Ready to Pimp a Butterfly Dropout: the hip hop concept album

As a historian, I feel leery at claiming that every ten years or so, a hip hop album emerges of such fundamental importance that the genre is changed thereafter--a simplified (and potentially spurious) notion of history-in-cycles. And yet, when I first heard Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly last week, I almost immediately thought of a 10-hour road trip I took in 2005 with Kanye's College Dropout effectively on repeat for the whole time because I was so thoroughly entranced with the album. That was ten hours each way, resulting in almost a full day's worth of 'Ye when all was said and done. I would do the same for To Pimp a Butterfly in a heartbeat, and I cannot think of an album that has had such an immediate effect on me. My only question is why it took me until last week to discover it, but at least I can now rectify my ignorance by listening to it incessantly on repeat while at work.

When I listened to College Dropout a decade ago, I was struck by the singular sound that 'Ye had managed to produce, a sound that was very unlike what had come before. He did not limit his producing skills to his own album, but also worked with artists such as Common to incorporate this new hip hop aesthetic that featured soaring vocals and grandiose sounds:

But while Common's challenging rhymes were ideally paired with this new and challenging sound, one could argue that some of 'Ye's lyrics delved into the mundane (seatbelts for safety first) or even the absurd (pick whatever you want, there are plenty of examples):

In contrast, one of the most notable features of To Pimp a Butterfly is the sophistication of both rhymes and sound on the album. In fact, Lamar conscientiously fuses references to blackness in a variety of media to create a reflection on black culture as a whole. It is, I feel, nothing short of a masterwork, while simultaneously featuring tracks as catchy as this one:

There is much to be said about this video (and much has been said already) and about the imagery itself, turning around the main character of Alex Haley's Roots from a slave into a king--Kunta Kinte has taken over Compton as King Kunta, replete with a throne sitting in his driveway. Just as Lamar reimagines this iconic 70s black figure, he reinvigorates funk while drawing on its main indicators. It's hard not to hear the numerous exhortations of wanting the funk at the end of the track as parody.

If you haven't heard the album, please do not think of 'King Kunta' as typical of its sound. In fact, there is no 'typical' sound as each track ranges widely from sultry, jazzy big band:

To a Curtis Mayfield-inspired track that might simultaneously reference Kanye's 'Touch the Sky' (the repeated lyric in the chorus 'I love myself' could not be a better parody of 'Ye, really):

And beyond! Including spoken word tracks and a dialog with Tupac. That's right, he's still releasing albums from beyond the grave.

To Pimp a Butterfly is also quite clearly a concept album: a work that is meant to be understood as a coherent whole rather than what most albums present, which is an assemblage of individual tracks that do not depend on order. That Lamar sees the tracks as interwoven is undeniable since he presents a series of spoken-word lines at various points in the album. The first two lines are heard after 'King Kunta,' then are repeated and expanded as the album continues. It is only in the final track, 'Mortal Man,' that the poem is heard in its entirety, presented in a 'dialogue' with Tupac that intersperses a 1994 interview with Lamar's observations. That Lamar is reflecting on hip hop--and by extension, black culture--is apparent throughout To Pimp a Butterfly in subtle and blatant ways.

By presenting a concept album, I also see a parallel between Lamar's project and Notorious B.I.G.'s Ready to Die--an album that came out in 1994, so almost twenty years ago in keeping with the 'every ten years' idea. I would not characterize Ready to Die as a reflection. Instead, it is a provocation, from its lyrical content to its front cover, which features a black baby juxtaposed with the album title. Biggie was seeking to capture his world with its oppression and paradox, a world where a black man was ready to die as soon as he was born.

The reception of Ready to Die, particularly through its radio-friendly songs such as 'Juicy' and 'One More Chance' (in the remixed version specifically), makes it easy to forget about the more hard-hitting tracks that appear on this album as well. Through them, we are exposed to the ways in which the protagonist sees the world: at times its hope and promise, but also its insurmountable difficulties that eventually lead the narrator to suicide on the final track. 'Juicy' is the most optimistic moment of the album, although the verse opens with the line 'It was all a dream,' creating an immediate (and unanswered) question about whether the song should be understood as truth or fantasy. There is no ambiguity about how this album ends: a gunshot and an incredulous friend on the phone who has aurally witnessed a suicide.

Just as I am reluctant to claim that there is some mandated ten-year cycle for hip hop albums that indelibly change the genre, I am equally wont to suggest that hip hop is 'evolving' as time goes on--genres do not evolve so much as they shift and change. What I would suggest instead is that these three albums demonstrate the profound variety of responses that hip hop has grown to accommodate: from Biggie's provocation to Kanye's stylization and now Lamar's sophistication. If you haven't yet had the chance to listen to To Pimp a Butterfly, I hope you will take the time to check it out, as I have only scratched the surface in terms of what could be said about it.

Questlove's Contemplations on Hip Hop, Week 1

Esteemed hip hop artist Questlove will be sharing his thoughts about the current state of hip hop in a series of six posts that will be appearing on Vulture.  We are lucky people!  I feel certain that his observations will inspire a number of responses and I wanted to start by offering one here.  If you haven't read the post yet, I would highly recommend that you take a moment to do so because it offers an insightful look at some of the ways that hip hop has morphed over time.

Questlove's main concern is that hip hop has simultaneously become omnipresent and impotent.  Because it is everywhere, it is no longer challenging the norms--instead, it is reinforcing them, ensuring that the top artists remain at the top and making it difficult for others to obtain the same success.  He notes that few black musicians are succeeding in any other style, which he sees as a dangerous shift.  For those who would argue that this situation has happened before--and that it will correct itself in the future--Questlove responds that hip hop, itself, will likely not survive because popular music styles tend to disappear once they start their decline.  While there are historical cycles, Questlove claims that the specific artistic forms do not come back.  The fact that hip hop is no longer conveying truths suggests that its time is over.

In some respects, history does repeat itself.  In fact, much of what Questlove is observing in hip hop did occur previously in American culture, with jazz.  And it was jazz--or at least the styles that derived from jazz--that helped lead to hip hop.  I guess you could either say the dinosaurs are dead (Questlove) or that the dinosaurs evolved into birds (my argument). 

Indeed, many of the critiques that Questlove has for hip hop now were also leveled against jazz at various points in its long history.  Today, we are accustomed to thinking of jazz as a fixed phenomenon, but in reality the term was coined only in the 1920s to describe a new style of music.  What precisely it comprised was up for debate.  Jazz brought together a number of earlier styles, most notably ragtime and the blues, both of which were typically associated with African-Americans.  For the most part, these styles had been limited to specific geographical locations since it was hard for an aural tradition to travel far before recordings became widely available.  Some areas, such as New Orleans, had further developed specific practices that were unique.  However, the term 'jazz' eventually encompassed all of it.  There were later developments too: big band, swing, and cool jazz, to name just a few.  Also free jazz.  Free jazz will be back.

Questlove feels that hip hop's reach has gone too far, spawning such concepts as 'hip hop fashion' and even 'hip hop architecture,' which has little to do with the music itself.  But I think he errs in his claim that this type of conflation is unique to hip hop.  There is another clear parallel with jazz here, since there was such as thing as 'jazz fashion'.  Significant changes to women's clothes were associated with jazz, specifically 'flappers' and the dresses that were best suited for dancing to this new music.  Were these clothes tied to some previously unknown truths revealed by jazz?  I don't think so, but it's notable that this term is linked in such a ubiquitous way.  In fact, there is an entire 'jazz age,' a moniker not yet applied to our era with hip hop.

Some of Questlove's critiques sound familiar and have been heard before about jazz.  As Ingrid Monson has demonstrated, many jazz performers were criticized for their lack of engagement with civil rights movements during the 1950s and 1960s, which led to music that was perceived as being less relevant to society.  Black nationalists also felt that jazz would help spur their movement, as Michael Hanson has shown.  Specifically, these organizers claimed that free jazz would be ideal since everyone could participate in whatever way they innately felt.  The problem, of course, was that free jazz is, you know, free jazz, and people weren't really all that into it.  They went with funk instead, then wound up disappointed when it had a great beat for dancing but little to no political engagement. 

Questlove's first article in this series brings up the question of what hip hop has achieved in its forty-year history.  As he notes, 'the music originally evolved to paint portraits of real people and handle real problems at close range.'  'Evolved' is an important term here.  Certainly hip hop did not burst forth as a means of social critique when it started, unless the soggy macaroni described in 'Rapper's Delight' is considered a 'real problem at close range.'    In fact, hip hop may have accomplished more in terms of raising awareness about the injustices inherent in the African-American situation than any previous popular style.  Albums such as Straight Outta Compton and Ready to Die did convey the challenges unique to black people in a direct and confrontational way--and in a way that jazz never achieved.  As Eithne Quinn shows, the gangsta rap that emerged in the late 1980s/early 1990s reflected a population that was actively oppressed, and these songs targeted the oppressors.  But for the most part, this socially engaged hip hop with a popular following was limited to only a small part of hip hop's forty-year history--perhaps about a decade.  This is not to say that other artists have not been creating music that is socially engaged, but instead that the albums most associated with this specific type of civil rights issues are only one part of hip hop's legacy.

It is entirely possible that hip hop will never achieve this level of insight toward the culture from which it emerged again.  But I don't see this as necessarily the death knell for this style.  The roots that jazz provided were deep and strong, resulting in countless later movements.  Funk emerged from jazz, leading to disco, which provided the ground for the first experiments in hip hop.  More likely, then, the phenomenal influence of hip hop will be channeled into new movements and approaches, which is typical for any type of popular music.  I somehow doubt that black musicians will be absent from this discussion; after all, their importance for the early influences of jazz, and several of its key transformations, cannot be overstated.  Questlove, as an artist, is justifiably concerned for the style of music that he has made his own.  As a historian/critic sitting behind a computer and with little at stake in this argument, I can afford to take a broader view.

Either way, I am looking forward to installment 2!

Great Rap Beefs in History: The Fondue Chapter

In a thought-provoking post for this blog about Nas and the National Symphony Orchestra, Kira asked, 'Are hip hop artists performing the politics of respectability in these spaces?'  This past weekend reinforced to me the fact that hip hop artists have obtained respectability, as evinced by the fact that they have entree into all kinds of 'venues' from which they were previously shut out.  Three examples will suffice:

1) Hip hop is all the freak over NPR: Yes, NPR.  The station that has long demarcated a certain higher level of radio culture--and is generally perceived as the choice for white, educated listeners, as this parody evinces: 



In the past week alone, I have listened to hip hop appearing on numerous shows, mostly in a contemplative or esteemed light.  There was the Radiolab segment discussed previously on this blog.  Jesse Thorn, on Bulleye, offered his take on Nas's Illmatic as the best hip hop album of all time.  A segment on Ask Me Another featured a version of $25 000 Pyramid involving hip hop songs, with actor/comedian Hannibal Buress providing the clues.  Evidently, NPR believes that its listeners are conversant with 'classic' hip hop, enough so that they will understand the clues of this game.  I think that NPR is correct here, but this is a bold statement about how completely hip hop has been absorbed into contemporary American culture.  Also, there is a very white rap of 'Rapper's Delight' here (at around 1:30).  The contestant even substitutes 'NPR' into one of the lines.  That's right.  There is now, theoretically, an NPR rap.

2) Hip hop at hockey: I attended Game 2 of the Tampa Bay Lightning versus the Montreal Canadiens on Friday night.  During the second intermission, as the zambonis were driving around the ice, they were accompanied by the start of Notorious B.I.G.'s 'Hypnotize.'  This is new, at least since 2011.

I cannot think of a single sport that is whiter than hockey.  When I was a kid, there would be, literally, one black player in the league at any given time, and that one guy was Grant Fuhr (there is a whole Wikipedia category for precisely this topic). 

 'Hockey music,' in my experience, tends to reflect this demographic.  Favorite styles include heavy metal (perhaps not surprisingly, this track gets played to start the third period at Lightning games) or dance music from the 90s.  Yes, it must be from the 90s.  Yes, it must be dance music.  You might be wondering what we listened to before that and the answer is organ music and Stompin' Tom Connors.  A great example that is even featured on the EA Sports 2011 NHL Game:

Biggie?  No.  I used to think that the fact you could hear hip hop anywhere was notable, but that was at bars and such.  Now that you hear it at hockey and on NPR, I am willing to declare that we have reached a new era of cultural saturation.

3) Terrible rap beefs on TSN: What is TSN?  The Sports Network.  It is the Canadian equivalent of ESPN.  And you won't  believe what Drake said this week on TSN about Jay-Z. At least, you shouldn't believe it, because it's pretty silly:

Drake claims that Jay-Z eats fondue.  From a plate.  If you can imagine.  I can't because I don't know, exactly, how you eat fondue from a plate.  It needs some kind of warming mechanism to keep it viscous, like the type traditionally placed under a fondue pot.

Let's take a moment here.  What does this even mean?  Supposedly, that Jay-Z is not keeping it real, because only fancy people eat fondue.  At least, this seems to be the general interpretation of this statement.  He has moved beyond bougie, to whatever class where you eat fondue off a plate on a regular basis.  Now, I am not, by any means, advocating a return to the violent outcomes of previous rapper beefs.  But when one side is accusing the other of fondue eating?  That seems like we have entered a new level of respectability, to go back to Kira's quote.  Drake made no claims against Jay-Z's ability to rap or produce or do all of that music stuff.  He just might be a little high-faluting for your average person.

Be sure to read this story on A.V. Club, which features some classic commentary on this particular beef.  Perhaps Alton Brown will weigh in for Team Jay-Z.  Perhaps Jay-Z will respond by besmirching poutine.  Perhaps those radio bleeps ('f******') really are bleeping out 'fondues.'  'Cheese rules everything around me.'  And let's not forget that Jay-Z has claimed in the past that he 'checks cheddar like a food inspector.'

Stay tuned for what shapes up to be the most mouth-watering rapper beef ever to go down.  Or at least one of the most respectable.

The Hip Hop Musical Work: Notorious B.I.G., Puff Daddy, and Authorship

For the record, I did not change my name. I always have been and always will be PUFF DADDY! :) Be cool Man lol #MMM #BigHomie RT!!!!
— Diddy (@iamdiddy) March 25, 2014

With this recent announcement, P. Diddy morphed back into Puff Daddy, and what better way to celebrate this momentous occasion than reconsidering his role in producing the works of Notorious B.I.G.?  This topic will be the subject of at least two (maybe more) posts, particularly how we view the role of the producer and his relationship with the artist--or perhaps, if these two roles should be separated.  In fact, it is a complex problem that, I think, can be understood in a number of ways.  While this situation is more common to the world of popular music, which depends heavily on collaboration, I would suggest that older notions of the artist and work continue to predominate--and that there may even be parallel situations in classical music that have caused difficulties for scholars and performers alike.

This post will consider the role of the producer more generally and how these roles contribute to the work.  In a future post, I intend to look more closely at specific tracks from Ready to Die and analyze what exactly Puff Daddy does on them--but honestly I have not had the time or energy to do that.  So let's start with producers as a general phenomenon and go from there.  Actually, let's start by making fun of one particular producer, Lil Jon.  I feel pretty confident that readers of this blog are familiar with this video:

(Ed. note: I also feel quite confident that readers of this blog are familiar with this parody of Lil Jon, but it really is super funny when watched immediately following a video with Lil Jon.  I think that the only possible way that this sketch could have been better would be if after receiving his ticket, Lil Jon had yelled, 'LET'S GO.')

The humor here lies in the fact that the only obvious audible contributions by Lil Jon are these little, short phrases that are ultimately throw-aways and seem almost meaningless in comparison to what Usher and Ludacris do (and the pimp cup.  Let's not forget the pimp cup.  If you want your own, they are available on Amazon).  But without Lil Jon, would the title of the song be rendered as yellingly throughout?  Doubtful.

While I kid somewhat, Lil Jon here is more like a rousing DJ, a person who typically yells a variety of lines to the crowd to get everyone pumped.  Lil Jon takes on that role at the end of the video, when he gives out a series of dance steps to perform--this part often gets cut for the radio/club edit of this song.  In essence, then, he is closer to a DJ Kool in his contribution:

Is this great art?  Maybe not.  Does it have a beat and make you want to dance around?  I would submit that indeed, it does.  And that is the purpose here.

But what we are not witness to, in the Lil Jon example, is his actual production of creating beats, mixing the sounds, and putting the whole together.  This is significant, because there is a disconnect between his self-stated contributions (which include on 'Yeah,' 'Okay,' 'Let's Go' and other quick phrases) and what he has actually done for this track.  We hear Usher sing (and in the video, see him dance).  We hear (and see) Luda rap.  We hear Lil Jon yell 'YEAH' and see him walking around with a pimp cup--there are no intense scenes of him in a studio selecting beats, putting them together, and mixing them.  While those who are aware of the intricacies of making this kind of music would undoubtedly appreciate the contributions of Lil Jon within this process, more popularly, he becomes reduced to the parody seen on the Chappelle Show.

There is perhaps no better producer than Puff Daddy in terms of adding 'Yeahs' to a track (there are, in fact, multiple 'Yeahs' by all three artists--Puff Daddy, Biggie, and vocalist Total--in the first 20 seconds of this track):

In this case, Puff Daddy is far less in the DJ Kool mode of rousing the crowd and instead seems to be some kind of Biggie echo to the verse.  However, his contribution was vital for making this track palatable for radio and this was the first hit single from the CD.  This is no mean feat.  Many of the tracks on this album were in no way suitable for radio, in terms of language, subject matter, and even sound.  In fact, it was Puff Daddy who changed 'One More Chance' from a track that verges on X-Rated (and is on the CD) to the remix that most people are familiar with today:

The original track

The remix, aka the one you know

These are, ostensibly, two entirely different songs, and this example may even call into question what constitutes a remix in the first place (there are a few shared lines, but very few).  Here is where the problem comes in, for me.  What are we valuing as Notorious B.I.G.'s contribution here?  Is it the verse?  If so, what does it say that the original verse is almost wholly absent in the remix?  Because surely that must have, to some extent, been the influence of those around him.  And if it is, then that leads to the question of, ultimately, who authored this track.  Maybe the guy who loves yelling 'Whoo' in the background (he also did in 'Juicy') is the real creative force here.

In a piece that reminisced about the creation of this album that appeared in the March 9, 2004 issue of XXL, the various contributors to Ready to Die (and writer Adam Matthews) characterized Puff Daddy's contributions in a number of ways (from this point forward, Puff Daddy is PD and Notorious B.I.G. is NB).  While Matthews credits PD with providing the vision for this production, he also labels PD as perhaps the first 'overbearing executive producer to hip-hop.'  This characterization infers that Biggie's art was compromised by what PD did on the tracks, even though the success of the album was highly dependent on these precise songs.  In his discussion of the track 'One More Chance, producer Digga also remembered PD as apart from the rest of the crew, a person who changed the atmosphere when he entered the studio:

Puff was in my ear every 10 seconds in that session. When me, Big, Cease and Klept and some of the crew was in the studio it was all good. But once Puff came on the scene everything got tight. At the time, Puff was still learning about production and he wanted to show that he knew something about music. He wanted certain arrangements. And I was looking at him like, “What the hell is this guy talking about?” We’d listen to him for half a second, then we’d be like, “Yeah, whatever.”

Digga's anecdote suggests not only that PD was new to the business, but that he was less knowledgeable than those already working on the track.  The commercial success of the remix, however, suggests precisely the opposite.

In his discussion of the track 'Juicy,' which got to #1 on the US charts, producer Jean 'Poke' Oliver gave credit to PD for identifying Mtume's 'Juicy Fruit' as a good sample and seeking to make a more radio-friendly track for the album.  If you are not familiar with the Mtume video, I must insist that you familiarize yourself, because it is something else:

Poke also recalls that NB felt he was working in a style that was not natural to him in creating this track:

Big thought it was a popcorn record. He wanted to make all gangsta records. But Puff knew at the time radio wasn’t into that gangsta rap stuff. Big was like, “Yo, this guy is trying to make me an opera singer.” But Big was going to do everything that Puff asked him. He was at least going to try it. Once it became a hit, he realized: “These are the records I need to make.” When you get into this game you want to be a hardcore rapper, but those records only go so far.

 (Ed. note: an opera singer?  Paging Renee Fleming, again).  Again, this calls into question how we should view this work.  Of course, the lyrics should be credited to NB.  But would this track exist without the influence of PD?  Would NB have achieved the same level of success?

Lord Finesse, who also assisted with the album, suggests that without PD's contributions, there would not have been the same level of artistry:

When I first worked with Big, he was as street as you can get. You couldn’t get any more street than what Big was rapping about and what he was bringing to the table. But him and Puff were both growing at an incredible rate, between Puff being at MCA getting ready to go to Bad Boy, and Biggie just being able to absorb what Puff was sending him like a sponge. Biggie watching and learning Puff was like Payton and Malone, ya know? Puffy dishing it and Biggie capturing and scoring, dunking. That combination was incredible.
Puff was at a point in his career where he was growing at an enormous rate; he had Craig Mack, and he’d just come off Mary and Jodeci. He was ready to show the world. He was able to sculpt Big to not only be an underground artist, but to be well rounded. To not just dunk, but be able to finger-roll, crossover dribble, to be the best player he could be in the game. And Big learned it real, real quick! When Ready To Die was almost done, Big had all the raw street incredible songs, and Puff said, “Okay, you got to do what you wanted with the album. Now let’s do what I want to do with the album.”
Big was like, “Puff said to do this, so I’m going to do it. Puff let me do what I want to do, so I’m going to do what he wants too.” Because of that, putting his ego to the side, like, “I’ma try this,” that gave him the edge. And after that, he tried everything and it all worked! It was crazy.

The basketball simile here that compares Gary Payton and Karl Malone to PD and NB is one of the most generous in this article.  In this sense, PD is working with NB to set him up to score points; they need each other to succeed, and could not replicate the same success on their own.  I like this version much more than the image of the overbearing, inferior producer that is so prevalent in this article--or the 'yeller of phrases,' Lil Jon model.  Lord Finesse's recollection is that it was NB that provided the raw material, but that PD also had a vision for it.  In this version, both are working on the same level and contributing in the same way.  In fact, there is more of a mentor/mentee relationship here, with NB learning from what PD can teach him.

Yet despite all of the collaboration that took place on this album, at the heart of it, NB remains the artist most generally acknowledged.  This suggests that we are still stuck in the idea of authorship/work, and while the audible presence of PD forces us to acknowledge that he is at least somehow involved, it is worth noting just how many other, less acknowledged people worked on this project as well.  This is not to say that NB's contributions are not unique and valuable; the fact that the lyrics for the song 'Things Done Changed' are included in the Norton Anthology of African American Literature confers the idea of authorship upon him in the most traditional sense.  But perhaps things have done changed, at least in the sense of whose artistic product this album truly is.  Without the heavy hand of PD, it is almost impossible to imagine what the ultimate sound would have been.  Of course, this influence will only become more acute with later NB tracks, particularly when only raw materials remained after his death, but that is the subject for another post.