"The Blacker the Berry"- Kendrick Lamar (Prod. Boi-1da)

Weird. Claustrophobic. Ferocious. Militantly black. Proud. Conflicted. I could be at this all day long and not exhaust the Oxford Dictionary for adjectives describing "King" Kendrick Lamar's head turning "The Blacker the Berry." The dude's grasp of the language and his knowledge of its potency is greater than entire English departments, so you're "better off trying to skydive..." than parse one of his tracks. It's far less of a Herculean effort to sit back and listen, though listening can be taxing too.

That's undoubtedly true of "The Blacker the Berry," which pummels you with Boi-1da's "Funky Drummer" percussion and makes you shiver with the zombiefied guitar circles. It most closely resembles "m.A.A.d. city" in terms of suffocating atmosphere, but even that feels tame in comparison to this. Lamar snarls a lot more on this one and plays into the utter paranoia of it all by suggesting schizophrenia in the intro. It's unnerving when he pointedly asks "you hate me don't you? You hate my people, your plan is to terminate my culture." Where before the city was "maad," now the kid is. And he's not sure what to do.

The "naïf," "idealistic" teen that accompanied us then has rotted into a man who can't come to terms with the fact that he's internalizing all of the racial hatred faced by Black Americans and unleashing it on his "kinfolk." He's weeping over the death of Trayvon Martin, and then killing someone "blacker than me." Whatever preaching he's doing with the Panthers is being negated by penitentiary trips. The chains binding his ancestors now entice Lamar to snatch and run, without the least bit of concern for his fellow man. Arguably that's the greatest tragedy of the Ferguson or Los Angeles riots; entire groups of people feel so "institutionally manipulated" that they stop giving a shit about their own communities. What's the smell of a dead neighbor when the trash has been picked up in weeks?

Despite the savior status he's often tagged with, Kendrick doesn't have any answers on "The Black the Berry." That's not what the song, which pays homage to the similarly conflicted "Keep Ya Head Up," is about. It's all about painful self-reflection, the sort that leaves you realizing "I'm the biggest hypocrite of 2015." If you leave the piece unaffected that's your fault, not Kendrick's. He's doing everything he can to expose generational plots and see through deceits. What other "King" works that hard?

(Details on the new LP are still scarce, but I wouldn't be surprised if it dropped at some point between now and festival season.)

"i"- Kendrick Lamar

T.I. had a 2006 album where he proclaimed himself King. In the same year Pusha T's regal status was signified by a cockeyed crown he wore on the cover of Hell Hath No Fury. Hip hop's seen "the best rapper alive," "superheroes," and a "rap god." But every last one of those artists feels distanced from their audience. In being royalty you naturally slip from the everyday tedium of normalcy. The longer you sit on the mountaintop, the less time you have to commune with the villagers down below. 

One glaring exception to the rule and perhaps the only legitimate claimant to the title of king is "King" Kendrick Lamar. Between good kid, m.A.A.d. city's runaway success in 2012, the Twitter-breaking "Control" in August 2013, a particularly firebreathing BET Cypher session last October and a continuous stream of breathless guest verses in 2014, Lamar's firmly established his kingship. But he's also retained his "humanity" in the process. He headlines festivals while still rocking those Nike Cortez shows and white tees. Lamar still lays his head in Los Angeles and shows up to local radio stations to let the hometown hear a new single first, a single where he cops to lacking confidence. 

That new single, "i," has already been discussed to death for being "too pop," "too breezy," a sure-fire bet to soundtrack a Disney movie in the next five years. With its shuffling guitar, clopping pots and pans percussion, communal clapping and message of having to love yourself before you can love anyone else, it is poppy and breezy. Those liquid solos you hear in the chorus, pulled from the Isley Brothers' "That Lady," are the sort of thing that would've played in any number of 70s cop flicks. But Kendrick Lamar raps his ass off on this one. With absolute ease he stacks up images of "A war outside and a bomb in the street, and a gun in the hood and a mob of police, And a rock on the corner and a line full of fiends." If that weren't enough to allay fears, his message of loving yourself first isn't new terrain. Since day one he's shown us how far someone can go if they believe in themselves; continually exhorting himself and his audience to go farther. And of course this is just the first taste of what's to come from the third LP. There's a strong chance this is the "radio friendly" track Lamar pushes to make label execs happy before dropping another classic of chaos and confusion in the 21st Century. Whatever the case may be, Lamar can rest easy. The crown's not going anywhere for now.

There's no set release date for Lamar's third LP, but you can watch him discuss the process of recording the new album on Power 106.

"Blockbuster Night Part 1"- Run the Jewels

In my original review of El-P and Killer Mike's Run the Jewels collaboration I wrote that the rap bffs succeeded in "recasting rap threats as an art-form." While that was an accurate description of their brilliant, mechanical, stream-of-consciousness onslaught, I wish I hadn't used the phrase. Now I have nothing to say about "Blockbuster Night Part 1," the first sampling of RTJ2. What the hell looms above an "art-form?" How can you get larger than life with your chest-puffing?

If you're Killer Mike, you get there by bidding listeners "top of the morning, my fist to your face is f***ing Folgers," as sirens wail like a child who has had their favorite toy taken away. People tend to sit up like a board when you suggest that "the fellows at the top are likely rapists," as El-P does. Especially when that kind of hierarchical takedown is coupled with arrhythmic drums and broken police scanner static. This isn't some political crackpot convention though, it's a thoroughly reworked routine where RTJ "disappear in the smoke like we're f***ing magicians." "Blockbuster Night Part 1 is an orchestrated "macabre massacre." It's bold enough to tell Satan "be patient," but relaxed enough to burn through a pound of weed. As Killer Mike puts it, "it's murder, mayhem, melodic music."



Like the original Run the Jewels, RTJ2 will be available for free download and physical copies will be out October 28 through Mass Appeal. RTJ also has an Adult Swim single dropping on September 15. It's going to be a brutal couple of months.