The second season of Alex Pappademas’ podcast The Big Hit Show is here and boy is it ever good. The pop culture deep dive show made waves in January after revealing that they had secured a rare Kendrick Lamar interview for a multi-episode examination on the rapper’s vital 2015 album, To Pimp a Butterfly. The first episode titled “Hello Kendrick” was made available today.
Marking in at just under an hour, the episode features not just Kendrick, but Flying Lotus, Sounwave, DJ Quik, Anna Wise, Rapsody, Thundercat, and TDE’s Punch. The show even secured the iconic George Clinton to tell his version of events surrounding the recording of album opener “Wesley’s Theory.”
Kendrick’s Lamar’s obsession with funk is also discussed along with lost sessions with Prince who the team desperately tried to get on the album, as is the recording of centerpiece “u.” Don’t miss it.
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Here’s what we had to say about the album on our decade retrospective:
Lamar’s skills as an MC are in full form here. His flow elastic, use of words incomparable, story telling ability unmatched, and his bone demanded to be picked. An entire community's worth of different inflections with more thoughtful content, original sound, and creative use of background vocals-- many of them Kendrick’s own-- progresses the different voices from GKMC into a full ensemble cast. Every song whether it be lounge smoker or club banger is about living poor and Black in America. If “Institutionalized” is about equality then “These Walls” eases us with the spirituality of copulation. If “For Sale? (interlude)” is Kendrick impersonating Satan, then “How Much a Dollar Cost” is Kendrick betraying God. “Momma” is about youth, “Hood Politics” is about the rap game. Even the singles never stray from the mission of encapsulating the experiences of minorities and American economic disenfranchisement; “King Kunta” draws a tight Thundercat bass measure on Sounwave’s house party beat to create a song primarily about a slave who gets amputated, while the seething “…Blacker the Berry” tackles African American stereotypes and Trayvon Martin in a thoughtful, aggressive, if not self critical manner.
There really is nothing like it. 16 excellent songs with spacious production, knocking drums, and Lamar’s Miles Davis-like inability to do the same thing twice. It’s gone on to become a symbol of black excellence in its thematic combination of jazz, revolt, poetry and God. To Pimp A Butterfly will be timeless in what it did to document the social issues of the era and for its advanced futuristic musical arrangement all pulled together by the definitive songwriter of the era.
The second season of Alex Pappademas’ podcast The Big Hit Show is here and boy is it ever good. The pop culture deep dive show made waves in January after revealing that they had secured a rare Kendrick Lamar interview for a multi-episode examination on the rapper’s vital 2015 album, To Pimp a Butterfly. The first episode titled “Hello Kendrick” was made available today.
Marking in at just under an hour, the episode features not just Kendrick, but Flying Lotus, Sounwave, DJ Quik, Anna Wise, Rapsody, Thundercat, and TDE’s Punch. The show even secured the iconic George Clinton to tell his version of events surrounding the recording of album opener “Wesley’s Theory.”
Kendrick’s Lamar’s obsession with funk is also discussed along with lost sessions with Prince who the team desperately tried to get on the album, as is the recording of centerpiece “u.” Don’t miss it.
<iframe style="border-radius:12px" src="https://open.spotify.com/embed/show/5Sny24r7KfBeSmKjaT2HzL?utm_source=generator&theme=0" width="100%" height="232" frameBorder="0" allowfullscreen="" allow="autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture"></iframe>
Here’s what we had to say about the album on our decade retrospective:
Lamar’s skills as an MC are in full form here. His flow elastic, use of words incomparable, story telling ability unmatched, and his bone demanded to be picked. An entire community's worth of different inflections with more thoughtful content, original sound, and creative use of background vocals-- many of them Kendrick’s own-- progresses the different voices from GKMC into a full ensemble cast. Every song whether it be lounge smoker or club banger is about living poor and Black in America. If “Institutionalized” is about equality then “These Walls” eases us with the spirituality of copulation. If “For Sale? (interlude)” is Kendrick impersonating Satan, then “How Much a Dollar Cost” is Kendrick betraying God. “Momma” is about youth, “Hood Politics” is about the rap game. Even the singles never stray from the mission of encapsulating the experiences of minorities and American economic disenfranchisement; “King Kunta” draws a tight Thundercat bass measure on Sounwave’s house party beat to create a song primarily about a slave who gets amputated, while the seething “…Blacker the Berry” tackles African American stereotypes and Trayvon Martin in a thoughtful, aggressive, if not self critical manner.
There really is nothing like it. 16 excellent songs with spacious production, knocking drums, and Lamar’s Miles Davis-like inability to do the same thing twice. It’s gone on to become a symbol of black excellence in its thematic combination of jazz, revolt, poetry and God. To Pimp A Butterfly will be timeless in what it did to document the social issues of the era and for its advanced futuristic musical arrangement all pulled together by the definitive songwriter of the era.
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