Kendrick Lamar
Pitchfork describes how Kendrick Lamar and Drake found their voices
Drake‘s If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late and Kendrick Lamar‘s To Pimp a Butterfly are vastly different hip-hop artifacts, made by artists who use their voices in vastly different ways. And yet, in the gulf between them, something does emerge, something invisible but real. With both records, you hear two artists honing in on their message by exploring the outer reaches of the most elemental tool available to them.
Kendrick Lamar Has A Verse On Kanye’s “All Day”
Well, well, well, what do we have here? Looks like Kanye West has enlisted Kendrick Lamar for the official remix of his blazing single, “All Day.” Details are slim to non-existent at this point, but we do know Kanye was INSPIRED BY KENDRICK after he heard To Pimp A Butterfly, and – most importantly – we’ve got a super brief snippet for you to chew on while you wait for the full version to drop.
Video: Reebok x Kendrick Lamar Mobile Concert
Video: King Kunta – Kendrick Lamar
Video: Kendrick Lamar On Hot 97
Behind The Scenes: Kendrick Lamar’s “King Kunta” Video
“To Pimp A Butterfly” Deemed The #1 Rated Hip Hop Album Of All Time (Beating Out Outkast’s “Stankonia”)
Well, that didn’t take very long.
Kendrick Lamar‘s new album, To Pimp a Butterfly, has achieved a score of 96 on Metacritic, a website that aggregates reviews of music albums from major newpapers, magazines and digital publishers.
According to the website, a Metascore “distills the opinions of the most respected critics writing online and in print to a single number.” In the case of TPAB, that number, 96, now represents the highest rated hip-hop LP of all-time. That is not a misprint. All. Time.
Kendrick Lamar Performs A Mobile Concert On A Flat Bread Truck Through The Streets Of L.A.
Last week, Kendrick Lamar took the hip-hop community by storm, accidentally dropping his already legendaryTo Pimp A Butterfly a week early. Tuesday night, he continued that momentum in one of the most unexpectedly awesome ways possible.
Rocking a grey sweatsuit and some fresh Reebok sneakers, Kendrick performed a mobile concert on the back of a flatbed truck. This is how you promote an album:
The Story Behind Tupac’s Interview From “To Pimp A Butterfly”
One of the defining characteristics of Kendrick Lamar’s sophomore album, To Pimp A Butterfly, is a running poem that builds and unfolds as the album progresses, with K.Dot sharing more and more of the piece song by song. The piece culminates after the music fades out during the album’s final track, “Mortal Man,” and as Kendrick finishes he asks a question, answered by the voice of Tupac Shakur. The two proceed to have a conversation about metaphors, social inequality, classism and maintaining sanity in the face of so much pressure; towards the end, Kendrick asks ‘Pac for his take on the future of Kendrick’s generation and receives an answer that wouldn’t seem so out of place if it was given today. The only difference is, that interview with Tupac happened in 1994.
How exactly Kendrick came across that particular interview—which you can hear in full here—is still a slight mystery, but the origins of ‘Pac’s answers are not. The interview was conducted in the Atlantic Records office in New York City around the time of the release of ‘Pac’s Thug Life: Vol. 1 album with his group Thug Life, which came out Sept. 26, 1994. The journalist in question: Mats Nileskår, a Swedish radio host who has been documenting the careers and music of African-American musicians through the jazz, soul, funk, R&B and hip-hop eras since 1978, conducting around 6,000 interviews in the past 37 years by his estimation. Nileskår’s P3 Soul radio show has grown into an influential and now-legendary European institution over that time period, with this Tupac interview one of the crown jewels of his collection.
Got The Drop 