Kendrick Lamar is better than Soundgarden

[verb_to_trust]

YAH. is hypnotic.

Giraldo is pissed about that one

[tragabigzanda]

Top 10 maybe?
Hello Morning
Close Captioned
The Kill
Place/Position
Do You Like Me?
Latest Disgrace
Recap Modotti
Nightshop
Break
Life & Limb

I'd maybe bump Life & Limb for Epic Problem

[Jammer XCI]

Fear and Duckworth are fucking awesome.

[Kevin Davis]

Well, "XXX." is definitely the best song U2 has ever been involved with.

This is how I always felt about Chris Martin and "Homecoming."

[LoathedVermin72]

My one complaint about this album is that it is just too long. I'm thinking it would be pretty perfect if "LUST.", "LOVE.", and "FEAR." were excised.

[tragabigzanda]

[Kevin Davis]

"Blood" is the only track I'd dump, or at least eliminate the words from -- this sort of spoken/skit-type track is one tacky aesthetic cliche that the rap genre just can't seem to shake, diminished in frequency though it's thankfully become over the years. The Geraldo Rivera soundbyte would have been the perfect lead-in to the album, which from there on out is pretty much perfect. I agree with Trag that it doesn't necessarily hit the individual highs of "TPAB" but that it's a much stronger front-to-back listen overall. Though there are little musical nuggets all over his records, I think Kendrick's greatest asset is still his raw talent as a wordsmith and rapper, and that's a talent that benefits from the kind of discipline that "TPAB" just wasn't prepared to commit to, great as it is (in fact, I tend to prefer "Good Kid, MAAD City" and in some ways even "Untitled/Unmastered" to "TPAB" for precisely this reason, while still appreciating "TPAB" as the further-reaching work of art -- my train of thought just doesn't always follow Kendrick's over the course of that album). This new album seems to take a lot of "TPAB"'s sense of imagination-run-wild and harness it into a more linear stream of musical ideas, while pairing them with the sharper lyrical focus of "Good Kid." No arguments that this is ultimately his best work -- it's fantastic.

[Kalevi]

Ive listened to this once and if pressed I'd still take superunknown, dotus over it. Maybe even badmotorfinger.

[tragabigzanda]

[LoathedVermin72]

SUCH a good post. I mean just WOW.

[4/5]

I really like this album a lot but I think people are getting carried away already describing this as hands down his best album. It's definitely more accessible and prettier than TPAB, but I think it's more accurate to say this is another great album from him as opposed to a leap forward to greatness.

[96583UP]

SUCH a good post. I mean just WOW.

[Kevin Davis]

It's definitely more accessible and prettier than TPAB

I'm not sure I agree with this at all -- "TPAB" has a lot of catchy, immediately satisfying songs. But downing the whole thing at once takes some doing. "TPAB" is like a big psychedelic explosion of ideas; this album feels like Kendrick picking up those ideas, discarding the unusable ones, and whittling the rest into some logical shape. I don't think it proclaims its own greatness as loudly as "TPAB," but after a couple listens I'm pretty confident in my feeling that it's the better-realized, more accomplished piece of work. And I liked "TPAB" a lot.

[4/5]

BLOOD. is the perfect start to the album and pivotal to everything that comes after it. If the blind woman represents Lady Justice, who is blind to represent her impartiality and the equality all have before the law, it is quite powerful when she either misinterprets the black-community-via-Kendrick's intentions and kills him out of misplaced fear/self-defense or she reveals that she's not actually blind and kills him in a manner more consistent with an overtly systemic prejudice that has no ambition of blindness/equal justice.

It's the perfect intro to this album and bridge from TPAB. Immediately after she kills him it cuts to the FOX reaction to his BET performance. I think the spoken word story and the plot twist at the end of the story make the FOX clip more powerful and provides it with an anchor to something bigger than just FOX. The way he structured it, the story represents the systemic issue and the FOX clips/lines sprinkled throughout are examples of the symptoms of the bigger problem. Without BLOOD. I think those clips/lines could lose some of their effectiveness because then he's just clapping back at right wing media and that isn't the most interesting or fresh route to take.

[4/5]

It's definitely more accessible and prettier than TPAB

I'm not sure I agree with this at all -- "TPAB" has a lot of catchy, immediately satisfying songs. But downing the whole thing at once takes some doing.

But isn't that kind of the point? This is a much easier listen. It doesn't, as overtly at least, challenge the listener as much as TPAB. I don't mean that as an insult or critique or compliment; it just seems self-evident to me. There aren't tracks like U or For Sale? or For Free? that are in some ways quite ugly and not particularly pleasing to the ear. And that's fine. You're right that there are some catchy/accessible songs on TPAB, but This album will probably be a stronger front to back listen for most people. (I swear even if that sounds like an attempt at an elitist insult I don't mean it that way.) Even among the immediate songs, though, I think songs like Humble, DNA, and Loyalty pop in a way unlike anything on TPAB did.

I already really enjoy this album and have already listened to it probably 8-10 times and I can't wait to listen to this album over and over and over even more and dissect it because I'm sure it will start hitting for me on other levels and my appreciation for it will grow.

I'll probably have to make a defense of TPAB post soon and it'll undoubtedly be tl;dr, but it should be therapeutic to get my love for that album down in writing.

[Kevin Davis]

BLOOD. is the perfect start to the album and pivotal to everything that comes after it. If the blind woman represents Lady Justice, who is blind to represent her impartiality and the equality all have before the law, it is quite powerful when she either misinterprets the black-community-via-Kendrick's intentions and kills him out of misplaced fear/self-defense or she reveals that she's not actually blind and kills him in a manner more consistent with an overtly systemic prejudice that has no ambition of blindness/equal justice.

It's the perfect intro to this album and bridge from TPAB. Immediately after she kills him it cuts to the FOX reaction to his BET performance. I think the spoken word story and the plot twist at the end of the story make the FOX clip more powerful and provides it with an anchor to something bigger than just FOX. The way he structured it, the story represents the systemic issue and the FOX clips/lines sprinkled throughout are examples of the symptoms of the bigger problem. Without BLOOD. I think those clips/lines could lose some of their effectiveness because then he's just clapping back at right wing media and that isn't the most interesting or fresh route to take.

Great post -- this is an excellent read on that track that goes a lot deeper than I've had the chance to go with this album yet, so maybe the conceptual will end up outweighing the aesthetic on this one. I'll certainly listen with this in mind. But for now it's battling twenty years' worth of baggage stemming from sliding rap CD's into my player only to find I have to sit through 1-2 tracks of yakity-yak before the music starts (and I know, there's music happening on this track, spoken word can be art too, yadda yadda -- I'm sure you know what I mean in any case).

[Dscans]

This is how white I am: When he raps "I feel like friends been overrated," I thought he was talking about the TV show.

[Fuzzcharger]

I quite dig LUST on this. I found the second album NATION theories pretty interesting too. I can't think of any artist that has been getting this much attention and generating this much interest for a long time.

[Fuzzcharger]

I imagine his Coachella set tonight could possibly be an 'all time' event.

[LoathedVermin72]

I quite dig LUST on this. I found the second album NATION theories pretty interesting too. I can't think of any artist that has been getting this much attention and generating this much interest for a long time.

Do I have to say it?