Kendrick Lamar Best Posts: Pitchfork has named "To p---- A Butterfly" the album of the year

Poohdini · Dec 16, 2015

Dec 16, 2015
Kendrick stans are the worst, objectively.

DKC · Dec 16, 2015

Dec 16, 2015
f--- surf

lil uzi vert stan · Dec 16, 2015

Dec 16, 2015
d--- ppl with less than 100 posts and no avatar pickin up on how s--- on @Narsh is. this hurts me

Goku187 · Dec 16, 2015

Dec 16, 2015

Besky said

no it isn't, objectively.
Click to expand...

shut the f--- up

Besky · Dec 16, 2015

Dec 16, 2015

Swizz said

1989 is better champ
Click to expand...

no it isn't, objectively.

Ordinary Joel · Dec 16, 2015

Dec 16, 2015
Trust Nizzy to turn a thread about Kendrick into a thread about Eminem...

Thread-banned.

MTY · Dec 16, 2015

Dec 16, 2015

StarNizzaveli said

Terrible album. Very boring and the execution was poor, lacks any replay value

They are trolling
Click to expand...

your post/like ratio makes total sense

what · Dec 16, 2015

Dec 16, 2015
Still waiting on that long list of critics that supposedly hate this album in secret. @WPG confirm this

derro13 · Dec 16, 2015

Dec 16, 2015
How come narsh always gets ethered by pretty much everybody on this site

MTY · Dec 16, 2015

Dec 16, 2015

StarNizzaveli said

Kendrick suffers from from being way too Lyrical on deep songs the same problem Talib Kweli, Jay Z, Canibus, Lupe Fiasco, Nas, Mos Def, Andre 3000, KRS-One, Jay Electronica suffer from like them he doesn't know how to and can't tone it down

Not to make this an Eminem thread but i have to use him as the prime example because he is the most successful rapper ever on his deep songs he knows how to tone down the Lyricisim and make the focus of the song on song writing and emotion. Not sacrifice Lyricism but tone it down and let the focus be on emotion, message, melodies, passion, production

With Kendrick and the other rappers who are too Lyrical when trying to make substance based songs. There is no point in focusing so much on word play, metaphors, multi's, similies, double entendres, rhyming when u making a deep song don't sacrifice lyricism completly of course not but make the focus on emotion. Emotion songs aren't supposed to be about how well u rhyming. Kendricvk is too complex

Also Kendricks hooks are weak too i'm a fan of rappers who sing on hooks and sound well doing so but Kendricks attempts at singing or harmonizing are terrible sounds bad. HE needs to stop and just let featured singers who actually can sing do the hooks or have songs with no hooks or use sampled hooks
Click to expand...

What the f--- are you talking about Kendrick not being emotional enough? Did you not listen to "u" or something?

Charlie Work · Dec 16, 2015

Dec 16, 2015
So we really are renaming the site D12World? Ballsy @Mike Tyson

B6 is overrated. You're delusional @Narsh

Narsh · Dec 16, 2015

Dec 16, 2015
barter 6 @ 14

summertime 06 @ 4

Revolutionary · Dec 16, 2015

Dec 16, 2015
You know whats most impressive about this album? it's that the jazz on this album is better than the best jazz album of the year. But then again the most celebrated & praised jazz album of 2015 is the debut album of Kamasi who also worked on To p---- A Butterfly

MikeH · Dec 16, 2015

Dec 16, 2015

Besky said

1) TPAB

the rest

objectively of course.

On the real, stop mentioning this thrash of Compton... there's a reason if its not even craking the top 30 of any list
Click to expand...

tbh... Tpab is like twice as good as compton, doc2,deeply rooted & love trashstory combined.

Winter · Dec 16, 2015

Dec 16, 2015
Objectively the new sonically

Goku187 · Dec 16, 2015

Dec 16, 2015
Embarrassing write up. So we're giving it to TPAB because of its "blackness"? lol, okay

Sufjan, Grimes, D'Angelo, Father John Misty, and Jamie xx are all far more worthy AOTY picks

Narsh · Dec 16, 2015

Dec 16, 2015

Mike Tyson said

Honestly Slime Season 1 was better imo. I haven't revisited anything from Barter 6 aside from Check since SS1 dropped. But I'm glad he got a high placement, Thugger deserves it.

Like @Ordinary Joel said, BBTM is missed. It's at least better than IYRT, and maybe better than B6. Not better than Wildheart though.

And Jamie xx album was great guys, that whole joint is a journey. When 'The Rest Is Noise' comes on That whole song is subtle yet triumphant.
Click to expand...

Barter 6 is a better project than ss1 as a whole.

trust me, listen to it front to back again. its so cohesive its ridiculous. ss2 is closer in that aspect, but b6 still beats both of them in terms of being a complete project. im not denying ss1's highs tho.

but man from the moment constantly hating twinkles on, to how surreal songs like dream are, to halftime, and then the 3 track sequence to end the album...man so many people underrated barter 6.

thats why i hit u up for my review of it, some writers i follow on twitter were talking about how they were wrong for underrating it when it dropped lol

MTY · Dec 16, 2015

Dec 16, 2015
DISSECTING THE TOP 10:

10. Kamasi Washington - The Epic

Wasn't in my top 25 because its f---ing 3 hours long and I never found the time to re-listen but this is well-deserved, no complaints.

9. Courtney Barnett - Sometimes I Sit Here and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit

I liked the album a lot on first listen but on repeated ones, it didn't hold up that well. The lyrics and Courtney are great, but the instrumentation half the time felt generic. Tons of potential though and see why it's this high, but I didn't feel this all that much.

8. Miguel - Wildheart

Again, on first listens I liked this a lot, but f--- that second half is a mess starting with "what's normal anyway" due to bad production and general corniness. Also, the first three tracks are the best tracks by a decent margin and that's not good. Really shouldn't be this high.

7. D'Angelo and The Vanguard - Black Messiah

No complaints here, should be higher.

6. Sufjan Stevens - Carrie & Lowell

Should be a bit higher on this list.

5. Tame Impala - Currents

Shouldn't even be in the top 10, let alone top 50, let alone honorable mentions.

4. Vince Staples - Summertime '06

Well deserved.

3. Grimes - Art Angels

A surprisingly generic and forgettable pop album made by someone far from it. Should just be in the honorable mentions.

2. Jamie xx - In Colour

An enjoyable, but too safe album. Really doesn't need to be this high.

1. Kendrick Lamar - To p---- a Butterfly

It would have been a travesty had this not be #1, definitely well deserved.

MTY · Dec 16, 2015

Dec 16, 2015
http://pitchfork.com/features/staff-lists/9764-the-50-best-albums-of-2015/5/

At this point, it should be no surprise that Kendrick Lamar's To p---- a Butterfly is the Album of the Year on numerous lists, including this one. Upon its release, it was universally lauded. It was only March, but the writing was on the White House walls: To p---- a Butterfly was an opus, a statement, a feat. It felt weighty, labored, accomplished. One hour and 20 minutes of big ideas handled with complexity, it was a dextrous addition to the canon of art expressing disenchantment with fame and success. It launched a thousandthinkpieces, and forced critics to think deeply about music—to the point that it was still generating back-and-forths about its merits, as late as last month, eight months after its release. Commercially speaking, it set first-week streaming records on Spotify, meaning that it was being listened to as fervently as it was being debated.

It's also Black as f---. "Blackness" is a concept that remains fluid and intangible, but so solid that one can feel it when it’s present. And it was all over Butterfly. From the opening notes (a sample of Boris Gardiner's "Every n---- Is a Star") to the closing—a fabricated conversation with Tupac Shakur—the album is packed with Blackness. Kendrick may not have given the public much advance warning for Butterfly’s rich sound—the luxe spillover of stripped funk and jazz grooving of Terrace Martin, Kamasi Washington, Flying Lotus, Thundercat, and many others—but he made his thematic intentions abundantly clear with the pre-release singles. The first, "i", with its Isley Brothers sample and message of self-love, was initially overlooked for its subversion; while Black folk were telling the world that #BlackLivesMatter, Kendrick turned the message inwards: "I love myself." It was the amendment to his controversial statements to Billboard magazine that veered uncomfortably close to respectability politics. ("What happened to [Michael Brown] should've never happened. Never," he told the magazine. "But when we don't have respect for ourselves, how do we expect them to respect us? It starts from within. Don't start with just a rally, don't start from looting—it starts from within.")

At a moment when his peers remained fixated on finding worth and esteem from the world and things around them—the power of celebrity, the trappings of material excess, the numbing of drugs, the escape of sexual conquest—Kendrick emerged as a grounded Black hippie. He was enthralled with all of the same things as other rappers, but not beholden to them. He escaped into p---- on "These Walls" but philosophized as he stroked: "Walls telling me they full of pain, resentment/ Need someone to live in them just to relieve tension/ Me? I’m just a tenant." When he got drunk on "u", he turned to self-loathing: "Mood swings is frequent, n-----/ I know depression is restin' on your heart for two reasons, n-----." When he gassed up his luxury vehicle onPresident Obama's favorite song of the year, "How Much a Dollar Cost", he encountered God in the form of a beggar.

None of these things are explicitly Black, but the lens through which they were filtered was undoubtedly so. From its vernacular to its point of view, To p---- a Butterfly was about dealing with the survivor's remorse of escaping the poverty of Black America, while also relating to those still there. On "Institutionalized", when he took one of his hood friends to the BET Awards, he noted: "You lookin' at artistses like they harvestses/ So many Rolies around you and you want all of ’em/ Somebody told me you thinkin' 'bout snatchin' jewelry."

Nowhere is Blackness more front and center than on the album’s second single, "The Blacker the Berry". It was the song that most clearly announced Kendrick's lack of f---s about the comfort of his white audience. Perhaps it was a retort to his previous Grammy snubs; maybe it was a reaction to seeing "Swimming Pools (Drank)", his anti-drunk song, turned into a pro-drunk song in the mouths of bros. Whatever his reasoning, "The Blacker the Berry" provided white people with no entry into the song: There is hardly anything on the song for Taylor Swift to lip sync in her car unless she was going to deal with psychic turmoil of mouthing "My hair is nappy, my d-ck is big, my nose is round and wide/ You hate me don't you?/ You hate my people—your plan is to terminate my culture/ You're f---in' evil, I want you to recognize that I'm a proud monkey." He labeled the song as the "emancipation of a real n-----" and, even in a society where whites regularly rub ears with the n-word, it was abrasive and unsettling.
Click to expand...

@KendrickSXN

OTHER HIP-HOP/R&B/ETC. PLACEMENTS

50. Dawn Richard - Blackheart
48. Shamir - Ratchet
44. Jazmine - Sullivan
41. Jeremih - Late Nights: The Album
36. Janet Jackson - Unbreakable
33. Archy Marshall - A New Place 2 Drown
32. Dr. Dre - Compton
31. Kelela - Hallucinogen EP
29. Rae Sremmurd - Sremmlife
25. Earl Sweatshirt - I Don't Like s---, I Don't Go Outside
24. Thundercat - The Beyond / Where The Giants Roam
21. Donnie Trumpet & the Social Experiment - Surf
19. Future - Dirty Sprite 2
17. Drake - If You're Reading This It's Too Late
16. FKA twigs - M3LL155X
15. Björk - Vulnicura (should be Top 10 )
14. Young Thug - Barter 6
10. Kamasi Washington - The Epic
8. Miguel - Wildheart
7. D'Angelo and The Vanguard - Black Messiah
4. Vince Staples - Summertime '06
2. Jamie xx - In Colour

Revolutionary · Dec 16, 2015

Dec 16, 2015

Sign Up / Log InJoin

Thread Tools

Kendrick Lamar Best Posts: Pitchfork has named "To p---- A Butterfly" the album of the year

Sign Up / Log In

Register

Kendrick Lamar

Useful Searches