Why rapper Kendrick Lamar is a great musician

In mid-April, “Damn.” Was released, the fifth album of the 29-year-old American rapper Kendrick Lamar, a multiple Lauret of the Grammy Prize, which is considered the best hip-hop musician of his generation. At the request of Medusa, Lev Gankin tells what the greatness of Lamar is - and for which he should be appreciated even by those who are indifferent to his music.

“Damn.”, The new album of rapper Kendrika Lamara, was released on Friday morning, April 14, and already in the evening of the same day, a rumor rolled along social networks: they say, wait, this is not all, on Sunday the artist must publish another record! As evidence, the mysterious tweet of the ally of Lamar, producer Saunweight, as well as the fact that on April 14 was a passionate Friday, and a day, respectively, Easter, that is, the resurrection of Christ; Given that "Damn." He was stuffed with gospel motifs, even skeptics were ready to believe in the likelihood of the appearance of the second new product.

Probably also because Kendrick Lamar is a person who always surprises: since he appeared on the radars about 2010 (before he was known only to the neighbors of more than once the sung by the American hip-hop by the Los Angeles suburbs of compton). The bassist and composer Tanderket, another constant ally of the rapper (and the author of one of the best records of this year “Drunk”), was seriously puzzled in 2016, when he learned about the release of the Lamarovsk album “Untitled. Unmastered. ”, on which there is also his parties, directly on the eve of his appearance in stores. Following him came the turn of the listeners: the rejected demo versions and outlets of Lamara (the header of the disk can be translated as “without name, without mastering”) plugged the license plates of many competitors of the REP community. The producer of one of the tracks was the five-year-old son of the R&B star Alishi Kiz-the context in which Lamar lives and creates, allowed to easily believe even in it.

It's just that Kendrick Lamara is not like the rest. His album “To Pimp a Butterfly” is perhaps the most outlandish leader in recent years: take at least the “For Free (Interlude) track”, in which Lamar reads the text to the accompaniment of a bizarre off-owland collage at a machine gun speed; Of course, it was precisely this composition that it was decided contrary to all logic to release one of the single-and of course, it hit the hit parade and separately. So Kendrick showed that he does not make considerations of format and production calculation. A little further on the album-in the final epic 12-minute track “Mortal Man”-a kind of sound hologram of the murdered hologram in 1996, Tupaca Shakur, with which Lamar entered a detailed dialogue. The legitimization of his own work through a staged conversation with the late classic is a dubious adventure, but Kendrick also did this: perhaps, simply because he had not needed any legitimization at that time for a long time.

And also because the final question of the composition “Mortal Man” (after a long monologue about the content of the album, Lamar is interested in: “Well, what do you think about this, Pak?”) The ghost of Tupaca leaves unanswered. Here is another impressive deception of listener expectations: hip-hop is not alien to the brash, and Kendrick also fully plays out in his songs most of the boastful rap stamps. It seemed that it would be logical to take advantage of the appearance of Shakur so that Lamara “blessing in the coffin,” but this does not happen: Kendrick’s request hangs in the air, the album “To Pimp a Butterfly” ends with an indefinite polytheism.

In this uncertainty is one of the main advantages of his records. Rap, whatever one may say, in the vast majority of cases thinks of himself by the art of direct utterance (sometimes passing and into direct action - the same tupak and his eternal antagonist Biggie Smalls, who also died from an enemy bullet, could tell a lot about this). It doesn’t matter, we are talking about stereotypical bravados about women and cars, about the existence of life in the ghetto, or, for example, about an acute socio-political commentary on the topic of racial non-rights. In any case, the genre historically did not favored any noticeable reflection of the artists about what was said and did not welcome uncertain, confused types-that is, exactly those that Kendrick Lamar periodically reproduces in his compositions. A characteristic example with its breakthrough conceptual album “Good Kid, Maad City” is the composition “The Art of Pather Pressure”, in which the lyrical hero falls into the divorce for the company, is not able to resist the dubious proposals of his friends. Rhyme from the fresh "Damn." - The track “DNA”, which claims that the vicious circle of violence has already been laid in the DNA of those who live in the ghetto. It turns out an unusual story: rap about weakness, about the absence of will, about insurmountable circumstances, which are stronger than a small person who fell into their whirlpool.

Further - more: for every yang, that is, a song with the expected self -confident boletus, there is its own yin - a composition in which Lamar describes fear, confusion, and confusion. The first single with “To Pimp a Butterfly” was a peppy, positive track “I” (“I love myself!” Paned the back vocalist, accompanied by a life-affirming seed from Isley Brothers); Inside the plate, his evil double “U” was discovered - a five -minute of desperate self -flagellation, in which the artist calls himself a “fucking loser”. He does not hide his paranoid fears: he used to be afraid of death, who is in wait for anyone who lives in compton and is probably not in the wretches with the law - Lamar twice felt the cold of a gun assigned to his temple; Now it is worried that his take -off will turn out to be random and short -lived, and with a great creak agrees to buy a modest house in the oriental suburb of Los Angeles - and he is more likely for his parents than for himself. What if the money ends tomorrow? But what if it was just a decade long - and tomorrow he will again find himself in Comton without a penny for his soul?

Tens of thousands of demonstrators at the antitrampic manifestation with a chorus sing his mantra: “We Gon” be alright ” -“ Everything will be fine with us ”; The track "Alright" has become an unofficial anthem against the police arbitrariness of Black Lives Matter. Thus, having not yet reached the thirty years, Kendrick joins the galaxy of the great musicians, whose songs turned into hymns of generation, struggling for his rights, becomes the heir to Nina Simon (“Mississippi Goddam”) or Gila Scott-Heron (“The Revolaution Will Not Be Televized”). Can there be a higher recognition for a black artist? Lamar, however, also hesitates, doubts: in the long, verbose, almost psychoanalytic essay that he published in the XXL magazine before the release of the album “To Pimp a Butterfly” (the very appearance of such a text), he writes: “Young people are all youth, not only African-American-now more than ever the lead. I always knew: I am here not only to compose music. But, as they say in my song “Mortal Man”, I am afraid of the prospect of taking over the burden of leadership. I am so. A simple guy from Komton ... It is with this new responsibility that I am trying to cope now, to understand how to live with her. ” In the final track of the new album, named after his own surname - “Duckworth”, Kendrick reads: “There was always“ peace against me ”, and then I realized that it was more“ I am against myself ”, thus, in this way, with his idol of Tupik, whose main record was called“ Me Against the World ”

The genre of the so-called conscious (conscious) hip-hop has existed since the 1980s-but Kendrick has a completely new consciousness. Formally, the same “to pimp a butterfly” is an album about black and blacks: in the first track, Patriarch Fanka George Clinton arises here, and then the record absorbs all the black music of the last fifty years: Soul, Fank, Jazz (including Free Dzhaz), R & B, R & B, R&B hip-hop. Lamar, however, is all the time as if hesitated to speak on behalf of any racial, social or national group, of some many people-preferring to speak only for themselves instead. And if not for themselves, then at least on behalf of those whom the rap is used to ignoring and not noticing: for example, on behalf of women - like on the first album of Lamara Section 80, where two heroines, Tammi and Keisha, or in the song “You ainʼt Gotta Lie”, where Kendrick broadcasts alternately for his mother and daughter acts.

New consciousness - in this self -digging, in the introverted look at itself and in its place in the world, in the abandonment of populist slogans, which the flock of Lamara would not mind hearing him at all. And yet - in indecision: Kendrick himself is only looking for answers to questions that interests him, and does not know them by heart; Moreover, it fully admits that he will never find them. The author acts in his tracks from a completely different position than the stereotypical rapper “Do as me”, voiced once in Russian by Bogdan Titomir; He puts forward hypotheses, makes uncertain assumptions, always remaining internally ready for what is now mistaken, it will fall into trouble.

But how easy it would be to get frozen! Lamar has long been one of the main characters of current American popular music (objectively - according to commercial indicators and citation index). He is on a short leg with the powers of this world-from Barack Obama, who called his composition “How Much a Dollar Cost” the best song of 2015, to the Lebron James basketball superstar, who, personally lobbied the release of the album “Untitled. Unmastered. " He is a master of an unexpected plot turn - as in the same “How Much a Dollar Cost”, where a tramp, to whom the lyrical hero refuses to give alms, turns out to be the Lord God. Or in the fresh “Duckworth”, where Kendrick exercises in an alternative story, reflecting on the effect of a butterfly: it turns out that his head of his label Top Dawg could easily shoot his own father during the robbery of fast food “KFC” in which he worked.

In addition, he is not just a rapper-Emsi, but a person who is directly involved in creating music on his records. All Kendrick’s associates say one voice-he does not turn to them with the request to just choose a suitable bit for the text, but personally controls all the stages of the creative process, sometimes puzzling colleagues with strange requests associated with his innate synesthesia, the ability to see music as a set of color shades (“Let's make this track light green”). Possessing an unusually sharp instinct for talent, he surrounds himself with brilliant musicians: from the mentioned tanterket to the newspaper saxophonist Kamashi Washington - many of his partners, thanks to cooperation with Lamar, receive a sufficient amount of money and fame to launch their own bright career. It can do without samples at all, as on “Untitled.unmastered.”, And then insert the Yugoslav progressive rock of the 1970s into the same track “Duckworth”. He does not really need guest purchases - but on "Damn." In the song "XXX" appears, for example, the U2 group in full force.

He was able to fully realize the literary potential in the rap: the main notes of Lamara are conceptual albums, in the best traditions of the 1970s rock classics like “The Wall” Pink Floyd or “The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway” by Genesis. In a strange way, despite the obvious log centrism of hip-hop, on its obvious narrative, on the fourth ten of the existence of the genre there are not many conceptual records in it that would tell a single story from beginning to end-and Lamar has already recorded them: “Section 80”, “Good Kid, Maad City” (with a short-term film “Short-grade Kendrika Lamara ”),“ To pimp a butterfly ”. Conceptual elements are also found on the fresh album “Damn.”, Which, most likely, will replenish this list - after network analysts finally read the message contained in it.

Finally, Kendrick Lamar, unlike the lyrical hero of many of his songs, could just - at least formally - to break with a dysfunctional past. He still periodically hangs out “in the area”, and also finances relatives and componial friends, but in his case the story of the ghetto flight - not only in the geographical, but also in a psychological sense - ended at least an intermediate success. Lamar already at school studied for five, despite the cavard surrounding him and communications with bad companies; He received an impulse to the composition of texts from a literature teacher in high school. He does not drink a long time ago, does not use prohibited substances and practices meditation. With his companion of life, Whitney Alford, they have been together for many years.

In a word, there are many reasons why he would suppose to experience complacency, to imagine himself to be a spiritual guru, speak pathetic slogans and lead crowds of adherers.

The fact that Kendrick Lamar does nothing like that is invaluable.

Lev Gankin