now that the dust has settled, did it really deserve all

critics loved it but I'd bet most of his friends don't even understand it.

>>69718807
yeah

Reception was obviously bloated, but its still pretty great a part from a few tracks imo.

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>TPAB came out almost two years ago
What the FUCK

peopel could at least listen to a suga free or mausberg project before they claim this reinvented the wheel of rapping

i think any critic being objective had to appreciate it for what it is. i don't think it's as good as GKMC, but as a piece of art it's still very valuable.

he could have stuck to a theme better instrumentally. hopping from funk to jazz to g funk is pretty jarring as a musical experience. it wasn't "enjoyable" but it was still great

>>69718807
Yes it did

>>69718807
It sounds great, but the poem he put between each track was cheesy and dragged the album a bit. The only track I don't like is mortal man

>>69718868
kendrick's best when he's straight rapping. that stretch of For Sale, Momma, Hood Politics, and How Much a Dollar Cost is 10/10 rapping and isn't bloated at all. should go down as a GOAT stretch of songs in rap history

>>69718807
I don't think the rapping was nearly as strong as GKMC
I'm not usually a fan of concept albums, or albums that tell a story at all, but GKMC did it really well imo. Apart from a couple of tracks like "Blacker the Berry" nothing lyrics wise on TPAB really did much for me.

>>69718807
No this shit sucks. Fucking try hards.

>St. Brick is a better song than any on this shit

A little pretentious, but earnestly so. It's a good album.

>>69718807
yeah, it was pretty fucking good.

King Kunta is bomb

its gonna be remembered as a classic so ya

>>69719228
WHAT'S THE YAMS

>>69719269
THE YAMS IS THE POWER THAT BE

>>69719228
>That little query at the "Two man cell?"

Fucking gets me every time.

>>69718807
I literally havnt once felt driven to go back and listen to this after it was first released. Im always listening to gkmc and section 80 but i sware nobody i know even listens to this thing either.

>>69719281
the track is full of little querks

>Aye aye nigga whats happenin' nigga, K Dot back in the hood nigga

gold

>>69718934
Agreed, I liked the poem at first but it got old FAST. Literally my only complaint though

>>69719417
>privileged life as an attractive and mildly intelligent white man in suburbia
>still trying to figure that shit out

Was he talking about how his teenage love turned into narcissistic lust? Or how easily children of ghettos are recruited into gang violence?

> Kill whitey: the musical
Only cuck media like fantano liked this racist shit.

>>69718807
Yes, I do feel like a bit of a faggot whiteboi for disliking the vast majority of hip hop and loving Kendrick so much, but he's honestly just a step above anyone else

>>/pol/
>>/pol/
>>/pol/

its hard to say, but i think we'll look back at this album and immediately remember everything going on at this time. I think that's important. if it got mediocre ratings, shit would be brutal. i feel like people somewhat knew that it would get the acclaim that it did solely because of the black pride aspect of it coinciding with all of the BLM protests and police brutality cases, etc etc.

as far as the music goes, this shit is pretty fucking good. in that sense, i think it deserves the acclaim. musically, kendrick pulled out all the stops and took a lot of risks that went over flawlessly.

>>69719291
nobody you know listens to 2 hours of drone on repeat either. it's an exhausting experience

>>69719477
it's literally the opposite you fucking retard

>>69720193
i don't think you actually listened to the album if you think it's about "nigger pride"

the entire concept is literally in the title of the album

>>69720292
i was a huge kendrick fan at the time thinking TPAB was going to be an absolute classic. i definitely listened to it.

>>69719450
It's just a timeline depicting the journey of self-development Kendrick depicts using the songs, from an ambitious but naive and insecure rising star who fell into temptation from things like the government, his own thirst for revenge, and even the devil herself, to a more mature star who is able to use his position as someone who's made it to the upper echelons of society as an opportunity to help and become a leader for his city and his race, and has the ability to acknowledge the legitimate problems facing his race, and at the same time, the hypocrisy they subject themselves to on occasion.

But he still feels his role is uncertain at the end of the album; he's not sure how his fans will react to this sort of development, the ambitions the album itself takes musically and Kendrick's own development as a person and accepting what he believes his role to be, so he consults his idol and someone who's been in this situation before, Tupac, and after giving his perspective on the positive and negative facets of human nature with the caterpillar and butterfly allegory, and realizing that despite their differences and conflicts with each other, they all make up the same human mind, completing the journey of self-development. The abrupt ending of the album and Tupac's failure to respond possibly suggest that even with this journey complete, there are still questions left to be answered, and that the journey itself might not be complete, since he'll never know whether his conclusion about human development, and therefore his maturity is truly sound. Also, the ending is a slight acknowledgement of the fact that Tupac died way too young in order to help his race's youth develop, and since Kendrick is trying to find the answer to these questions for his listeners, he might be able to succeed where Tupac had failed.

I haven't listened to the album in a while, so anyone else can chip in with what they think.

>>69720681
*he completes

Literally EVERY song except Mortal Man is 10/10. If he released a trimmed version without MM and the poetry it would be the best HH album of the decade.

>>69720681

our generation's "Invisible Man" desu

>>69720681
Interesting. I have absolutely zero audience for hip-hop and the changes it's going through, but I'm glad we have someone like Kendrick and don't have that silly east/west 90s thing.

>>69718807

i think a good lyricist would do well to be say fewer words (each of which is carefully chosen) than to say a thousand sentences and hope for a few golden nuggets here and there

obviously given that this is a popular work of art and it's not standalone lyricism, i can understand why it's praised as it is. many parts of it are thought provoking. ultimately however i think that a large part of its bloated acclaim is the result of the circumstances in which it was released, and the identity of the artist. I think a lot of critics will probably not expect kendrick to have the same artistic potential as someone in a greater degree of privilege and as such they will treat the work with underestimation. and great surprise when they do hear a "golden nugget"

>>69718807
yknow how at the end of the year hollywood churns out oscar bait movies that are usually very formulaic and tend to be forgotten in a year

this is the musical version of that

>>69718807

Absolutely not.

>>69719477
It's a pro-black album, not anti-white

>>69721092
This one's hardly forgotten faggot

>>69718807
Yes

why doesnt the album address the culture of poverty among blacks instead of blaming whitey for everything

>>69721206
Have you even listened to it?

>>69720681
All this said, about my opinion of the album, I think it did deserve all the critical acclaim for its ambition both musically, lyrically, and in terms of delivery, how it brought previously mostly forgotten black musical and lyrical forms, like the funk and free jazz and soul stuff, along with Gil-Scot Heron type poetry, back into the mainstream, how most of these risks paid off, and how this album serves as a period piece for the current political climate.

That said, though I love the first poem and I think it's a great way to tie everything together because of the points I bring up here, I feel that the second poem shouldn't have just been thrown in at the end as an explanation of the title, rather, I think it should have been split up and the imagery it contains should have made its way into the bars of each of the songs; that way, we more actively see the parallels between Kendrick's development and the development of the caterpillar, since we would literally be seeing the caterpillar become a butterfly alongside Kendrick's metaphorical metamorphosis into one, and the allegory could be fleshed out on a deeper, more topical level. I feel that this would make the title drop a bit less haphazard. I do like Mortal Man though, especially since I find the instrumentation during the interview very calming, and it was cool to see him tie the songs into the second poem, but my point still stands; I feel that it would have been better if it was split into bars and hidden throughout the album.

>>69721163
Ehhhhh id say its pretty forgotten bud

>>69721456
This is probably bait, but TPAB is almost 2 years old and still has threads being made about it on a consistent basis.

>>69718883

>Benji came out 6 years ago

>>69718883
Fuck. What have I even done in the last year and 9 months?

>>69718807
Yes it's good as fuck.
People say that they don't 'revisit' it, and I don't listen to the album regularly, but there are plenty of songs from it I still listen to all the time.
Yeah looking back over it it's basically all good tracks

Overhyped as fuck. Kendrick is a hack. Deal with it.

Yeah. It's easily one of the best hip hop albums of the decade. The instrumentals are varied and great, flowing between styles really well. And Kendrick, as cliche as it is to say, is really a step above the large majority of rappers out there

>>69718807
The instrumentals on this album are just so fucking good.

>>69718807
I don't know what album this is, but it makes me think

>>69718807
Was very exciting at the time. I remember listening to it and thinking holy shit. I loved it, but t b h i haven't really listened to it much since then. It's lost a lot of replay value for me for whatever reason whereas GKMC hasn't.

>>69719190
>>69719228
its shit

>>69720193
the album is just kendrick lamenting on his self-hatred. and not hating on his black-self, just his self (self-self?).

self-hatred arising from fame bringing him out of his home town.

go outside, get some air.

>>69718807
Absolutely.
>>69719055
>I'm not usually a fan of concept albums
Why? Because they require you to actually pay attention?

>>69722011
2 actually

>>69718807
no.
Perhaps if he dropped the modern rap bullshit drums that sound like absolute shit on anything other than a laptop speaker.

>>69718807
I loved GKMC and Section.80, but TPAB blew both of those albums out of the water. This is the album of the decade and I don't know if anything will be able to surpass it. There have only been a handful of times that I've been absolutely floored by an album on first listen, and this was one of them. I think Kendrick transcended hip-hop on this album. The instrumentals are fantastic. For Sale? in particular, definitely my favorite track on the album, is one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard.

section 80 started with a song called fuck your ethnicity, this starts with "every nigga is a star"

>>69723317
don't have to because you're wrong, faggot! :-)

>>69725791
how dare he change his mind!

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>gave the album a brief listen
>selected songs that had a good beat. Chose about 5 in the end
>6+ months later, give the whole album a proper listen to
>realise that I love the whole album

>>69718807
Absolutely.

it was interesting at the time so yes

I remember you was conflicted
Misusing your influence
Sometimes I did the same
Abusing my power, full of resentment
Resentment that turned into a deep depression
Found myself screaming in the hotel room
I didn’t wanna self destruct
The evils of Lucy was all around me
So I went running for answers
Until I came home
But that didn’t stop survivor’s guilt
Going back and forth trying to convince myself the stripes I earned
Or maybe how A-1 my foundation was
But while my loved ones was fighting the continuous war back in the city, I was entering a new one
A war that was based on apartheid and discrimination
Made me wanna go back to the city and tell the homies what I learned
The word was respect
Just because you wore a different gang color than mine's
Doesn’t mean I can’t respect you as a black man
Forgetting all the pain and hurt we caused each other in these streets
If I respect you, we unify and stop the enemy from killing us
But I don’t know, I’m no mortal man, maybe I’m just another nigga
One of the best parts of the album tb.h

>>69720823
The actual song Mortal Man is one of the best on the album, and the 2Pac interview is a neat idea that should've lasted 2 minutes max

>>69723555
this.

I'm a white dude in Canada, I know like 3 black people. None of the themes are applicable to my life in the slightest.

But goddamn if the music isn't just so damn pretty. It's a beautiful nod to soul sampling and the modern bedroom producer AS WELL as to the jazz and funk greats of the 70s. Just absolutely perfect rap instrumentals. Kendrick isn't even the "star" of a lot of these songs, his voice just exists within their world, and it's fantastic.

It wasn't until I saw the guy live where I realized that you don't have to be a braggadocios blowhard to command people's attention. Kenny is just smooth, honest, and humble and the people flock. He raps like a conversationalist, not a rockstar or street preacher. Kenny knocks on your door and asks what he can do for you, while others merely barge in.

So two years on, this sounds as fresh as ever.

>THAT NIGGA GAVE US BILLIE JEAN, YOU SAY HE TOUCHED THOSE KIDS?

>>69727571
Nah the drums ruin it. Some great sounds ruined by attemps to sound "hard" and all that bullshit.

>>69727571
Sometimes the instrumentals could've been better
Blacker the Berry could've been a 10/10 SOTY if the backing orchestra was actually fucking audible when scary yelling man begins his tirade

>>69718807
Yes.

>>69718807
Yes, but how relevant will this album be in 10 years? Thats the important question to ask now

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>>69718956
The stretch began at These Walls desu.


Also anyone notice that Kenny has the best stretch of albums as a solo artist in hip hop history? Not even Kanye has had this good of a stretch.

(Ignore the rating system from whatever site this came from)

>>69722028

dude same fuck

>>69721206
"Then why did I weep when Trayvon Martin was in the streets
When gang-banging make me kill a nigga blacker than me? Hypocrite"
Blacker the Berry

>>69727717
>FUCK

>>69729181
College Dropout to Pablo is a sort of flawless stretch, and if it wasn't, Dropout to Graduation would be as good. The only thing resembling a blemish is Cruel Summer (Watch the Throne is underrated) and I don't really count it or WTT.

>>69718807
Nope

>>69727717
That line was intense as fuck.

And the album deserved all the acclaim.

It's at least a 7. But still don't understand the hype.

yeah definitely

>>69718807
maybe like

>>69718807
Nope.

>>69718807
no, people force themselves to like kendrick. fucking trash rapper

Yes it deserved

>>69729996
graduation sucks ass

>>69719477
I put a bullet in the back of the head, back of the head of the shitposter

>>69722011
>Untitled unmastered came out 4 years ago

These Walls is a great track, probably my favorite of the last two years.

I'm a very conservative anti-SJW person, but I still really enjoy Kendrick.