Kendrick, in picking unified beats and session musicians that worked great together, displays the same kind of foresight and genius. Dre, meanwhile, also obviously made beats for Snoop Dogg, N.W.A., and others, but he also launched Aftermath Records, which directly or indirectly discovered Eminem, 50 Cent, and Game. RZA coached all 9 members of his clan to huge success, making all of their beats and business decisions (such as what label each group member, like Raekwon, would sign with.) Dr.
In this way, then, Kendrick shows the ability to guide his unofficial artistic collective as well as RZA did Wu-Tang, or Dr. But, of course, most of those aesthetic choices were made by session musicians, not Kendrick himself, who almost definitely doesn’t know any harmonic music theory. TPAB sometimes comes across as a live performance of a jazz quartet where the lead singer just happens to be rapping. On this song, normal, triadic (3-note) chords are replaced and extended to have lots of notes (into chords that include 4 or even 5 notes.) These extended, spacy chords are reflected all over the album, as on “Institutionalized,” or the opening of “Hood Politics.” Jazz has been in rap for a while, as on Tribe Called Quest’s songs. For instance, there are tons of jazzy chords on “For Free?”. What I think is interesting about Kendrick’s own unique type of unification is that it doesn’t consist primarily of subgenres of rap, or the sounds of his songs it actually consists of strictly musical aspects, like harmony. The difference is Jay-Z follows the sound of his time, while Kendrick, like Kanye,is currently defining it. Jay-Z probably has one of the best ears for a beat in the game - discovering Kanye, discovering 9th Wonder - but Kendrick is right behind him. In fact, “Complexion (A Zulu Love)” has a grand total of 4 producers listed! But somehow, overall, Kendrick managed to pick beats that all sound related. But every track except 1 has more than 1 producer listed in the credits on Wikipedia. But it’s actually Sounwave who appears the most on tracks, a total of 7 times. For example, we have Pharrell, Flyin Lotus, and Boi-1da as credited producers.
It has an incredibly unified sound, even though there are many different producers on it. Kendrick’s TPAB, then, is an album that falls into the latter category.
(I can even compare Kendrick’s TPAB album against Kendrick’s other album, “good kid, m.A.A.d city,” which I reviewed in another article that you can read by clicking here.)
I mention all of this for two reasons: 1.) To show that I can judge Kendrick’s TPAB against a lot of other rap albums, and 2.) To show what kind of listening treatment To Pimp A Butterfly got from me. That’s almost a week’s total of listening to only that single song, and that play count doesn’t even take into account how many times I’ve listened to “Dip-Set Forever” elsewhere, like on my iPhone. That works out to 372.4 minutes, or about 6.2 hours. For instance, one single song - “How We Do” - occupies 4 different playlists on my computer (a swag one, a Top 10 Dre Beats one, a workout one, and another playlist.) In fact, iTunes tells me that I’ve listened to Cam’ron’s song “Dip-Set Forever” 95 times, which is about 4 minutes long. Now, I know a lot of rap albums, and practically study them over and over through playing them not just all the way through in one take, but also on multiple mixes and playlists. Let me set the tone for this piece right off the bat: To Pimp A Butterfly is the greatest rap album of all time.