Kendrick Lamar - Why the hype?

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What am I missing here?

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Nothing.

He's no Nas, Rakim, or Eminem. He's not a good mc

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After a few listens, this album is pure crap. It's sounds like the bad b-sides to the weird, super-experimental Outlast stuff from the Stankonia/Speakerboxx days (and I loved Outkast, btw).

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He's definitely influenced by Andre 3000 lyrically in a lot songs.

Too many Kendrick stans hyped up his last two albums like those were classics. Honestly, Section.80 is his best album.

He's extremely intelligent and emerged on the hip hop scene at a really great time. TPAB is a great concept album with a great concept behind it. Concept albums get a lot of love from the critics, especially when they come at a politically timely moment.

In retrospect, I'm going to say that Vince Staples Summertime 06 has bumped TPAB off the top rap albums of 2015 for me, though.

I respect TPAB and think it's a great concept, but there's way too much crap on it that I just don't really want to listen to repeatedly. Summertime 06 is great from start to finish every time.

1) It's not crap and filler. It's an interesting album.

2) TPAB is a play on To Kill a Mockingbird. It basically deals with a young rapper (pretty much Kendrick autobiography to an extent) who has risen out of his neighborhood and is finding success. Satan is tempting him with all this material success, and all he has to do is keep selling ghetto bullshite to his people in order to, himself, have success. It's basically a reflection on the state of "gangster" rap and the inherent contradictions within it. On top of that, it gets even more autobiographical if you followed his prior album, which is basically about a kid in the ghetto trying to make it up. This one picks up where that one left off. The kid has made it up, and now he's reflecting on where he's at.

3) It's brilliant in concept and execution. It's not crap filler. Everything has a meaning and a place. That doesn't mean I want to listen to it over and over. Hell, I loved Swans album The Seer and agreed it was one of the best of 2012, but I'll be damned if I went back to it over and over to listen to it, because it was freaking exhausting ot listen to it. That doesn't mean it's not brilliant.

4) A lot of the album became incredibly topical and timely when the crap started happening with BLM and the various problems that have arisen in the last year or so with the AA community.

If you're genuinely interested in seeing the brilliant of the album, check out the genius annotation for it. It will help you see what Kendrick is trying to do:
LINK


Awesome: a downvote for a thoughtful, well-researched and linked post. Dumbasses.

To Pimp a Butterfly is unbearable for me to listen to. I love good hip hop, I loved Outkast's take on that style, and I love Kendrick, but that album is shite. Listen to older Kendrick.

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I've heard this dude's name for a few years now. I'm a hip-hop fan from back in the mid/late 90s, but haven't been into it as much lately.

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the mid/late 90s, but haven't been into it as much lately.

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I'm the same. I loved rap up until the early 2000s.... I'm not sure if I grew out of it or the artists and product became so bad I got disinterested

Wait, so an autobiographical story of a young black rapper tryin to make it out the ghetto and having success in doing so is a brilliant concept?

Every fricking hip hop artist since Master P has rapped about trying to make it out da ghetto

Say what you want, but he does bring up a good point. Is he good at what he does, sure, he's an acclaimed hip hop artist. Is he avant-garde and the most inventive and original, no, not at all.

Better question:

Why the hype with drake?

I agree. Like I said, Summertime 06 was a better rap album than TPAB last year, IMO.

Other than a few serious bangers (king Kunta), I don't really play stuff off TPAB that often. I was just trying to explain to the OP why there was a lot of fuss over the album.