Kendrick Lamar vs. Drake

[Horus]

The two are currently engaged in the highest profile rap beef since Jay-Z and Nas over 20 years ago, possibly since Biggie and Pac. While I hesitate to call Drake a rapper due to his constant singing and inability to write his own lyrics, whose music do you prefer?

[certified hummus supporter 🇵🇸🤝🇺🇸🤝🇺🇦]

K-Dot has been absolutely DEMOLISHING Drake with Euphoria and Meet the Grahams

[Since I'm the mad scientist proclaimed by myself]

drake is garbage.

[Kamala's side hoe]

The American over the Canadian. I don't think listening to more Drake and more of Kendrick's more recent content will change my opinion.

[wnwnwn]

Drake sings better, Lamar raps better.

[Progressive Pessimist]

Drake is maybe the worst highly successful rapper to ever exist.

[Neo-Malthusian Misanthrope]

Neither, I can see people losing brain cells in real time by following this

[Horus]

Neither, I can see people losing brain cells in real time by following this

Do you just not like rap? Kendrick is a very cerebral artist. To Pimp a Butterfly in particular is an absolute masterpiece.

[Neo-Malthusian Misanthrope]

Neither, I can see people losing brain cells in real time by following this

Do you just not like rap? Kendrick is a very cerebral artist. To Pimp a Butterfly in particular is an absolute masterpiece.

I wouldn't say I dislike rap but I'm definitely not too keen on it these days. I wrote a massive rant here a few weeks back about how TPAB is the most overrated record ever, but even if you like that everything else he's done since has been a step down. The guy is so high on the smell of his own farts at this point he makes Kanye seem humble. And the less said about Drake the better.

[GeneralMacArthur]

OK this is off topic but To Pimp a Butterfly is one of the most overrated albums ever made.  Kendrick's rapping is incredibly inconsistent and all over the place, he can't stick to one musical or thematic idea for more than two verses, and even songs that could've been good are ruined by skits and cutaways and goofy voices and such.  Which is a shame because a lot of the instrumentation and production is really good and this could have been a truly fantastic album if Kendrick himself hadn't ruined it.

There's only two songs on the record that have more than 150K plays on Spotify -- King Kunta and Alright.  Only three other songs get over 100K.  Compare to GKMC which is older but has six songs with over 400K plays and another four with over 100K.  And then every song on DAMN is over 100K with again six being over 400K.  Even Mr. Morale, which was poorly received, is much more popular.  My point being, people say this is a good album, but they're not actually listening to it.  Nobody wants to listen to these songs.


Wesley's Theory:  This song has a killer beat and a lot of good ideas but Kendrick is all over the place and never really lands on anything consistent, it's just a hodgepodge and ends with annoying screaming.

For Free:  This is actually my favorite bit of the album because it's the longest snippet we bit of Kendrick fully committed to rapping and staying on flow with full technical precision -- for most of the rest of the album he can never stick to anything for more than thirty seconds without f--king around.  I also really like the improvisational jazz sounding beat he's rapping over.  That said the song sucks because the first half of it is just some girl yapping, and Kendrick's actual lyrics are whiny bulls--t trying to sound deep by saying they're about America and the system, man.

King Kunta:  This song could've been good but right in the middle when it's hitting its stride, Kendrick decides he doesn't want it to be good after all and the second half of the song is just him trying to claim the legacy of black funk artists by saying the word "funk" a lot with really no purpose or ideas.  This is also our first introduction to the "I remember you was conflicted" poem that Kendrick reads a half-dozen times on the album, consuming nearly five minutes of album time with a repetitive waste of space that's constantly killing any momentum the album tries to build up.

Institutionalized:  GKMC already did the same concept of this song way better than anything Kendrick has to offer here, and his flow is terrible, and the chorus is terrible, and the "zoom zoom zoom" bit is dumb.  Snoop Dogg sounds good on this but he's not on it enough to save the song.

These Walls:  This is one of the best songs on the album but it starts with 38 seconds of sex noises followed by the word "sex" in case you didn't get it.  I think part of why this song works is it's just about Kendrick taking revenge on a guy in jail by f--king his girl, it's not trying to make some big commentary on America and black society or whatever.

U:  This song is absolutely terrible and unlistenable and the people who say it's one of Kendrick's best songs are the same people who say Revolution 9 is their favorite Beatles song.

Alright:  It's fine.  It's the big hit from the album but I never thought it was as good or interesting as Kendrick's other big hit singles.  By the way, if you check out the music video for this song, there's a little interlude Kendrick does before the actual song starts (2:00-2:30 or so) that sounds way better than anything on TPAB.  Unfortunately he's never made this a full track, not even on Untitled Unmastered.  On YouTube this snippet is the most-played segment of the music video.

For Sale:  Is this the worst track Kendrick has ever done?  It takes two minutes to even get started and then it's Kendrick rapping completely off-beat in a really annoying affected fake voice where he keeps repeating "Looshy" over and over and over.  It's a shame because the chorus is actually good, this could have been a good song but his rapping is just terrible.

Momma:  Another song that could have been good, I like the minimalist beat and Kendrick's spoken-word style of rapping here is kind of interesting at least.  But the second verse where he repeats "I know" as the start of every line gets really old, and there's not really anything to hook you into this song and make you want to listen to it more than once.

Hood Politics:  Maybe the most annoying chorus Kendrick has ever done, and the beat is terrible.

How Much a Dollar Cost:  This is the best song on the album, and it's illustrative to examine why it's better than everything else.  It tells a cohesive story that we're interested in and can follow, it sticks to it from start to finish instead of being jammed with cutaways and bits of skits and poetry, Kendrick sticks to the beat and has good technical flow and raps in his real voice instead of doing his "I'm too good to make a rap song" thing he's doing elsewhere, and it has a point.

Complexion:  "Dark as the midnight hour or bright as the mornin' sun, give a  about your complexion, I know what the Germans done" is a terrible bar.  But Kendrick is only barely on this song, half of it is Rapsody who isn't good.  "For my Solomon up north, twelve years a slave" was pretty egregious in the dying days of hashtag rap.

The Blacker the Berry:  This song kicks ass and the beat is great, but I don't think it's aged very well.  "Been feelin' this way since I was sixteen, came to my senses, you never liked us anyway, f--k your friendship, I meant it... You hate me, don't you?  You hate my people, your plan is to terminate my culture, you're f--king evil, I want you to recognize that I'm a proud monkey" I mean this is the powerful opening of the song and while stuff like this may have been cathartic in the early days of the Black Lives Matter movement, it comes off as kind of corny and try-hard now in my opinion.  And yes I know this is Kendrick taking on a persona (that's the excuse for every off-putting song on this album) but it's try-hard in that endeavor.  Still, this is the second-best song on the album and I've ridden around Seattle banging this out my window.

You Ain't Gotta Lie:  This song is 80% repeated chorus.  Nothing special about it.

i:  Corny, and then the entire second half of the song (and the first thirty seconds) is a skit.  And it's a really painful skit because it's the worst example of Kendrick trying to sound deep and faux civil rights leader but just comes off as corny and try-hard.  It's like a weak Tupac / Malcolm X impression.

Mortal Man:  This could have been one of the better songs on the album, but it's only four minutes long and the last eight minutes is Kendrick pretending to have a conversation with Tupac where he cuts up bits of old Tupac interviews to make it sound like Tupac's responding to what he's saying.  It's very silly.

[Never Made it to Graceland]

Lol. It wasn't written for you.

[Horus]

Lol. It wasn't written for you.

I would say its closest historical comparison would be Coltrane's A Love Supreme which at the time many people didn't like either. GMac's insistence on a linear story being told is the same thing the critics of free jazz said back in the day.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Lol. It wasn't written for you.

Pretty sure I could have written literally anything and you would have posted this, and that you wrote this after reading the first sentence of my review and didn't even bother with my actual thoughts on the album.

I would say its closest historical comparison would be Coltrane's A Love Supreme which at the time many people didn't like either. GMac's insistence on a linear story being told is the same thing the critics of free jazz said back in the day.

while TPAB suffers from simulating a narrative form while not actually having a story, linear or otherwise, that is not the primary problem with the album.  "Zoom zoom zoom zoom zoom, zoom zoom zoom, zoom zoom zoom zoom zoom, life, can be like, a box of chocolate, quid pro quo, somethin' for somethin', that's the obvious, oh s--t, flow" wouldn't be any better of a musical experience if it was part of a linear story.  The Looshy section of For Sale, and Kendrick's drunk hoarse screaming on U, are both part of what could pass for a linear story, and they're the two worst verses on the album.

A Love Supreme is ok but not really anything more than the sum of its parts.

[DaleCooper]

Couldn't tell you the names of any songs by either.

[ꙮ]

Neither of them can hold a candle to Gudda Gudda, the greatest lyricist of the 21st century.

[Never Made it to Graceland]

Lol. It wasn't written for you.

I would say its closest historical comparison would be Coltrane's A Love Supreme which at the time many people didn't like either. GMac's insistence on a linear story being told is the same thing the critics of free jazz said back in the day.

What's this poetry crap at the end of each song? Why does he keep saying "I remember you was conflicted?" What a corny gimmick. He should be more like Eminem.

[Pheurton Skeurto]

Obviously Kendrick because my reading level is above a 6th grade level

[Rand]

If they had a son his name would be Kendrake Lamar.

[Ferguson97]

Kendrick is both a better artist and not a groomer, so easily him.

[HisGrace]

Meet the Grahams transcends being a diss track and is a great song period, and I don't even really like hip hop. Drake is a worthless manufactured pop star pretending to be a rapper and the mask got ripped off him.

[Horus]

https://twitter.com/USA_Polling/status/1790787034195362048?t=HAul_muTBT9LCTkEsmt...

[bagelman]

Lamar I think is winning the rap battle against Drake. I've listened to some of Drake and he comes across as controlling towards women, but I haven't listened to a second of Lamar's music.