issue with Drake making songs like that because he wants to be a part of every wave and sound -- which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it can definitely come across as try-hard or annoying. Personally I think it's cool that he big ups lesser known artists, whether it be hoping on the Versace remix (it's true Versace had already blown up, but this was the first time I heard people outside of the internet talk about Migos) or putting on Grime artists on More Life. It's mutually beneficial.

 

Apr 18, 2017

rich homie quan resurrected his career too his album is wildly good

and bro 2 chainz still dropping. wow

thug too

 

Apr 18, 2017

lmaoooooo kendrick a martian, just like wayne

only explanation i can give you

 

Apr 18, 2017

sups @Poohdini

double standards lmao