How is this not the greatest Hip Hop album of all time?

How is this not the greatest Hip Hop album of all time?

bcus there r better

Revival was way better than that. TPAB literally has like 3 good songs and they feel old already

Time isn't finished yet, relax

it is

>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 old-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.
>6/10

WE

ARE THE CHAMPIONS

This is the greatest piece of music criticism I’ve read in fucking ages. Bravo to whoever you’re quoting, I’m speechless in that my ineffable sentiment for the album finally found words to match.

not

scaruffi

lol no if anything I’m more likely to have Christgau peg me

>the poetic depth of Kanye West
>doesn't mention the multiple narratives at play
>doesn't mention any substantial details about mortal man, arguably the most important track on the album
Everything else I agree with

Hey man, Kamye has more passion than Kendrick any day of the fucking week.
That’s the only thing keeping even his worst verses up on their feet.

It's not even Kendrick's best. Still pretty decent album before his downfall with Damn.

It sucks

HOL UP WE GON bE FINE

>when you’re the shiniest shit in the pile

WE WUZ KANGS

There are quite a few better than it, including Good Kid, Maad City

Time will tell, but its up there.

Liquid Swords is way better than this.

...

But Scarufi likes Kanye. A 7.5 is pretty high for his standards.

because records better than it exist

If he gave MBTDF an 8 it would be his version of that p4k's 10

I don't think Yeezus is the best thing ever but how in the world is it a 4/10?
Black Skinhead, New Slaves, Send It Up, I Am A God and Blood On The Leaves are superb. Rest of the track list is just alright. I used to really like Hold My Liquor but it's soured over time.

>Yeezus (Def Jam, 2013), designed with an incredible number of collaborators, is a sloppy, awkward and amateurish work despite the impeccable fusion of electronics and vocals, the impeccable collages, the impeccable production. But sound quality is a technological, not an artistic, fact. Daft Punk are responsible for the robotic beat of On Sight and the monster riff of Black Skinhead (one of the catchiest "songs"): cool but nothing we haven't heard before. There are a few moments of pathos: the reggae-like cry of I am a God in a desolate post-industrial soundscape, the gloomy crescendo of the first half of Hold My Liquor (before the misguided synth orgy), the martial trombone fanfares of Blood on the Leaves, and... i struggled to find at least one more. But there are also embarrassingly trivial moments of both mashup and sociopolitical analysis (New Slaves, I'm in It, Blood on the Leaves, and Bound 2, which is simply a lame tribute to soul music) and there is certainly an unusual dose of filler (a four-song EP would have been more appropriate for what West had to say in this album). As a narrative experience, these stories may try something new but it's more a case of a populist bard desperately trying to find something new to say to his followers than a serious discussion on gender and race. As an aural experience, this album feels terribly old, like most granpas when they try to speak the language of their high-school nephews. Maybe this album was only meant as a self-mocking joke?

I'm pretty sure his highest rated hip-hop album is It Takes a Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back and he gave that an 8, so yeah, you'd be right.

He also gave Impossible Nothing an 8.

>Hood Politics
>a song that is highly polyrhythmic with Kendrick's flow switching interplay between each set of rhythms
>straightforward

>more revivalist than innovative
>doesn't hear the enormous amounts of filter work put into how those sounds are modified and put together

>superficial album
>literally cites shit that happened to Kendrick that you can find pics and shit Of on the internet

>compares Kendrick to a bunch of different rappers
>he ends up having far more lyrical depth than all except maybe El-P, and absolutely destroys them in terms of flow/delivery styles

As usual there's no reason to take Scaruffi along with 99% of the people that hate on this album seriously at all.

Kanye has jack shit in terms of passion. Especially if we are talking lyrics where he puts so little work compared to Kendrick but even more so in delivery where Kanye lacks range (even his angry voice on Black Skinhead sounds just like every other Kanye.)
Very sparse production that's not that engaging nor mixed well to today's standards. GZA is highly technical but has none of the variety in flows that Kendrick does on TPAB.
DOOM never changes his flow nor tone of voice, and while the production is original it always maintains a similar amount of layers rather than being variable density like TPAB which has everything from bangers to polyphony to polyrhythms.
Ghostface isn't as technical as Kendrick is, and the production is very hit/miss as not every track has that much work out into it with some having that badly aged east coast sound to them.

t. soyboy

>Kanye has jack shit in terms of passion

please go back

Haters btfo this resorting to ad hominem. I know, sometimes I wish there was something better than TPAB in hip hop, too. But the genre hasn't really grown enough yet to be on the level to pull that off.

The fact that so many books still name the Kendrick Lamar as "the greatest or most significant or most influential" rapper ever only tells you how far hip-hop music still is from becoming a serious art. Jazz critics have long recognized that the greatest jazz musicians of all times are Duke Ellington and John Coltrane, who were not the most famous or richest or best sellers of their times, let alone of all times. Classical critics rank the highly controversial Beethoven over classical musicians who were highly popular in courts around Europe. Hip-hop critics are still blinded by commercial success. Kendrick Lamar sold more than anyone else (not true, by the way), therefore they must have been the greatest. Jazz critics grow up listening to a lot of jazz music of the past, classical critics grow up listening to a lot of classical music of the past. Hip-hop critics are often totally ignorant of the hip-hop music of the past, they barely know the best sellers. No wonder they will think that Kendrick Lamar did anything worthy of being saved.

Weak instrumentals that blend together too much and vanish out of your mind very quickly after listening.

Kendrick's rapping and vocals as always are boring, the man has no charisma and should have stayed a ghostwriter.

Like all his albums feels like he's putting the concept way too far ahead of the music.

Because it's sounds like Stakonia with no Andre.

>it sounds

TPAB provided me with the greatest stimulation music can offer, therefore it's the best album I've ever heard.

The best and the only good hip hop is hip hop from '85 -' 92 everything else is overrated shit

I THINK YOU MEAN LEAST SHITTY

Who says it's not?

it literally, unironically is