Hip-hop

Its a little hard to believe, but Kanye West has been producing hip-hop tracks now for 20 years. In terms of longevity, hes been more relevant for a longer period of time than any modern pop producer. And, in that period, hes undergone several stylistic shifts that have taken him from being a champion of very meat-and-potatoes trad hip-hop -- albeit with a chipmunk twist -- to being a pop conduit to the outré electronic and old school psych. This article by Third Bridge Creative does a nice job at capturing these shifts, and uses data supplied by Whosampled to back up the analysis. The associated playlist provides a more rote but still compelling look at some of the most recognizable samples, placing Kanye classics next to the originals.

The sound of Run the Jewels is crafted from El-Ps beats. But Killer Mikes singular balance of brash confidence and vulnerability—not to mention his love of 80s and 90s rap from all regions—has vaulted the duo to a level of popularity that would’ve seemed improbable back when mutual friend Jason DeMarco of Adult Swim initiated their unlikely union five years ago. Listening now to Mikes Pledge Allegiance to the Grind series a decade later or El-Ps Fantastic Damage 15 years after it detonated this month back in 2002, there isnt a straight line to draw between the two. How do you blend Alec Empire and T.I., Trent Rzeznor and Sleepy Brown, Mars Volta and Young Jeezy? Obscure yet joyous moments—like 2002 El-P rapping over Missy Elliots "Gossip Folks" and 2011 Mike floating on Flying Lotus "Swimming"—predicted how they could inhabit each others worlds. But many left-field rap collaborations are one-time novelties, not dynasties.Now that Run The Jewels has become a staple of festivals, Marvel comic book covers, and soundtracks for TV shows and video games, its worth noting how much Mike and Els work ethic hasnt changed in the combined 38 years theyve worked in the music industry. Mikes discography pre-RTJ was 10 deep (counting studio albums and mixtapes) while El-P was at nine (if you include the two Company Flow albums). Their unifying love of Ice Cube, EPMD, Public Enemy, Wu-Tang, and Run-DMC has crystallized into subwoofer H-bombs as a duo, while their individual catalogs are snapshots of young rappers proving themselves. El-Ps biggest single in the Def Jux days featured a video of him being flanked by shotguns and hand cannons in post 9/11 New York during a neighborhood trek for smokes. Killer Mike was shoehorned onto hits by Outkast, Bone Crusher, and JAY-Z, but his biggest single was about the urban myth of Adidas namesake.El-P stated his intention early, back in 1997 on the inner artwork of Company Flows debut album Funcrusher Plus: "Independent as fuck." Killer Mike concurred, starting in the mid 2000s with his eyeopening mixtape series after stalling out with major labels. El-P came up during the great indie rap boom of the late 90s/early 00s: Stones Throw, Anticon, Def Jux, Rawkus, Fondle Em, etc. while Mike was slangin CDs hand to hand, everywhere from strip clubs to barber shops to mom and pop record stores, in the vein of Atlanta success stories like Ludacris, DJ Drama, Lil Jon, and Lil Flip. The models of independence varied wildly between New York and Atlanta, but the idea was the same: Your career has to be earned.Now that theyre playing Made In America Festival this year, its interesting to look back at their best work (compiled in the YouTube playlist below) and hear a redheaded maverick from Brooklyn holding his nuts while making Philip K. Dick and Vangelis into viable hip-hop ingredients, and the son of a Southern police officer running through brick walls with a Bible and a blunt in his hands.https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEAFD97JV-MKrgVHuWwn991Vc4r2fzKjj

There’s an amazing story that DJ Premier relates near the beginning of this excellent hour + interview with Chairman Mao. Although he’s now synonymous with New York hip-hop, the legendary hip-hop producer and DJ was born and raised in Texas. His grandfather, however, was a BK resident, and Premier would frequently visit him as a child. On his first trip to New York in the fifth grade, Premier was on a subway car that ran over a man who had jumped onto the tracks. The train backed up, and a young Premier peered out the subway window and watched as the man’s disembodied arm wriggled on the tracks. According to an excited Premier, this had been a suicide attempt. “Wow, this is where I want to live,” DJ Premier remembers thinking.To a certain extent, this is just a typical NYC origin story -- the sort of semi-mythological shit you say to sound like a comic book bad-ass. But it also embodies a lot of the qualities of DJ Premier’s music --gruesome, grimey, traumatic, and incredibly vivid. Hip-hop is clearly bigger than one person, city, or era, and any attempts to claim ownership are misplaced -- to say the least -- but few figures seem to embody the music and the culture better than Premier. It’s not that he invented it -- he was nowhere near its mid-70s birth -- but he created a style and sound that was uniquely and singularly hip-hop. Bleary, spiraling samples wrapped around and onto drums that were harder than nails -- pounding, body-rocking combinations of the snare and bass drums known by its onomatopoeia, “boom bap” -- and paired with rough-hewn, Mt. Olympus raps from a rotating pantheon of legendary emcees (Jay-Z, Nas, Rakim, and, of course, Guru). But more than being a singular touchpoint for ‘90s hip-hop, Premier was arguably the most important sample-based musician, ever; his vision of hip-hop pastiche was unlike anything before it, and, due to market forces, it’s doubtful anyone will return to such a nuanced, intricate manner of sampling music, in hip-hop or elsewhere.Like a lot of early hip-hop innovations, the quintessential DJ Premier sound was born partially of necessity. It took a while for Premier to hone his godlike sound, though the journey there is almost as compelling as the destination. Listen to the early albums with Gang Starr, his flagship group with the Boston emcee Guru, and the sound is looser, jazzier. The instrumental “DJ Premier in Deep Concentration” from the 1989 album No More Mr. Nice Guy serves as an initial calling card of sorts for the young producer. The track is anchored by a liberal sample Kool and the Gang’s “Summer Madness” that achieves the neat trick of gliding off the track with soaring, croaking synth line, while also feeling diffuse and guazy -- it’s a multi-textured sonic illusion that be-bop musicians were particularly skilled at pulling off. There are no rapped vocals in “DJ Premier in Deep Concentration,” but Premier weaves in a variety of samples and callouts to various producer (“Prince Paul!”), so that the track both has vocal presence and texture and even a narrative focus. All of the components of his later masterworks are there: the sample-based pastiche, the self-referential callouts, the swagger, the soul.Around 1992, Premier begin to switch up his style. Like a lot of early hip-hop innovations, this evolution was born of necessity. In 1991, Biz Markie was sued for his use of Gilbert OSullivans 1972 hit, "Alone Again (Naturally)." Judge Kevin Duffy’s ruling against Markie not only cost the rapper $250,000, but also meant that hip-hop producers had to be much more careful and either clear their samples before use or cut them up to the point that they were unrecognizable. Premier largely, though not exclusively, decided for the latter course of action. He recognized that it was not just the rhythms or melodies that drew him to classic soul, jazz, and funk, but the textures and sound of the music, so he would cut his drums into millisecond intervals and overlay them on one another, combining them with a cache of synth and piano samples that seemed to emphasize their pure otherworldliness. For Gang Starr, this made sense. They had largely been marketed as a jazzy, college hip-hop, but that didn’t feel entirely true to either Guru’s personality or DJ Premier’s artist ambitions. They were nostalgist, to a degree, but their milieu was more modern and urban. The music they made on 1992’s Daily Operation and 1994’s Hard to Earn reflected this grimier reality. The dizzying organ sample laid of “Soliloquy of Chaos,” the chaotic swirl of “Brainstorm,” or the urgent, corporal drum breaks of “Code of the Streets” signal Brooklyn. It’s broken crack vials and loosey butts, summer nutcrackers and skelly sketches. Rarely has a music so embodied such a particular time and space.This would be the template for all of Premier’s best known productions, from Nas’ hip-hop totum “NY State of Mind” to Biggie’s dizzy disorienting “Unbelievable.” Though the sound undeniably strange and novel, it’s also immediate and visceral, which allowed it to ascend the charts in the mid to late-90s. It’s hard to believe, but, at one point, Premier was among hip-hop’s most on-demand commercial producers. The specificity of his music meant that designation wouldn’t last. Beginning in the late 90s, Southern hip-hop would loosen the genre’s focus -- bringing back the more overt homages to funk and soul -- and the music would move back onto the dancefloor. And New York hip-hop would adopt the more polished nihilism of G-Unit and Dip Set, before later seeming to abandon any notion that there was a unified, tri-state sound. But, for a minute, thanks to Premier, the music was pure, aberrant, and purely hip-hop.

Subscribe to the Spotify playlist here.Virginia native Shelley Marshaun Massenburg-Smith always seems to have a huge grin on his face, and makes the kind of infectiously whimsical anthems that put a smile on everyone else’s faces. The 2015 EPs #1Epic and Gahdamn! established his unique sound and irrepressible personality with the Super Mario Bros.-sampling hit “Cha Cha.” A wide array of features followed, with kindred spirits like Chance The Rapper and Donnie Trumpet as well as surprising collaborators like Chairlift and E-40. The full-length debut Big Baby D.R.A.M. arrived on the heels of the smash Lil Yachty collaboration “Broccoli,” showcasing D.R.A.M.’s witty rhymes as well as his earworm melodies.

Since the late ‘90s, New Jersey trio Dälek has been pushing hip-hop into harsh, dissonant realms, and their latest album, Endangered Philosophies (Ipecac Recordings), honors their reputation for raw rhymes, bruising beats, and extreme sonics. On this playlist created specially for The Dowsers, the crew’s namesake MC salutes his fellow rap iconoclasts. “This is a collection of songs and groups that move me. It is a playlist of underground musicians who each, in their own way, have pushed the culture of hip-hop forward. What strikes me is the sheer variety of styles, sounds, and experimentation here.“I am lucky enough to have shared stages or studios with most of the musicians here. Some I only admire from afar. All of them leave me in awe of how powerful and beautiful music can be. These groups to one degree or another are, in my opinion, underappreciated.“There are a few artists that unfortunately were not available on Spotify that should be on the list: Techno Animal, B L A C K I E, The Labteks, Company Flow, and I’m sure a few others that may have slipped my mind.“Also, full disclosure: I added two of my own groups—Dälek and iconAclass—and a few tracks I produced for other artists, as I feel these all are a part of the story that this playlist paints.“This list goes back from the mid-’90s to present day. It is not in any particular order, chronological or otherwise. It was just compiled to show the depth and scope of what hip-hop music is.”—MC Dälek

Photograph: Misha Vladimirskiy/FilterlessAs one of the most unbridled voices in rap today, Danny Brown can come off as something of an attention-starved maniac to the uninitiated. But get past the gritty hood politics, blacked-out benders, and turbulent fuckfests, and Browns music reveals itself to be largely about the pained, confused loss of one’s innocence. His lyrics are as dotted with old-school street poetics as they are ridiculously turnt up hedonism, and Brown confronts the addictive, drug-fueled culture of his native Detroit upbringing with an attitude that is both relentlessly eager and utterly horrified at itself. For all his delirious energy, hes an incredibly sentimental artist, a rapper whose braggadocio-filled nights tend to end with a sad, self-loathing walk home. A genuine wildcard with a taste for heavy atmospherics (the man is a self-professed Radiohead fanboy), Brown draws inspiration from the party animals and outcasts who bear a solemn knowledge of the brutal side of life in the city, and who refuse to let that darkness interfere with their good time. -- Sam Goldner

We’ve all heard the grievances lobbed at Auto-Tune before; that it’s a stand-in for actual talent, that it strips away any humanity from a singer’s voice, that it just doesn’t sound good, etc. Towards the end of the ‘00s, the technology developed such a negative stigma that everybody from JAY Z to Death Cab for Cutie was taking public shots at it, fretting over the implication that a musician might be able to modify their voice in order to make better music. Call it a plea for authenticity, or perhaps just fear of a changing world, but when Auto-Tune began to dominate pop music, many treated it more like an epidemic than a novel sonic trend.Needless to say, many artists have embraced the vocal technology with aplomb, and over the past several years we’ve seen some incredible work done in the field of vocal manipulation that could not exist were it not for everyone’s favorite pitch-corrector. Like any great electronic software, the magic isn’t really in the tools but the hands that use them. And with Auto-Tune in particular, the possibilities are ripe for contorting and inflating the human voice to extraterrestrial levels, whether in the mainstream or in the underground.Respects must be paid to Kanye West, who were it not for his 2008 cybernetic reinvention statement 808s & Heartbreak or his 2010 masterpiece “Runaway” (the crowning vocal finale of which may be Auto-Tune’s finest moment), the sound certainly would not have taken root in the way that it has today. Whether it’s in the basement rap shenanigans of Lil Yachty and Sicko Mobb (whose digitized vocals soar with ecstatic, lovable amateurism), or in the dystopic, self-loathing warbles of Future, it often feels like Auto-Tune has become a tool for distorting and reinventing pop vocals rather than perfecting them, unveiling new depths in between the unnaturally shifting notes. Even breakout indie figures like Sufjan Stevens and Bon Iver have gleefully taken to the tool, further blurring the lines of what kinds of music we commonly associate with the sound.Much of the original gripe with Auto-Tune had to do with the sense of synthetic plasticity associated with just having a computer smooth out all of your melodies for you. It’s a completely natural instinct to crave that tactile, irreplaceable feel that comes with music made wholly from scratch, to say nothing of our society’s general paranoia over encroaching technological dependency. But the goal of art should always be to speak honestly, using whatever means are necessary to achieve that goal. In an age where artificiality rules the day, where human nature has become so deeply intertwined with algorithmic machinery, is it possible that a technology designed to turn our imperfections into beautiful music could be one of the most real things we have at our disposal?

Despite its reputation as the No. 1 music-industry disruptor of 2019, Lil Nas X’s honky-hop hybrid “Old Town Road” owes a great deal of its success to an age-old formula: the promotion of the chorus from cleanup hitter to leadoff batter. Although its usage has gained considerable traction in the streaming era (when shortened attention spans demand that artists engineer their tracks to elicit love-at-first-click), you can find examples of chorus-verse-chorus songwriting throughout pop history. This playlist provides a brief history of songs in which the first verse is secondary, chronologically charting how the practice has evolved over time. Back in the days of Elvis and The Beatles, it was an instant invitation to get up and dance to the devil’s music. For iconoclastic rockers like Neil Young and The Clash, it was a means of putting their social messaging front and center. At the height of hair metal, bands like Bon Jovi and Twisted Sister put their shout-along refrains up front in anticipation of engaging with their arena-size audiences. And as hip-hop and R&B have become the dominant forms of pop music in the 21st century, it’s becoming increasingly common for artists in the former camp to lure you in with hooks steeped in the latter.

If you’re the sort of person who thinks that the worst part of a Drake album is Drake, you’ll love More Life. There are long stretches where Drake simply disappears. U.K. grime artist Skepta gets his own track, as does beautifully wounded R&B crooner Sampha. The shuffling U.K. funk of “Get It Together” features Drake only briefly, and primarily as a baritone counterpoint to the jazzy inflections of Jorja Smith. For long stretches of the collection, Drake is content to wander the catacombs of his billion-square-foot mansion, while his friends stay above-ground, sipping acacia mimosas around the pool and pointing their iPhones at one another. It makes for a fun party.Yes, there are still Drake’s tortured-godhead delusions, the awkward therapy-raps, and his famed faceplant similes (exhibit 1: “I’m grateful like Jerry, Bob, and Mickey”), but we also get to hear 2 Chainz blurrily quip, “I love my fans, but I don’t want to take pictures in the restroom,” a line that constitutes the most pointed commentary on outsized fan expectations since Lou Reed released Metal Machine Music.This is among the best of Drake’s clumping-tracks-together things, and that’s very much because More Life is consciously a “playlist.” This isn’t a “low stakes” gambit or a cheap marketing gimmick (at least not entirely), but an honest engagement with a new form. It was informed by Drake’s involvement on the OVO Sound radio show for Apple Music. In fact, Drake told DJ Semtex that he imagined More Life as an episode of that show. But what makes More Life a good playlist? How do we even judge such things? When critics review albums, focus is given on consistency, with the work being the sum of its parts. This is true whether the album is intended to be coherent piece of work (see: Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly or Beyoncé’s Lemonade), or a collection of songs (see: Justin Bieber or Pitbull). There’s the expectation that everything is there for a reason. More Life is looser and more meandering, and sometimes the individual components seem slight and tertiary. But it captures a moment, a feeling, and a place. Outros stretch and breathe (as on god-status track “Passionfruit”), while sampled dialogue bits are strung together—not so much to form a ramshackle narrative or even a running meta-commentary (a la De La Soul’s classic albums), but to reflect a vibe. More Life is a long weekend at the beach spent counting clouds and taking inventory of idle distractions. In this sense, it doesn’t so much resemble a mixtape, or a crew compilation album (like JAY Z’s The Dynasty: Roc La Familia), as it does a mood playlist. It’s audio wallpaper, in the best sense.While Drake delivers on the mic—his lead-off verse over the icy flute trap of “Portland” is an obvious standout—there’s no mind-bending “King Kunta”-level/David-Blaine-on-the-mic classic moments™, and that doesn’t matter here. More Life is enjoyable and, as anyone who listens to a lot of classic albums knows, enjoying music trumps appreciating it—and this release is infinitely better than any other non-sweater-meme Drake release in years. For that, we can thank the generations of mixtape compilers, playlist curators, radio DJs, and compilation creators for helping define this new form. But, most of all, we should thank Drake for getting that the lines between artist, audience, critic, and curator are porous, and for making an initial foray into what this intersection looks like. And, of course, for understanding that you should always invite 2 Chainz to a pool party. — Sam Chennault

This post is part of our program, The Story of Kendrick, an in-depth, 10-part look at the life and music of Kendrick Lamar. Sound cool and want to receive the other installments in your inbox? Go here. Already signed up and enjoying it? Help us get the word out and share on Facebook, Twitter, or with this link. Your friends will thank you. Like the most challenging art, the music of Kendrick Lamar’s 2015 masterpiece To Pimp a Butterfly teaches you how to listen to it. Its production is dense and layered, drawing in strains of jazz, funk, blues, and hip-hop, and though squishing genres together is not new, per se, other fusionists tended to reduce the elements of each sound to, more times than not, populist beats and smooth melodies. TPAB, on the other hand, throws the boldest, loudest, and brashest elements of each genre against one another. It can be jarring and even disorienting.It’s an appropriate backdrop for Kendrick’s lyrics, which are knotty, neurotic, and, ultimately, transcendent. Those elements—anger, despair, empathy, and hope—have been present in protest anthems from “We Shall Overcome” to Beyoncé’s “Formation,” but they generally don’t converge in one song or one album. And, even less frequently, do the songs implicate their author, or blur the line between subject and the object.This is a new form of protest music, one where (to borrow a phrase from second-wave feminism) the personal is political, and the political is personal. In this new strain of agitprop, Kendrick is our most reliable narrator; he acknowledges the ambiguity, and he inhabits his stories rather than tells them to us. The moments of uplift—the chorus of “Alright,” or the first half of “i”—feel hard-won and authentic. He sounds like a savior, but, sometimes, he talks like a killer.Contradiction is a byproduct of this era. Our lives are endlessly complex, but we reject nuance. We’re globally interconnected, but locally isolated. We reject the weight of history, but still live in its shadow and play by its unspoken (and often unacknowledged) rules. All of us negotiate these things, in small and large ways, and Kendrick is no different. He’s just more talented than most of us, and perhaps a bit more honest.To Pimp a Butterfly resonated with so many of us because not only was it such a frank negotiation of these conflicted themes—identity, allegiance, history, and duty—but also because it’s a personal testimony, grounded in a very specific set of circumstances. Some of the catalysts for the album are obvious—the shootings of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown; Kendrick’s well-documented hardscrabble upbringing in Compton; the continual spectre of slavery, Jim Crow laws, and police brutality—but there are also largely hidden stories that explain the context and headspace that birthed TPAB.The process for creating TPAB was familiar to anyone who’s worked with Kendrick: endless ideation, constant revision, and precise execution. “We did good kid [m.A.A.d City] about three, four times before the world got to it… new songs, new everything. I wanted to tell that story, but I had to execute it,” Kendrick recalls. “My whole thing is about execution. The songs can be great, the hooks can be great, but if it’s not executed well, then it’s not a great album.”The process for TPAB was similarly painstaking, and had begun even before the release of its predecessor. “Good kid, m.A.A.d city wasn’t even printed up, and already he’s doing brainstorms for the new album,” Sounwave remembers.“We recorded 60 to 80 tracks for this album over the three years, and Kendrick tried many different concepts and approaches,” go-to TDE engineer Derek Ali shared in June 2015. “The final direction began to emerge in the last year and a half or so, with most of the tracks written and played from the ground up.”One of the earlier sessions for the recording took place during Kendrick’s 2013 stint as opener on Kanye’s Yeezus tour. Kendrick had enlisted L.A. producer, DJ, and multimedia artist Flying Lotus to help out with his light show, and, during the process, FlyLo had slipped him a “folder of beats.” As the producer recalls, “Later that night he told me he had the concept for the album.”While FlyLo speculates that Kendrick rapped over every one of his beats, most of the recordings never made it to the album, and he only ended up with one production credit, albeit a very significant one with album opener “Wesley’s Theory.” That song begins with an invocation of sorts, a sample of the chorus from Boris Gardiner’s smooth jazz track “Every Nigger is a Star.” Afterwards, Kendrick assumes the stereotype of a newly minted rap star—“Ima buy a brand new Caddy on fours/ Trunk the hood up, two times, deuce-four/ Platinum on everything, platinum on wedding ring”—before transitioning to the persona of Uncle Sam, a familiar symbol who’s transformed here from an icon of oppression to a consumerist pimp: “What you want? You a house or a car?/ Forty acres and a mule, a piano, a guitar?/ Anything, see, my name is Uncle Sam, Im your dog/ Motherfucker, you can live at the mall.”From the inception of the album, Kendrick knew that the struggle he articulated would be a personal one, and would reflect his own battles with temptation and identity. “One thing I learned, from when you in the limelight: Anything that you have a vice for is at your demand, times 10 and it can kill you,” Kendrick said in 2012.But the album’s creation would be halted as Kendrick wrestled with a set of personal tragedies. In 2013, three close friends were gunned down in Los Angeles, seemingly one after another. Kendrick remembers being on tour, leaving the stage, where he “faced the madness, and gets these calls … three of my homeboys that summertime was murdered, close ones. Psychologically, it messes your brain up. I got to get off this tour bus and go to funerals.”On one hand, Kendrick was touring behind one of the best-received hip-hop albums of the decade in good kid, m.A.A.d city, but he was also tasked with going back to Compton to attend the funerals of loved ones. Kendrick captured this turmoil on the YG song “Really Be (Smokin N Drinkin)” from 2014: “Im on this tour bus and Im fucked up, I got a bad call/ They killed Braze, they killed Chad, my big homie Pup/ Puppy eyes in my face, bruh, and Ive really been drinkin/ Muthafucka, I really been smokin, what the fuck? Im the sober one/ Man, Im so stressed out, I cant focus.”

Chad Keaton’s loss, in particular, was difficult for Kendrick to handle. "He was like my little brother; we grew up in the same community," he says. "I was actually best friends with his older brother, who is incarcerated right now. And him just always telling me to make sure that Chad is on the right path. And, you know, he was on the right path. But, you know, things happen where sometimes the good are in the wrong places, and thats exactly what happened. He got shot … when Chad was killed, I cant disregard the emotion of me relapsing and feeling the same anger that I felt when I was 16, 17—when I wanted the next family to hurt, because you made my family hurt. Them emotions were still running in me, thinking about him being slain like that. Whether Im a rap star or not, if I still feel like that, then Im part of the problem rather than the solution."

Kendrick + ChadGiven his harrowing childhood, there’s a good chance that Kendrick suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. He’s not alone. According to Howard Spivak M.D, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of Violence Prevention, PTSD is rampant among inner-city youth. Some studies have cited that one in three youth live with it. “Youth living in inner cities show a higher prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder than soldiers,” Spivak commented. And, unlike war zones, most children in these areas are never able to escape. Those that do, carry their own scars.One related condition that Kendrick has been very outspoken about is the idea of survivors guilt, a complex that occurs when a person believes they are at fault for surviving a traumatic event. It was first identified in Holocaust survivors who didn’t understand how they escaped when so many of their friends and family members died in the gas chambers. “How can I be a voice for all these people around the world, and not reach them that are closest to me?,” Kendrick wondered.In addition to the problems at home, Kendrick was having issues adjusting to his newfound fame and wealth. Throughout 2013, Kendrick’s feelings of isolation and displacement intensified, and his unease with the space he now occupied was nearly crippling. The transition was jarring and cannot be understated. "Im going to be 100 per cent real with you," Kendrick shares. "In all my days of schooling, from preschool all the way up to 12th grade, there was not one white person in my class. Literally zero… Youre around people you dont know how to communicate with. You dont speak the same lingo. It brings confusion and insecurity. Questioning how did I get here, what am I doing?"And his interactions with the black kids that were bused in from other areas more affluent than Compton were jarring. “I went over to some of their houses … and it was a whole ‘nother world,” Kendrick says. “Family pictures of them in suits and church clothes up everywhere. Family-oriented. Eatin’ together at the table. We ate around the TV. Stuff like that—I didn’t know nothin’ about. Eatin’ without your elbows on the table? I’m lookin’ around like, ‘What is goin’ on?!’ I came home and asked my mama, ‘Why we don’t eat ’round the table?’ Then I just keep goin’, always askin’ questions. I think that’s when I started to see the lifestyle around us.“You always think that everybody live like you do, because you locked in the neighborhood, you don’t see no way else … You can’t change where you from. You can’t take a person out of their zone and expect them to be somebody else now that they in the record industry. It’s gonna take years. Years of traveling. Years of meeting people. Years of seeing the world.”Luckily, Kendrick would soon get to see a very important part of the world for him. In late 2013, he did a brief tour of Africa, an experience that changed his life. It helped him understand himself—where he’s from and even where he was going. “I felt like I belonged in Africa,” says Lamar. “I saw all the things that I wasnt taught. Probably one of the hardest things to do is put [together] a concept on how beautiful a place can be, and tell a person this while theyre still in the ghettos of Compton. I wanted to put that experience in the music.”He traveled the Cape Town, Johannesburg, and Durban, among other places. This had huge implications for his music. According to his go-to engineer, Derek Ali, Kendrick scrapped “two or three albums worth of material.” But more than being just about subtraction, the excursion inspired a whole new suite of songs. The iconic track “Alright” has its roots in that trip. The song’s chant, “we gonna be alright,” was sparked from witnessing people’s struggles in the country.Traveling in a black-dominated continent brought into stark relief many of the symptoms of American oppression. “Complexion (A Zulu Love)” deals with the idea of colorism—that people within the same race or ethnicity can discriminate based on the shading of the skin. "Theres a separation between the light and the dark skin because its just in our nature to do so, but were all black,” Kendrick says. “This concept came from South Africa and I saw all these different colors speaking a beautiful language."But even beyond the lyrics, the idea of unity informed the sound of the album. Just as Western culture draws lines between skin types, it also needlessly segments black music. Lead producer for TPAB, Terrace Martin, explains the approach: “I kinda don’t like saying jazz no more when it comes to TPAB. It’s throwing everybody off because we haven’t had a real black record in about 20 years with real black music and real black people doing the music, and people who understand that we’re under attack everyday who show up to do the music… that album is just black, it’s not funk. It’s not jazz. It’s black.”[caption id="attachment_10843" align="alignnone" width="576"]

Kendrick in Africa[/caption]But more than being the birthplace of any given song, the Africa trip helped heal Kendrick and gave TPAB a focus. “The overall theme of [TPAB] is leadership,” Kendrick later said, “[and] using my celebrity for good.” This came into focus when Kendrick visited the jail cell in Robben Island where Nelson Mandela was locked away for 18 of his 27 years behind bars. The experience taught him the value of resistance and resilience, and it helped him understand his role as a leader in his community as well as in the larger world.“I’m not speaking to the community,” Kendrick says. “I’m not speaking of the community. I am the community.”It’s difficult to overstate the impact of the album that came from these two very different experiences. TPAB debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard charts, and would go platinum. It received nearly unanimous critical acclaim—Rolling Stone, Billboard, Pitchfork, Spin, The Guardian, Complex, Consequence of Sound, and Vice all named it their album of the year—and it would go on to win the Best Rap album at the GRAMMYS. (It was nominated for Album of the Year, though GRAMMY voters felt that Taylor Swift’s 1999 was a more worthy recipient.) The Harvard University Library archived it alongside Nas Illmatic, A Tribe Called Quests The Low End Theory, and Lauryn Hills The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.It certainly wasn’t the first “woke” album, but it set the stage for the budding social consciousness of an entire generation. It also established Kendrick as a generational spokesman, and earned him a visit to the White House, where he met another African American who was also wrestling with issues of identity, experience, and power."I was talking to Obama," Kendrick says, "and the craziest thing he said was, Wow, how did we both get here? Blew my mind away. I mean, its just a surreal moment when you have two black individuals, knowledgeable individuals, but who also come from these backgrounds where they say well never touch ground inside these floors."Related Reading:The Narrative Guide to Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a ButterflyTo Pimp a Butterfly Album Review—Dead End Hip-HopFlying Lotus Details His "To Pimp A Butterfly" InvolvementHere’s A Timeline Of Everything That Led Up To Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A ButterflyKendrick Lamar Breaks Down the Making of To Pimp a ButterflyKendrick Lamar: "I was DRAGGED off the street & FORCED into the studio" (2017)Kendrick Lamar, By David Chappelle Real Talk | Producers Talk Making Kendrick Lamars "To Pimp a Butterfly"SaveSaveSaveSave