The 10 Best Rap Albums of 2020

Drakeo the Ruler, Lil Uzi Vert, Boldy James, and more

by

Jayson Buford

Season Published
MP305

Dec 01, 2020


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10.  Chris Crack, White People Love Algorithms

Chris Crack is more than a rapper—he is an absurdist comedian who slanders cops one second and claims that black men don’t cheat the next. With White People Love Algorithms, the first (and best) of four albums he put out this year, the Chicago native leans into his comedic gifts and delivers a 29-minute stand-up special. 

Crack’s unbelievable consistency justifies the maniacal rate at which he releases music. White People Love Algorithms, an album with zero bad songs, shows that he is just getting started, and that he isn’t playing by your rules.

Listen on Bandcamp // YouTube // Spotify // Apple Music


9. Lil Baby, My Turn (Deluxe)

Down the road, when we are free from the chains of capitalism and free from a neverending story of white supremacy and an increasingly polluting planet, historians will look back in awe at “We Paid,” the collaboration between Lil Baby and his 4PF protege 42 Dugg. It begins ominously, with spare, spooky drums that seem like they’re leading you into a Lovecraft Country scene. Then, Baby and Dugg dig in. It’s simple, and sometimes simple is all you need. Along with the rest of My Turn, “We Paid” proved that even the most straightforward Baby song can crack the top 10 of the Hot 100, and that he’s as much of a superstar as any other rapper on the planet.

Before this year, I wasn’t that into Lil Baby. On “Emotionally Scarred,” a beautiful moment from My Turn, I finally realized that he was more than just another Young Thug clone. He was a singular entity—a rapper with the ability to unite old heads and Generation Z’ers. “Emotionally Scarred” is our generation’s “Song Cry” with leather jeans and auto-tune.

Listen on YouTube // Spotify // Apple Music


8. Jay Electronica, A Written Testimony

Jay Electronica’s long-awaited album arrived during the week the COVID pandemic hit the United States, making the timing of the release all the more ominous. Aided by a rejuvenated Jay-Z no longer rapping about being a landlord, A Written Testimony opens with a speech by Minister Louis Farrakhan, then segues into “Ghost of Soulja Slim,” a manifesto for black empowerment. Jay-Z sounds fiery: “My ancestors took old food, made soul food/Jim Crow’s a troll too, he stole the soul music.”

Throughout Testimony, Jay Elec and Jay-Z trade bars and feed off each other. Some listeners mistakenly compared their chemistry to Ghostface and Raekwon on Cuban Linx. In truth, it’s more like an older, smoother, and more sober version of Freddie Gibbs and Curren$y on Fetti—a pair of legends finally linking up for a long-overdue album. Two rappers in perfect sync is a sweet science indeed.

Listen on YouTube // Spotify // Apple Music


7. ShooterGang Kony, Red Paint Reverend

ShooterGang Kony has lived a life that is all too familiar for black men in this country. The Sacramento native was first locked up at age 13 and bounced in and out of jail for years before he started rapping. You can hear this in his music. It isn’t rap for the golf courses. It is mean and nasty and meant to cave in your roof during the party you are throwing when your parents aren’t home. 

Listening to Red Paint Reverend is like taking a long ride through the streets of Sacramento. “Kony Intro” keeps delivering you stunts in the form of questions: Who got the neck that cost him four bricks? You better answer that, or Kony is coming to run up on you. Across Reverend, he proves himself as an adept rapper who balances aggression with a keen ability to find a pocket. “A Sinner’s Story” is effortlessly brilliant—a great rap record without trying. By the moment the album closes out, it’s clear that Kony is one of best rappers alive because, well, he is.

Listen on YouTube // Spotify // Apple Music 


6. Roc Marciano, Mt. Marci

With Mt. Marci, Long Island vet Roc Marciano continues to refine his immaculate style, which poses a battle between his two moods. Mt. Marci is ambient but aggressive, straightforward but poetic, brutal but graceful. There’s no limit on what can happen when his drumless production collides with his sick and twisted mind, inspired by the boom bap of the New York streets. “I’m in the pussy doing the stanky leg” is one of the funniest and horniest bars of all time. That’s who Roc Marciano is—your inappropriate uncle, the realest and grimiest person at the barbecue. 

Listen on YouTube // Spotify // Apple Music 


5. Ka, Descendants of Cain

A working-class man by trade, 48-year-old Brooklyn firefighter Ka raps like an old head who has experienced a lot of trauma. His voice is hoarse, like those of Boldy James and Jadakiss, but more grim. It works well for the type of music that he makes. Ka hails from Brownsville, Brooklyn, where he “had to man up, another man down/at the least we stand fast, never stand down.” On “Patron Saint,” a haunting song with stream-of-consciousness bars over pianos and tense drums that feel like a live performance in Central Park, Ka recounts the time that he saw his dad commit a violent act. This kind of pain feels like something out of a Sopranos episode. He is matter of fact as he recounts the demons that the previous generation left to him; “our heroes sold heroin,” he raps.

This album takes me back to a time where Brooklyn wasn’t gentrified. I imagine this album on the streets generations ago, when the Son of Sam was loose, with Giuliani emboldened the NYPD to oppress black citizens, and when you couldn’t walk the streets with any safety. Ka’s music rings with his truth—his solitude, his pain, and his strife. And it’s glorious.

Listen on YouTube // Spotify // Apple Music 


4. Freddie Gibbs & The Alchemist, Alfredo

Freddie Gibbs is competing with himself at this point. A couple weeks ago, he received a long-overdue Grammy nomination for this album. The Grammys tend to award rappers for their work at the end of their peaks, and never when they make their best work. That’s what happens when you are a corporate entity that exists to celebrate the best music that sells, not the best music of humanity.

That’s the reason why I am having trouble reviewing Alfredo, which is clearly a very good album. Gibbs sounds like a boxer on the somber yet militant “Scottie Beam.” White supremacy has beaten, ravaged, and dehumanized us, but he’s still up and ready to go when the bell rings round 15. When he says that he has more guns than the Gary police, it isn’t only a boast—it’s a call for even the meekest among us to rise against racist tyranny. Gibbs is so goddamn good at what he does that it feels regular now. “Frank Lucas” is still one of the best songs of the year; gangsta rap is limitless and beautiful in the form of a Gary, Indiana transplant that is the son of Richard Pryor and Brad Jordan. 

Listen on YouTube // Spotify // Apple Music


3. Drakeo the Ruler, Thank You For Using GTL

Drakeo the Ruler is now a free man after spending three years in LA Men’s County Central Jail as a political prisoner. Though he was in bondage because of sadistic detectives and corrupt prosecutors, he was hardly absent from the rap game. In February, he released Free Drakeo; four months later, in June, he dropped Thank You For Using GTL, the greatest rap album ever recorded from jail. 

Drakeo’s status as an example of the harrowing racism and oppression in the criminal justice system has somewhat obscured one of the biggest reasons his case meant a lot to all of us—he is an incredible rapper. He commands attention even while spitting over the jail phone. He can be playful, but there isn’t a single track on GTL that doesn’t feel high-stakes. These aren’t songs so much as street sermons. On “Quit Rappin,” when he says, “I got problems/ I wouldn’t last one minute up in college,” it’s a threat and a boast. Drakeo codes his message in slang, but once you decipher it, you won’t be able to listen to anybody else. The man knows how to develop his themes. On “Bad Timing,” he opens up the second verse, “I would hit ’em with the K, but then that’s violent/ I would say I let ’em live, but then that’s lyin’/ I didn’t plan to go to jail, it was bad timing.” It’s a beautiful thing that Drakeo has been released from the inhumanity of prison. Thank You For Using GTL won’t be his last great album. Let his freedom ring. 

Listen on YouTube // Spotify // Apple Music


2. Lil Uzi Vert, Eternal Atake

This is the part where I tell you about one of my favorite songs of the year. “Silly Watch” feels like the song that you hear in your head when you mix alcohol and weed. (Don’t do drugs, kids.) If you made a music video for this song, the camera would be doing cartwheels. It’s a three-minute riot from the man who bridges the gap between Andre 3000 and Chief Keef and brings in a bit of Lil Wayne’s extra-terrestrial personality. 

Uzi may not be the most technically sound rapper, but he sounds superhuman on “Silly Watch” and all over Eternal Atake. He successfully locates the pocket on every beat on the album, from “You Better Move,” which samples a Pac-Man arcade game you’d found at a local Philly pizza joint, to the Keef-produced “Chrome Heart Tags,” which sounds like a Dedication outtake. Across Eternal Atake, Uzi has the fun of an incorrigible teenager, and it is infectious. Even though he’s definitely an artist whose heart belongs to the younger generation of music fans, there is something for everyone on this record. This album celebrates rap music in all of its forms. For most of Uzi’s career, old heads have seen him as a harbinger of rap’s demise. This viewpoint was always incorrect and crass. The truth is, Uzi is a shining example why rap is always going to be the premiere genre in American culture.

Listen on YouTube // Spotify // Apple Music


1. Boldy James (with The Alchemist), The Price of Tea in China

Boldy James is having one of the most memorable years of any rapper in recent memory. You always hear mentions of “2008 Lil Wayne,” and all praises due, but I now propose: 2020 Boldy James.

In actuality, Boldy has been great for a while now. My 1st Chemistry Set, his 2013 debut album, is an unheralded classic. Rap is funny that way. Sometimes it takes a particular time and particular year for an artist to get the flowers that they have always deserved. Released back in February, The Price of Tea in China is your favorite rapper’s favorite album of 2020. Every song is a meal in itself. Boldy’s voice sounds like a somber military veteran who subsists on a steady diet of Johnnie Walker. His raps are criminal in nature; there is no limit to the number of coke puns he can cram into a verse. But it’s a nuanced record—he raps not only about crime, but how it has affected him over the years. The guest features are excellent, too. Freddie Gibbs shows up Boldy on “S.N.O.R.T.” rapping about his uncle’s discerning nose for quality blow. Griselda sharp-shooter Benny the Butcher lends a hand on “Scrape The Bowl” with his trademark grit-and-grind raps. 

Alchemist works with Boldy better than anyone this side of Prodigy. The minimalist, grainy beats of The Price of Tea allow Boldy’s controlled, monotone voice to shine through. Boldy conveys a wide range of emotions with ease; he can brag, lament, and reflect, all without removing his finger on his trigger. “Phone Bill” talks about the tough times he had in the hood growing up. Aunty had throat cancer and he can’t afford to pay his phone bill. That’s why black kids enter life on the streets. You have to eat some way.

There’s a sense among old heads that no one wants to listen to rappers rap anymore. Boldy proves this isn’t true; everyone can get down with this. There’s a difference between great, original rapping and rapping that simply tries to impress the listener. Boldy is the former—a cold man from Detroit energized on The Price of Tea by Alchemist’s gritty brilliance. The result is a borderline masterpiece that will one day be upheld as the first great rap album of the decade. And I didn’t even write about Manger on McNichols. ▩

Listen on YouTube // Spotify // Apple Music


Sell My Sole

by

Carver Low

Season Categories Published
MP00 Music

Feb 20, 2013


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If there is one thing the current state of culture has given us, it’s choices. Many, many choices. An appetite for cultural consumption entails scrutiny of musicians, writers, chefs, and everything else we could possibly have an opinion about. With all this effort being expended, we naturally feel that we have given something of ourselves to whatever it is we’ve chosen to bestow our all-important ‘taste’ upon. When something we like suddenly leaves a sour taste in our mouths, we don’t only want to spit it out. We want to create a spittle-filled impressionist painting of our disgust on the social media canvas to show everyone just how shitty it tastes. Only, we’re really no different than children spitting out something without thinking just because they don’t like how it looks and they “don’t” eat Chinese food. Amid their exploding fame, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis are the latest to experience this phenomenon.

About a week ago, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis unveiled their latest in “holy-shit-we-aren’t-signed-how-did-we-do-that” moments” by releasing and promoting an adapted version of their song “Wings” for the upcoming NBA All-Star Weekend. For many this was nothing more or less than impressive. However, for Macklemore fans who follow his music more closely, this amounted to nothing less than Brutus stabbing Caesar while telling him that his wife tastes like Cheerios. In more literal terms, he was quickly accused of selling out for the big bucks.

This kind of pseudo-controversy isn’t new to Macklemore. His clean-cut image, wholesome, positivist messages, and soccer-mom-liberal political views make him an easy target in the hip hop world. Of course, none of this bothers Macklemore. Listening to his lyrics, one of the clearest themes is that he doesn’t want or need to fit into any box, even the one many of his fans love. He spent enough years trying to be something he’s not through drug use and abuse, and through his sobriety he’s found a kind of self-assuredness that only leads to success. He is more than happy with his millions of fans who adore him (sometimes to an almost idolatrous extent) to be affected by the “hardcore” rap blogs that label him as a poseur or co-opting white guy — pariahs in the hip hop world. Given the impervious nature of Macklemore’s brand, it’s only logical that his biggest detractors are his most vocal fans.

Macklemore & Ryan Lewis remain unfazed by their critics and humble in the face of adoration, driven by a conviction in themselves and comfort in their own skin. In his song “Wings” Macklemore tells the story of his love of sneakers. Part of that story is his realization that people are willing to steal and murder to get the sneakers he so loves, and the self-questioning that comes from realizing something you love may only be hurting you and everyone around you. He ends by stating that he is “trying to take mine off,” which is to say, stop obsessing over Nikes and their marketing driven brand. Taking his final words as gospel, it does seem contradictory for him to lend his brand and song to the NBA, an unabashed proponent of consumption (and Nikes). Given these apparent contradictions, it’s easy to say that Macklemore has sold out on his ideas for what ever it was the NBA was offering. The problem is, the easiest thing to say isn’t always the most accurate.

Being labeled as a sellout is nothing new for musicians. Take Bob Dylan (who, I would like to make clear, I am not comparing Macklemore to). After attaining an enormous following by writing and performing socio-political American folk songs, he made a leap into rock ‘n’ roll and away from social issues. To him it represented a disillusionment with himself, an all too human loss of faith in both his ability to enact change and society’s ability to accept it. To his audience, it felt more like this:

Movie adaptations aside, the audience hated the new sound and quickly branded Dylan as a sellout for abandoning his protest songs. Looking back, Dylan’s transition away from protest music was a natural process of growth for him.  There are many who prefer his rock music to his folk songs. Nevertheless, at the time abandoning folk music meant Dylan contradicted everything he had previously stood for, even if he personally didn’t feel that way.

Dylan and Macklemore’s cases are not the same. Dylan changed his sound and his content, but never refuted anything he previously wrote. Macklemore implicitly contradicted himself by placing himself in the NBA commercial and removing the lines of his song that are critical of Nike and consumerism. Are all of these uses of art selling out, despite their differences? The rules for selling out are political, which in this case means empty rhetoric and posturing. I’m reminded of a dilemma I went through in the latter half of my high school years.

When I was 15 and 16, I was obsessed with punk rock music and the surrounding ‘scene.’ I read ‘zines (the punk rock version of magazines), went to shows, and even sported a Mohawk for a few months. Punk rock is especially applicable here because unlike most other music genres, by nature it is anti-establishment. This anti-authoritarianism also drives members of the punk rock scene to constantly scrutinize each other for selling out, which could consist of a band signing to wrong label, a writer not focusing on the right things, or a songwriter changing their sound at the wrong time. It may be driven by scene politics, but those were scene politics I cared about back then.

I had been staunchly ‘punk rock’ for years, refusing to listen to the ignant rap music almost all of my friends listened to or buy into their mindless consumerism (my words). However, I was growing tired of constantly posturing, and frankly, ignant rap music looked fun (it is). Towards the end of my junior year, I was at a skate shop with a friend, being an aimless teenager. I had been toying with the idea of beginning to dress more ‘normally’ for a few weeks, and that seemed like as good a time as any to pull the proverbial trigger on my thoughts. I walked up, picked out a pair of black and white Adidas Shell Toe sneakers, and began my transition into dressing much more like everyone else at my school. I got what I wanted: an easier time fitting in with the more popular crowds, compliments on the way that I dressed, and attention from the ladies (hey ladies!). I didn’t feel bad about abandoning my former stances because I felt I hadn’t. I still believed in them, even if I didn’t wear them like a billboard on my clothes. In a sense, I was becoming more mature and seeing the world with more depth. However, that didn’t lessen the sting of being voted ‘Most Changed’ in our high school yearbook. Nobody really saw the award as an insult or an embarrassment, but for me it was a quiet reminder of the compromises I’d made in my views.

Change is natural, even healthy. I’m not the only person who formerly or currently defines themselves by the music they listen to, via the subject matter of the music (or lack thereof). The music we listen to is emblematic of our worldview, whether that worldview focuses on the horrors of global capitalism or the beauty of local ass-shaking. When we’re young, we go further than choosing our music to fit our interests, we alter ourselves to fit the words and sentiments of the musicians we like. In the awkward confusion of post-adolescence, adhering to a genre of music can be more comforting than any home.

However, when we give so much of ourselves to our music, we tend to expect something in return. By pouring so much of our own identities into an artist, we feel that much more disillusionment when the artist changes and we no longer feel the same connection. Most basically, when our favorite artist sells out it makes us feel illegitimate and misguided, meaning we’ve been misled, and only the weak are misled. When our favorite artist sells out, it is us who is weak, not them. The social media age only intensifies this effect, because every post and tweet we made hyping an artist becomes a testament to our own gullibility.

The problem is, this isn’t how music and art works. The artist makes it, we consume it. Part of the reason people love artists like Macklemore is because he refuses to do what is expected of him.  So why should we feel such personal disrespect when an artist does something we feel is questionable? Selling out tends to become a buzzword turned buzzsaw to cut down artists whose new direction we find distasteful. Macklemore suffers from this very problem, amplified through the intimate relationship he and Ryan Lewis cultivate with their fans.

In its original form, “Wings” tells the story of Macklemore’s relationship with sneakers. He has a hopeful beginning, a loss of faith in the middle, and a conviction at the end. However, we as a consumer pick out the pieces of the song that make the most sense in our lives and exclusively focus on those. In the case of “Wings,” those branding Macklemore a sellout identify most strongly with the anti-consumerist thought that “Phil Knight tricked us all.” The song is much more that that. It’s a human story (as only the best stories are) of contradiction and confusion, where Macklemore loves his sneaker but sees the evil they can be and are becoming. He is human, with human flaws, but has the courage to point out those flaws. His criticism is of our society’s commitment to consumerism, not of Nike or NBA specifically. He never changed his attire to Toms or even stopped wearing his Nikes, he only pointed out his own misgivings about what they’ve become. He definitely loves Nikes and probably loves the NBA, and who wouldn’t jump at the chance represent something you love?

I have my own reservations about “Wings” being used for the NBA All-Star weekend. I also have my own reservations about using the term sellout. Years of scrutinizing artist to make sure they are staying true to their stances while slowly slipping away from my own has a left a poor taste in my mouth surrounding the term. It unfairly reduces artists to statements and soundbites and cheapens the story they are trying to tell. The idea of selling out is rooted in the concept of authenticity and the conceit of hypocrisy. When an artist is labeled a sellout, it means they’ve contradicted a statement or stance they’ve made in the past, making them either a liar or a hypocrite. Everyone’s realized the redundancy of calling anyone a hypocrite; everyone contradict themselves all the time. It’s what makes us human, Homo sapiens. When we call Macklemore a sellout, in the end are we attacking the man who warned of being strangled by our laces, or the kid who put on a pair of Jordans and was elated to touch the net?

Action Bronson: Overcooked

by

Danny Schwartz

Season Categories Published
MP00 Music

Nov 26, 2012


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Action Bronson Rare Chandeliers Cover

He is a morbidly obese white Albanian dude covered in tattoos, rapping about his years as a professional chef with vulgar, quasi-horrocore lyrics.  Something about Action Bronson just makes you feel uncomfortable.  Nothing about him makes any sense when compared to more conventional rap.  The only thing that harkens back to common ground is a slight stylistic similarity to Ghostface Killah.  Action Bronson built his appeal simply by being unexpected.

Over the past year and a half, Bronson exploded into the rap game as a promising up-and-comer.  Why did we enjoy listening to a fat Albanian chef rap?  He had no discernable street cred or monumental struggle – the conventional hip-hop narrative did not apply.  We kept listening because we had no idea what he might say or do next.  It was obvious that his tales were fictional – he wasn’t pulling girls or firing guns at the absurd rate his rhymes often declared.  But his lyrics still didn’t seem disingenuous – though his stories were fictional, they were interspersed with personal nuggets – lines about repping Queens as well as lines simply about food, from his life as a chef.  “Smokin’ heavy / artichokes spread over spaghetti / I flow for the green, snow and confetti”

Action Bronson’s most recent mixtape released last week, Rare Chandeliers, superficially promised the same shock value as his previous work.  The album art told us it would have everything we loved about Bronsolino – graphic violence, gratuitous sexual descriptions, weed, and a general sense of “What the fuck is going on here?”  But the tape itself comes up woefully short.  Rather than expanding his palate to include more flavorful, unique ways of making his audience squirm, Action Bronson regresses, exposing his artistic shortcomings and de-emphasizing what he does best – the unexpected.

On Rare Chandeliers, Bronson pairs with acclaimed producer The Alchemist.  The pairing seems like it should work.  Alc has the ability to make beats for any style, and Bronson’s style is one of the strangest.  But rather than working together to achieve a cohesive sound, the balance of power is tilted heavily towards Action Bronson.  In nearly every song, the beat switches for every verse, trying to match the stylistic and lyrical changes Bronson is making.  The Alchemist is seemingly trying to keep up with Action Bronson – the two seem neither cohesive nor compatible.  The Alchemist’s beats are too complex, too dope, for Bronson’s jumpy style.  This isn’t a knock on his skill.  He would simply benefit from working with stripped-down shittier beats that let him shine more – think Big L.

Action Bronson broke down his mixtape in an interview with Complex Magazine.  Describing both the tape and its namesake song he says, “At the end of the day, I’m just a fucking one of a kind, and so is Al. We’re just some rare chandeliers.”  He pinpoints the problem with the tape.  Action Bronson is too individualistic – he lacks the ability to develop cohesive, linear structure with anybody.  He is too accustomed to being the center of attention to allow The Alchemist to shine.  The dialectic between the two is non-existent.

While discussing the next song, “The Symbol,” Bronson states, “I’m trying to go with a theme here. I’m rap’s vigilante. I’m out for justice.”  In doing so, he reveals his main downfall as an artist: a complete lack of narrative ability.  If his narrative goal on Rare Chandeliers was to portray himself as a vigilante, it was an utter failure.  There’s nothing to suggest he is anything but a nutjob.  And there is nothing wrong with that – it was being a nutjob that made him successful in the first place.  Why deny the truth?

On “Eggs on the Floor,” the beat changes for each individual verse Action Bronson spits.  This song, and every other on the mixtape, could easily be subdivided into two or three different songs, each roughly 0:45 in length.  Neither and inter- or intra-song connection exists on this tape, exemplifying a lack of storytelling ability.  His stories are one-line, fictional tales – “Spin out the Beamer at the arena / bitches spot me like a Cheetah.”  The cleverness is there, but what does he say about himself in the process? Gucci Mane’s storytelling style is similar, but the sum of his one-liners is a tale about Southern trap culture.  The sum of Bronson’s individual stories is a garbled mess.  We have already heard him tell stories like this on previous tapes – this isn’t new or exciting anymore.

Even his style seems stale and replicable.  On “Modern Day Revelations” the Alchemist tries to direct him towards perhaps his closest hip-hop match: early Eminem.  The non-stop drug, violence, and sex references tie them together.  The beat drops, and it has the same basic melody and rhythm as “Guilty Conscience” from The Slim Shady LP.  But Bronson is simply not as talented as Eminem.  “Guilty Conscience” has three mini-stories tied together within a larger story.  “Modern Day Revelations” just has a series of clever lines tied together with no larger structure.  At the end of Bronson’s verse, Roc Marciano drops a verse in the exact style of Action Bronson, full of food, drugs, and uncomfortable imagery, and he does it better than Bronson.  He tells an actual story while still talking about “cracking crustaceans” and “crab dipped in the garlic.”  Roc’s verse was dope because we didn’t expect it from him – but we do already expect it from Action Bronson.

Perhaps if Rare Chandeliers was a listener’s first exposure to Action Bronson, they might derive the same uncomfortable pleasure the rest of us did when we first heard him on Bon Appetit ….. Bitch!!!!! or Dr. Lecter.  But having become accustomed to his appearance, his culinary past, and his vulgarity already, we have become desensitized to what makes Bronson unique.  The image of a morbidly obese redhead having violent sex being forced into our heads by his lyrics no longer hold the same disturbing value they once did – we have already been forced to imagine this in his previous works.  For Action Bronson to continue his ascent in the rap game, he needs to find a way to develop a compelling narrative or make his music as unexpected as it once was to us.  Otherwise, it seems that he has peaked.

The Sage from Compton

by

Danny Schwartz

Season Categories Published
MP00 Music

Oct 25, 2012


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In July 2011, Kendrick Lamar’s debut album Section.80 fell from the sky, released independent of a label, exclusively online. It peaked at 13 on the Billboard Top Rap Albums, good enough for the national hip-hop consciousness to let onto its outskirts 24-year old Kendrick, the 5’6” dude from Compton who didn’t really smell like Compton, who could contort his voice to make any two words rhyme, gifted with dexterous flow and lyrical wit. Section.80 was about what it meant to be a Reagan baby, and in spite of this heaviness it maintained an air of freshness.  Kendrick emerged, albeit quietly, as a rapper who could straddle the line between style and substance, who could OWN that line, who could wax semi- intellectual and give his songs artistic meaning without sacrificing hip hop’s seductive swaggadiocio. A couple days ago, he released good kid, m.A.A.d. city on Dr. Dre’s label Aftermath, and so it is likely to catapult thoughtful Kendrick into the mainstream.

GKMC has a pretty clear central conflict: Kendrick v. Compton. It is the story of Kendrick’s late adolescence, old enough to go forth with his friends to explore and experience the world of drugs and gangs and violence in which they lived. The cover of GKMC features a picture of baby Kendrick being held by his uncle, whose fingers are curled to form an unmistakable C, for Crip. Kendrick was born a child of Compton, a place that agitates the transition from youth to adulthood, and he is both seduced by and wary of the gangbanger lifestyle. At one point he asks, “But what am I supposed to do, when the topic is red or blue?”

It’s safe to say that the dominant trait of most rappers is their bravado, and that’s what makes Kendrick Lamar different: he exists internally. He stays within himself, perhaps in part from some instinct of self-preservation, in part from some inherent quality of his personality. GKMC comes alive in Kendrick’s imagination; he reaches back to his memories like a kind of dance, shifting toward and away and around them in a way that gives you a direct feed into his mind.

The album includes 15 songs, but is effectively 11 with 4 bonus songs. Almost all of the core 11 songs are characterized by interludes that act as segues between songs, so that they are less like songs and more like ‘scenes’. The interludes can be divided into 2 types – voicemails from his parents, or dialogue from his friends – this way, you know he’s out in the world, kickin it.

The interludes irritated me when I first listened through GKMC, because they are lumped onto the end of each song rather than allocated to their own track, thus making it harder to not skip over them. But eventually realized that the interludes deepen the world Kendrick creates. They give personality and ‘humanness’ to the opposing forces of Kendrick’s parents and his friends, because you hear their actual voices. This conflict plays out externally in the interludes, but also internally, in Kendrick’s lyrics, and in the space where these two planes intersect. Sometimes the tug of war between his parents and his friends occurs within a single song, sometimes indirectly from one song to another. It is to Kendrick Lamar’s great credit that GKMC is stronger when looked at as a single piece of work than as a series of individual tracks.

The tension that drives the album is established in the opening song ‘Sherane’, in which Kendrick tells the tale of his first girlfriend; in the final verse, he drives to her house, only to be confronted by two shadowy men en route to her door — the moment his phone rings. The song cuts to an interlude, a voicemail from his mom asking for her van back. Kendrick heightens the drama by squaring off the two opposing forces in a single place in time. In contrast, the interlude ending the 2nd track puts the 3rd and 4th tracks in context. His friend yells, “K-Dot [his nickname], we got a pack of blacks and a beat CD, get your freestyles ready.” Presumably, they are about to kick it.

The next song, ‘Backstreet Freestyle’, features the sort of mindless stuff that comes off the top of a 17-year old’s dome: “Damn I got bitches, damn I got bitches, daaamn I got bitches, wifey girlfriend and mistress.” This proceeds naturally to the next song, ‘The Art of Peer Pressure’ – Kendrick’s storytelling at its finest. Kendrick’s intro is something of his own quasi-interlude. He sings, “really I’m a sober soul…really I’m a peacemaker, but I’m with the homies right now,” at which the beat takes a turn for the melancholy and he dives into the first verse, young prospective gangbangers out one night on the town. “Me and my niggas four deep in the white Toyota/ A quarter tank of gas, one pistol and orange soda/ We on the mission for bad bitches and trouble.” Throughout this unsavory adventure, Kendrick wonders if his bad deeds will suffer karmic justice. Introspection, it seems, is not a trait Kendrick has developed over time. It is something he has carried with him all his life.

Over and over again, peer pressure drives Kendrick to be more hedonistic – causing trouble, and also getting supremely fucked up. In ‘m.a.a.d. city,’ he explains his encounter with PCP-laced weed, voice tweaked to exaggerate his distress: “And they wonder why I rarely smoke now/ imagine if your first blunt had you foamin at the mouth.” In the concluding interlude, his friend chides Kendrick for “always acting all sensitive and shit”, then tells another friend to pass the bottle — a seamless segue into ‘Swimming Pools (Drank)’, the album’s first single. Kendrick externalizes the chorus — “someone said to me/ nigga why you baby sippin only 2 or 3 shots, Imma show you how to turn it up a notch” — in contrast with the second verse, in which he adopts the viewpoint and funky voice of his conscience. Clearly, Kendrick likes to kick it. But clearly kickin it in Compton is a slippery slope. Kendrick directly acknowledges this in the act of creating GKMC. Rapping is an escape from the “funk”, an alternative outlet of self-expression, and ultimately, a route to financial stability.

(Breath.)

As if GKMC’s themes weren’t weighty enough upon the listener, it takes 64 minutes to get through the 11 core songs — 5:45 per song. That is absurd. You might call it longform rap. And while GKMC has elements of Weekend-style R&B and Dre-style g-funk, it mostly reminds me of a jazz album, because of its length and also the ways Kendrick uses that length.

Jazz tends to put emphasis on the soloist rather than on the hook. Most of the hooks on GKMC take the backseat to Kendrick’s verses. The persistent interludes and the fact that a few songs are actually two songs in one track further dilute the importance of the hook. The interludes actually sort of serve as the hook for the album as a whole. It’s like how John Coltrane uses a specific melodic theme on A Love Supreme to bring unity between the four esoteric movements.

Improvising comes off the dome — there is a stream of consciousness to GKMC, both in the way the album looks back into Kendrick’s memories. Improvising is about phrasing, making shapes, variations on shapes, also shaping the entire solo and song into a single aesthetic whole. You see this in the way Kendrick uses different voices to set different moods. His main organizing principle is rhyme schemes rather than lyrics, putting him into a box and actually forcing him to stretch his imagination to find the right word and overall image. On ‘Compton’, he dubs himself “King Kendrick Lamar”, something he wouldn’t have done if it didn’t alliterate.

I don’t mean to put Kendrick in the league of Coltrane. But whereas some hip-hop invokes jazz by using jazz harmonies in beats, GKMC invokes jazz in the way it is constructed — the way it emphasizes Kendrick’s internality, the de-emphasis of hooks, the longform, and in the way his rhyme schemes function as chord progressions — giving himself parameters that in a way expands his melodic potential.

(Breath.)

If Section.80 showed Kendrick’s awareness of where he exists in time, GKMC shows his awareness of where he exists in both space and time, in the context of Los Angeles. The album reeks of LA. It features verses from the progenitors of LA hip-hop, Dr. Dre and MC Eiht. The first two big rap groups out of Compton were N.W.A., led by Dre, and Compton’s Most Wanted, led by Eiht. Both groups emerged around 1990, not long after the crack epidemic broke out. The Compton known to Kendrick was largely shaped by that influx of crack. GKMC is about the Compton of the last 25 years, the lifespan of Kendrick himself. Compton, Compton, Compton. Kendrick has trouble escaping it, and neither can the listener. A lot of rappers talk about life in the hood, but rarely do they do it with the detail and persistence of Kendrick on GKMC. He applies the constant heat and action of LA’s 12-month summer to his accounts of Compton, which seems both to him and to us as the unblinking eye.

Good kid, m.A.A.d. city is not the easiest album to listen through. It’s not very catchy, and it is easy to grow weary of the long songs and long verses and persistent interludes. This density is the album’s shortcoming, but at least it came from a conscious, artistic decision. GKMC is one of the greatest artistic achievements in hip-hop’s brief history. It establishes Kendrick Lamar as one of the most creative MCs and deepest thinkers in the game. He is emotional, but not emo like Drake in Take Care. Both are relatively internally inclined rappers, but the distinction is that Kendrick looks deep inside himself as a lens to capture the essence of Compton and the state of the black ghetto in America. Just as the chorus in GKMC’s final song croons, “Compton, Compton, ain’t no city quite like mine” — there is no rapper quite like Kendrick Lamar, who goes through life with his hoodie up.

Kanye’s Apotheosis

by

Frankie Pavia

Season Categories Published
MP00 Music

Sep 30, 2012


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“G.O.O.D. woulda been God, except I added more O’s”

Cruel Summer is Kanye West’s child.  The album was technically released under the name of his label, G.O.O.D. Music.  He doesn’t rap on every song.  Yet when he is not at the forefront rapping, he is lurking in the shadows, organizing and crafting the album exactly the way he wants it.  The album’s purpose isn’t to please critics – he could care less about them.  He uses the other artists on G.O.O.D. Music to create a barrier between him and the outside world, instead opting to take absolute control over what he can – his label.

The first song of the album is “To the World” featuring R. Kelly.  The chorus is simple: “Let me see you put your middle fingers up, to the world, to the world, to the world.”  There has always been a “fuck the world” edge to Kanye’s music, but he rarely lays it out in terms this clear.  He is creating a divide between him and everyone else – not just within the rap game, but in life.  To do so, he enlists R. Kelly, one of few whose exploits have been as, well, misunderstood as Kanye’s.  Kelly’s verse is funny and reflects his own middle finger to the world- “The whole world is a couch / Bitch I’m Rick James tonight” but only serves to set up West’s eventual entrance

Within fifteen seconds, Kanye begins the trend that defines Cruel Summer – equating himself to God.  “Hmm, ain’t this some shit / pulled up in the A-V-entador / and the doors rise up like praise the Lord.”  The doors are only opening for Kanye – he is the Lord in this line.  The verse continues, and he eventually concludes, “R. Kelly and the God of rap / shittin’ on you, holy crap.”  Never mind the missed opportunity to make this the greatest lyric of all time by replacing shittin’ with pissin’, Kanye establishes just what religious idol he is – the God of rap.  Not a God of rap.  Kanye sees no pantheon, no Mount Rushmore of rappers.  He sees only himself on top, everyone who isn’t his subject sitting in a pile of his divine feces.

This is not an isolated incident.  The allusions pile up through the entire album. Kanye references making something from nothing (feeding the masses), people saying “There the God go in his Murcielago” as he drives past, Moses parting the Red Sea for him, the difficulty of preaching the gospel to the slums, and more.

Kanye isn’t foolish enough to deify himself unjustly, he simply defines both God and rap in a different way.  He knows that he will never be the God of rapping.  He knows that nobody will ever be the God of rapping.  It is a title too subjective to be absolute.

The next song, “Clique” establishes that there is a group of people immune to his divine wrath – his clique.  Big Sean and Jay Z, featured on the track, represent the old and new guards of the clique.  It is perhaps the hardest song on the album.  But moreover the song establishes which members of his audience Kanye doesn’t care about.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOrLNHbEzMg]

Cruel Summer was not created for those who would listen to the album critically.  All micro-motives within it eventually tie back to Kanye establishing himself as the God.  On “Clique” he raps, “My girl a superstar all from her home movie / bow on our arrival, the un-American idols.”  He could care less that his girlfriend is most famous for a video of her having sex with another dude – he still expects people to bow before him like a God when he rolls up.

Mercy” reveals more terms of Kanye’s godliness.  The song starts with verses from Big Sean and Pu$ha T, both firing on all cylinders over a bass-driven banger beat.  Kanye is obviously going to rap next, but when he comes in, the beat morphs into a choral, church-like “ahhhh” overlain by electronic pulsations.  When his verse is done, the beat reverts back to its original form, 2 Chainz spits, and the song concludes.

We see an distinct disconnect between Kanye and the stable of rappers he features on the album.  He descends from above to rap over a beat he has no business rapping on.  Mercy should have belonged to the three trapstars, not him.  So when he does spit, the beat has to change to adapt.

Yet West is absolutely crucial to the song.  “Mercy” was the first single released off the album and was a radio hit.  If the song was just Big Sean, Pu$ha T, and 2 Chainz, it would have been viewed as an interesting collaboration. But with Kanye? It blew up.  Much of Cruel Summer is devoted to the development and popularization of rappers either signed to G.O.O.D. Music, or whose struggle he admires – 2 Chainz, Big Sean, and Pu$ha T are prime examples.  Kanye is their God.  Pu$ha admits as much on the first line of “New God Flow” – “I believe there’s a God above me.” The illusion is striking within the context of a verse about Pu$ha’s willingness to play the role of Shyne to Kanye’s Puffy.  Their success depends on Kanye and his benevolence.  All experienced a degree of success before, but know that Kanye’s push could grant them superstardom.

G.O.O.D. Music is not meant to be a rap supergroup, but a collection of talented artists who depend on Kanye.  Megagroups typically take time to stratify by talent, but Kanye’s crew begins that way.  He doesn’t want them to be another Wu Tang – he brings Ghostface and Raekwon on consecutive tracks to implicitly affirm their approval of his Kanye clan.

At the halfway point of the album, Kanye drops out, only appearing on two of the last six songs.  He instead lets his underlings shine, their God acting only as the producer behind the scenes, driving their successes by giving them beats perfectly suited for their styles.

The album concludes with a remix of Chief Keef’s “Don’t Like.”  Accomplishing this is what ultimately cements his status as God over his domain.  In taking control of Chief Keef’s destiny, Kanye transforms him from 16-year-old one-hit-wonder to potential superduperstar.  The much more talented rappers surround Chief Keef on the track, but rather than killing him, they rap in stunted chunks, mimicking Keef’s style.  They are all riding together.

Kanye begins his verse with one final comparison between himself and Jesus before piecing together a strange string of seemingly unconnected ideas.  He eventually concludes with a shoutout to his new subject, “Chief Keef, King Louie, this is Chi(cago) right? Right?

Kanye creates a system for himself in which he can be God.  For those signed to him, Kanye is omnipotent.  After Chief Keef attempted to revolt against his lord, Kanye revoked his support and Keef has gone back to being a sideshow.

Kanye has long been expected to complete the initial arc of his album releases and drop Good Ass JobCruel Summer was not an attempt to boost his status in the eyes of critics or to move up the ladder of the greatest lyricists.  His name alone dictates that expectations for any album he drops are too lofty to ever be met.  So he doesn’t try to meet them.  Why bother making Good Ass Job when people will deride it as worse than The College Dropout, Late Registration, and Graduation? Tupac famously said to Bad Boy on “Hit ‘Em Up,” “Ima let my little homies ride on yo’ bitch-made ass.” Kanye says the same thing to the critics.  He makes his album a middle finger to the world, instead preferring to rule his own sovereign kingdom and be the God of G.O.O.D. Music.