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King Kendrick « The MacGuffin Men

King Kendrick

Published on April 2nd, 2015

Alex writes about Kendrick Lamar’s new record, failure, ‘journey’ movies, and Portuguese chicken.

There are (obviously) myriad ways to learn your lesson in life, but I tend to fixate on the way people react to two. The first is the most common, and the type people actively seek out: you experience something that is immediately enjoyable, and you like this experience so much that you choose to re-live it or think about it as frequently as possible. You eat a really delicious piece of poultry and you think, “Today I learned I love the Portuguese method of chicken preparation,” before going back to your local churrascaria. This applies to trying anything new: chicken, sex, or a piece of pop culture. This is a method that is very pleasant for you, if not necessarily those around you that truly don’t care that you have finally cracked the code to how The Lizzie McGuire Movie might be about teenage schizophrenia. The second way to learn something is common as well, but in a way most people loathe, because it tends to involve a decent amount of self-hatred.

When one thinks about all the things that really taught them something about their life, it’s generally not a list of easily solvable mysteries. Nobody ever learned something profound by finding out that they dropped a set of keys in their left Air Max. In order to learn something worthwhile, there has to be some sort of struggle. You have to not know something in order to learn it, and not knowing something means you are temporarily confused by this absence of knowledge. The few truly valuable things I have learned came out of things I never wanted to have to experience in the first place. The most powerful realizations always come out of a desire to avoid failing again. This is a thing I know to be certain about life. And I suspect everybody knows this, but nobody wants to admit it.

I remember I was conflicted. ‘This guy is rap’s new hope? This record is kind of boring, and it is entirely too jumbled for me to ever love. Keisha’s Song is intriguing, and a couple of the drum hits on HiiiPower sounded tremendous, but overall I am not particularly feeling this.’ I listened to the album once, wrote it off soon after. ‘I get it, I suppose, it’s just not for me.’ Yet.

There have been three really interesting hip-hop records released since 2010. That’s not to say there haven’t been a multitude of good records, merely that the gap between good and great is exceedingly difficult to overcome, and there are few exceedingly talented rappers. Records like Schoolboy Q’s Oxymoron or Big KRIT’s Cadillactica are very good, but there is something holding them back from being great. Songs like Q’s Man of the Year, with its out-of-nowhere string epilogue, or the grandiosity of KRIT’s Saturdays = Celebration are engaging, but there are also songs like Hell of a Night and Mo Better Cool on those same albums. They’re good records – and often the detracting songs aren’t necessarily bad on their own (although Hell of a Night is fucking terrible) – but parts stray from the tone and as such hurt the whole.

Of Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly, there are arguments to be made about the first half of that sentence, but certainly not the second. 

By the time Good Kid Maad City was about to be released in October 2012, I remained skeptical of the titularly not-problematic child. ‘Swimming Pools is kind of a boring single,’ I thought. It didn’t make me less interested to hear his major label debut, as I was always going to feel obligated to take a gander at this piece of culture, but it also didn’t make me more interested in the coming record. The lesson, as always: I am a dumb dumb.

Good Kid Maad City ended up being one of those aforementioned three really interesting modern hip-hop albums. Swimming Pools itself is a great song that I was wrong about; it’s a party record about the ills of alcoholism, the type of abstract contradiction that will always please me greatly. I wrote about the album at length when it was released, and my thoughts remain (mostly) the same: it is a great album about somebody trying to break out of a cycle they feel trapped within. Lamar felt he was just circling life, and he made an album about the desire to change his geometrical outlook. That album was great, and a lot of people bought it. Somehow, Kendrick became the next hope for rap by simultaneously becoming exceptionally popular and exceptionally interesting.

To Pimp a Butterfly was released either by surprise or by accident at about midnight a couple Sundays ago, and critical opinion was speedy and unflinching, the way modern critical opinion apparently must be. Twitter exploded with the instant opinions, and the next day entertainment websites did the same. Lamar had made a really, really, really good album that is really, really, really odd. It seemed to take all the more experimental elements of Good Kid’s construction and amplified those and only those. No more Backseat Freestyle, To Pimp a Butterfly is all Sing About Me. People that thought September’s single i was to be indicative of the album’s sound were profoundly incorrect, proven by the fact that the song appears on the album more as a piece of storytelling than a pop song. Like Good Kid, To Pimp a Butterfly is about a journey, but one made with the refined voice Kendrick was able to further develop in the time since the release of his major label debut.

Over the past year, I have found myself fascinated with what I like to call journey movies, where the film follows a singular character, features minimal plot, and shows us this person experiencing their life before leaving us to decide where the journey actually takes them. Frequently this character ends up back at a similar version of the same place he left at the beginning of the film, and they are mildly repetitive by design. These are films that are impossible to pull off if the filmmaker is not a master craftsman, and nobody really tries to pull them off in the earliest part of their career. Of the journey style, Raging Bull is likely the forefather, but it was perfected in Stanley Kubrick’s best film, Eyes Wide Shut. More recently, Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master and Inherent Vice are both like this, as is the Coen Brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis. All of these movies show you what this character experiences, but they leave the why up to the viewer, assuming they will be able to figure it out for themselves. When I’m experiencing a piece of art, I don’t need clear answers so much as I need interesting obfuscation, my love of journey cinema being a prime example of such. And To Pimp A Butterfly is the auditory equivalent to that style.

In the meantime between albums, the most notable public moment Lamar had was his lengthy featured verse on Big Sean’s Control. The appearance was K.Dot making a straight-ahead acknowledgement that – while other rappers may in fact exist – few concern him. The song had its own brief moment in the music news cycle, the type that only a specific type of cultural sensation can inspire. Rappers mentioned in the lengthy verse felt compelled to tweet about going to the studio immediately – a confused Fabolous took offence, and the normally offensively bad Mac Miller joked about writing a song exclusively using adjectives – and responses were soon everywhere. Phil Jackson even tweeted about his mention in it*.

*The idea of Phil Jackson and Kendrick Lamar being friends is not only enjoyable to imagine, but it actually seems like they would get along. In their best work, each man’s goal is to confuse their audience into agreeing with them. 

Lamar’s verse was initially perceived as a diss by most, as people can only talk about rap in the ways we have all previously talked about it, but it was more of Lamar challenging everybody around him to not be shitty. He was saying he’s the best, sure, but you can be better too, you just aren’t trying hard enough. He’s not concerned with other modern rappers, but his quandary is that he would like to be. Lamar is an eternally hopeful man; he sees the ills of the world and tries to right them by assuming his audience is intelligent enough to understand what he’s saying. As most artists get more and more concerned with a race to include everybody, somebody willing to exclude those that aren’t interested in what he’s doing grows more charming by the day.

On To Pimp a Butterfly, we are shown Kendrick Lamar as a man who achieved more than it seems reasonable for anybody to expect out of him, and now that man is looking at the various aspects he maybe failed to take into consideration. The beginning of this album makes that all abundantly clear, as we hear Kendrick actively worrying about treating his success poorly, and going from living that Snipes life to failing to pay his taxes and eventually being the best part of pieces of shit like The Expendables 3. Lamar knows he has reached an unlikely place in life, and he values his time accordingly, always hoping to maintain the value of his words. He positions himself as a leader of sorts because we did collectively, by choosing to listen to his records and hype them up to others. Throughout To Pimp a Butterfly, Lamar is a man out front of the movement he supposedly leads simply by virtue of being the one to speak up, and this movement may or may not eventually tear him to pieces. Kendrick is the leader because nobody else is quite up to the task.

This is (obviously) all very interesting, thoughtful stuff, and track four hasn’t even started yet. In contrast to most rappers blindly wishing for things they will never have, or rapping about the physical things they now do have – be they Beamers, Benzes, or Bentleys – Lamar looks back at where he used to be, desiring such things, and then looks to the present where he is forced to deal with these things, wondering aloud if he has the emotional make up to pull it off.

What the Control verse cemented was Lamar’s unquestionable hold over the youth, and hip-hop culture as a whole. He’s right alongside J. Cole as a rapper the kids love, but Lamar’s notable moments long overshadow even Cole’s on the list of trending topics. The G.O.M.D. video release barely made a dent, something Cole is likely penning overly emotional verses about right now. Not only was King Kendrick saying he was the best rapper with Control, but the media was interested in that statement because it was true, and the kids were echoing that statement so much that it became obvious that Lamar was an Important Rapper. Leading into his eventual album’s release, there were murmurs throughout the Internet that he was doing something, and we’d get it soon, but not yet. This remains all noise, the kid on the tweet replacing the man on the street, but the fact that the noise existed at all mattered. It’s not surprising that Kanye West chose to have Lamar be a part of his most recent tour, as Kanye is somebody that understands that what’s current in rap is rap currency. On the day To Pimp a Butterfly hit the digital streets, Kanye released a video for All Day and tweeted about being in the studio, trying his best not to get left behind. Even Yeezus understands the kids have a new messiah.

The only three other rappers that appear on this album – despite none of them actually rapping – are the trifecta of west coast hip-hop, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, and 2Pac. Instead of wishing to be in the same ranks as these men, Kendrick actually places himself in the same song as each of their voices. Regardless of whether or not this trio are the best Los Angeles has ever offered the genre, the perception will forever be that these three men were the most important; when the average person is asked to think of a rapper from the sunshine state, they are likely not saying Ice Cube, even though O’Shea Jackson’s best record is better than anything by Dre, Snoop, or 2Pac. They are picking one of the people from the Death Row era, the most popular era of West Coast rap music. That Vibe cover is forever burned into the cultural consciousness**, even among those that never actually saw it.

**Just like Suge Knight has been removed from it in our memories.

With all of this comes pressure; it is unsurprising that Snoop’s voice is used to sing an origin story of sorts about a young rapper, newly a cultural sensation but originally from west Compton. When Doggystyle was released, Snoop was in the same place, and he was assisted in getting there by Dr. Dre, as Kendrick was himself with Good Kid. It is equally unsurprising that Dre and 2Pac’s appearances on the album both come in the voice of mentor to Kendrick’s manatee. Dre gives unsolicited advice on Wesley’s Theory, and the thoughts Kendrick poses to 2Pac on Mortal Man are punctuated with question marks.

Kendrick Lamar is certainly on his way to this sort of rarefied air. It’s unlikely he’ll become as immortal as 2Pac’s murder allowed Shakur to be, but if nothing else, Lamar is in a similar place Shakur was before he was killed. Kendrick knows this, and the second and final thirds of To Pimp a Butterfly are about this; K.Dot is talking to people he knew before he was famous, he’s talking to himself, and he’s talking to us. In all of this, he’s figuring out what he’s supposed to do next. He doesn’t want to misuse his influence. As he always does, Lamar sees the flaws of the world and wants to improve upon them within himself.

By September 2014, Lamar was finally ready to drop a single, a single we all presumed would quickly morph into an album, as this is how most modern blockbuster record releases work now. That song was i, a not-wholly-beloved-but-still-absolutely-really-good song that remains the most traditional single Lamar has released on a major label. Unlike Swimming Pools, I was immediately a huge fan of i. It was all I wanted to listen to for a week. And despite the auditory message of its chorus, it was obvious that K.Dot was putting something more than the fluffy ideas of a traditional single into its lyrics. He loved himself because he had to in order to put up with the world around him. The single is a dance song about what people always talk about why they like dancing, to escape the various sadnesses of human existence. But for once that single was explicitly about a method of escapism: accepting that you are a fan of yourself, and hoping everything else eventually falls into place.

To Pimp a Butterfly is a journey, and i is that journey’s end. Kendrick returns to where he was at the beginning and tries to make a pleasant anthem about all that he has learned. Everything he learned in the time from Wesley’s Theory to now taught him the lessons of i, and now he wants to pass those along to the people that have committed to listening to him. He even trusts his audience to already know the lyrics; at least half of them are eliminated within the performance aspect present on the album. Let alone Lamar’s journey, he let his single have its own journey before it would wind up drastically altered on his album. On i, all of Kendrick’s thoughts dovetail into one pointed idea: he went through all of these thoughts so you wouldn’t have to. He could just pass along his thoughts on the matter to you.

There’s a certain leeway we’re able to give somebody we trust is a genius. Once somebody proves to you that they are experts at their craft, chances are you are willing to give their work the benefit of the doubt. I occasionally wonder if that dichotomy is the sole reason that my ears were instantly pro-i. Was I willing to accept a Kendrick Lamar pop anthem because he had previously made The Art of Peer Pressure? Perhaps I was just suckered in by the killer Isley Brothers sample, a tendency I am rarely able to overcome. But whether or not the single was actually good, I definitely trusted that, more often than not, Kendrick Lamar is right. Maybe I’m wrong this time, but at least I was prepared to be right. The thought I was unwilling to give Swimming Pools was given to i, if not more so. Instead of being a single I felt obligated to listen to because of a certain portion of culture I follow, my excitement for i’s release was palpable. And I was not let down. But maybe Swimming Pools wouldn’t have seemed mediocre if I had known what to listen for.

Regardless of the amount of thought one wants to put into To Pimp a Butterfly, on a simple qualitative level, the album sounds fucking amazing. The musical progressions are interesting; it goes from an album that can’t get loud enough to one that is purposely much too loud in less than a second. Where Good Kid Maad City sounded like OutKast by way of Compton, To Pimp a Butterfly sounds like a record Questlove wishes The Roots could make. The bubbling bass on King Kunta is perfect, the guitar addition at the seventy-three second mark even more so, and all of this comes out of the gorgeous abrasiveness of For Free. It seems like almost every song on the album has countless miniscule stabs of musical detail that will continue to reveal themselves over time. And the more bizarre-sounding tracks – the second half of u, the percussion of Momma, the contradictory militance of The Blacker the Berry – are almost distractingly engaging.

When one can find themselves into the words Lamar is actually saying though, it is clear he is the best rapper working today. The combination of his lyrics, rhyme schemes, and performance aspects make him unique in a way it seems nobody has been since Eminem. To Pimp a Butterfly even shares thematic similarities with The Marshall Mathers LP, another great rap follow-up by a rap sensation, a follow-up that is simultaneously about breaking free of what listeners expect from people like you, and responding to the world you have created for yourself. While Eminem distinctly wanted to prove that he was removed from the real world, Lamar understands that this is never the case, and feels obligated to put himself inside it. Instead of trying to distance himself from the world that has accepted him, Lamar knows he can no longer get away from the centre of it.

The most interesting stylistic choice on the record is how Lamar puts himself within the music of a lot of the songs; the album wants you to simply feel his presence on a variety of the songs, a contrast to the way most rap records are mixed, with the vocals being easily the most prominent aspect. On early songs like Wesley’s Theory, Lamar sounds drowned within his own thoughts, and by the time he returns home we’re hearing his vocals clearly, not unlike Lamar seems able to hear his own perspective on his life.

More than anything, To Pimp a Butterfly sounds like something that wants to be taken seriously. Even though his public persona is rarely anything other than projected pleasance, when recording he is Kendrick Lamar, Serious Man. As such, To Pimp a Butterfly is not a record to hype you up when you go jogging. It’s a piece of music for people that want to sit and think about a bunch of dark shit for a while, and I don’t want to do that all that frequently. Lamar’s rhymes are incredible, the personas he inhabits fascinating, but the result is not something that calls out to be listened to in chunks. It’s an all or nothing sort of proposition. This is something critics have mentioned about the album: it’s obviously great, but it’s not exactly carefree fun.

The thing that has always held me back from listening to Good Kid Maad City more often than I actually have was that there is no one part that easily separates itself from the rest. I tend to listen to the whole record (except maybe Poetic Justice) or nothing at all. There is no one song I want to hear always. Kendrick has no Numbers on the Boards. But that’s probably a higher compliment than most rappers get. Outside of its stellar highlights, I didn’t like Pusha T’s album all that much, and even the highly untalented Big Sean has made a song I enjoy. Making a song people like doesn’t seem that hard. It’s something that requires a bit of thought, but not an extended period of dwelling. There are great episodes found within shitty television shows, great scenes in garbage films. Action Bronson’s terrible album will always have Easy Rider. I might not listen to any of To Pimp a Butterfly again for a handful of months, but I am already looking forward to the overlong bus ride in my future when I decide it’s again time to fill my Audio Technicas with some Kendrickian magic. A release that makes me want to commit four minutes of my time is not uncommon; an eighty-minute proposition happens infrequently, but it’s always so very pleasant when it does.

There used to be three interesting hip-hop records released since 2010. One was Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, a pop masterpiece that combined everything we collectively think about Kanye with Kanye personally toying with that perception. Two years later came Good Kid Maad City. Then there was Run the Jewels 2 this past fall, an anarchist cookbook-style treatise on a world where all things are perpetually out of your control. And now there’s a fourth. No matter what one says about To Pimp a Butterfly, it is impossible to argue that it is not fascinating.

I am only one year older than Kendrick Lamar, but we have almost nothing in common. There is little within the lyrics of To Pimp a Butterfly that I feel applies to me directly, because I am equal parts not black and the owner of a relatively comfortable life history. Lamar’s record is explicitly about race, something the first forty-five seconds makes explicitly clear, and something I have danced around in this piece. This is mostly because my thoughts on that subject are unimportant here; nobody wants to read any more predictable white guilt pieces than they have to. This isn’t Salon. But Mortal Man, the epilogue of Lamar’s journey record, further drives home the race-centric approach; the album ends because Kendrick is only able to ask 2Pac so many questions before his mentor is taken away from him earlier than he wants. As such, Kendrick knows he won’t get to be the Voice forever, so he wants to say things while he can, and what he’s most prominently saying is that he wants his listeners to take themselves out of the cycle that took away Lamar’s previous leader. It’s a predictably dark ending to a record from a man that hopes our collective future is not. It’s a smart, thoughtful record that deserves to be thought about by smart people.

Perhaps the thing Lamar and I do share is a desire to believe that other people are smart enough to understand intelligent thought. I am constantly arguing for people that I know to not dumb down their opinions for others, to speak up for what they actually think is correct and assume others will catch up if they don’t initially understand. It’s not a problem to explain something to a confused person, but assuming your thoughts will confuse them is. If you treat the audience like they are smart, thinking people, they will become smart, thinking people. If you don’t, nothing good will happen.

Lamar’s new record is an intriguing statement on art in 2015: people are still smart, because you have to be willing to think to enjoy Kendrick Lamar’s album, something a high number of people do. It’s the Control verse all over again, but this time it’s the length of an album. So, ‘To everybody else,’ Kendrick is saying, ‘Please, do better.’ Audiences are smart, and they have the capacity to be even more so. At least one of culture’s most prominent voices understands this.

Like all people, I (obviously) don’t like being upset but, like all people, not everything in my life works out perfectly. Similarly, I don’t like it when I have to learn about life through a pile of regret, but I like to trust that at the end of it will come some valuable perspective. Few pleasant lessons actually end up being valuable. I will always get to ask the questions I want, but it will be the answers I don’t get that will thrust me into finding them out for myself. This is fine, another part of life we don’t necessarily love but that we tolerate out of necessity. Existence is about adapting to the world you exist within, and the simultaneous growth of each of those things is what pushes one forward. Hopefully there is some clarity to come sporadically between the sadness, but in the meantime we’ll have to cherish those that are able to achieve these moments of clarity. If they’re confident enough to assume the position of teacher, we might as well make sure they’re not wrong. Maybe that person is smart enough to teach us how not to fail. Until he proves otherwise, I’ll take Kendrick at his word.

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