Scaruffi review of To Pimp A Butterfly

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The word "hype" wasn't enough to describe the media assault on the sprawling 80-minute To Pimp a Butterfly (2015), another meticulously crafted album that employed legions of writers, producers and musicians (including jazz pianist Robert Glasper and jazz saxophonist Kamasi Washington). Six people wrote Wesley's Theory, including George Clinton, and four produced it, including Flying Lotus. Nine people are credited as writers for the funk-fest King Kunta, making it de facto a collage. The producers threw in more live instruments, resulting in a sound that is more revivalist than innovative, but also a sound that helps the general theatrical atmosphere. For better and for worse, The Blacker the Berry is the epitome of this emphatically pointless but fashionable avant-jazz-rap music. I begins as an olf-fashioned synth-pop hit of the 1980s before it begins to sound like a James Brown parody (with the lyrics "the number one rapper in the world" and "i love myself") accented by a jovial piano figure. The best psychodrama is possibly one of the simplest songs, the melodic funk-soul These Walls, and the best political sermon the equally straightforward funk ditty Hood Politics. But the music is secondary to the histrionics and it doesn't matter that the catchy and danceable Alright stands in opposition of the industrial beat that derails Momma, a fact that could account for at least eclecticism. This is a superficial and, ultimately, middle-of-the-road album from an artist who lacks the visceral energy of Public Enemy and Tackhead while also lacking the poetic depth of Kanye West and the musical genius of El-P. He tries to be all of them at once, but maybe he would be most credible if he were just himself: a brilliant script-writer of fictionalized real-life stories: the Christian parable How Much a Dollar Cost presents God disguised as a homeless man, and Mortal Man interviews the ghost of dead rapper 2Pac.