Sure: SZA feat. Kendrick Lamar, “Doves in the Wind” — SZA rides a horse with style, Kendrick Lamar levitates, and his alter ego Kung Fu Kenny plays the master teacher in SZA’s narrative sendup of classic martial arts films, complete with chin-stroking tropes and ninja imagery that’s dramatically cliché in parts. -…
Kendrick Lamar again heightens the art of the music video with his SZA collaboration, “All the Stars,” from the Black Panther soundtrack. Directed by Dave Meyers and Lamar’s Top Dawg crew “the little homies,” this is an oil painting in motion, rich with imagery of Lamar rapping as opulently dressed black men stand…
You might remember last year when Adele, crying and cradling her Grammy for Album of the Year at the end of the night, tearfully told audiences that Beyoncé actually deserved the award.
Following the release of 4:44, Jay-Z continues to share intimate details of the marital turbulence he and Beyoncé have weathered. In a video titled “Footnotes for 4:44,” he, along with many other men of color, discuss toxic masculinity and its reverberations.
Kendrick Lamar, like many of us, remains weary of the world, suspicious of its false progression—and of his own. He feels incapable of trust: in the system, in friends and family, in himself, he tells us. And amid this uncertainty, he’s anxious about intimate relationships, too, searching for certainty somewhere. His…
“DNA” is the most relentlessly rapped track on Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN., an album that plays like a deep, critical exhale from the intensity of To Pimp a Butterfly. The song now has a video, where we find Kendrick—a pretty good actor—locked in an interrogation room with another pretty good actor, Don Cheadle, who jokes,…
This June edition of the Wokest Baes, just like Sam Smith’s discovery of racism, is better late than never. And before anyone gets too verklempt, yes, of course I saw Jesse Williams’s BET Awards speech but he was honored last month and I’ve got to give every worthy woke bae a shot. Onto June’s wokest baes.
In the middle of a Fourth of July celebration at the White House—in fact, his last one ever aw—President Barack Obama broke out in song to wish Malia a happy 18th year on this here crumbling Earth.
Beyoncé opened the 2016 BET Awards with a ferocious performance of “Freedom.”
In the opening stretch of track seven on Untitled Unmastered, Kendrick Lamar runs down what sounds like a list of things that can’t quite elevate you like his music can. It’s mostly a series of nouns, a catalog of positive and negative forces. Love, drugs, fame, chains, juice, crew, hate, life, He, She. They all…
It might’ve felt endless but the Grammy Awards broadcast eventually drew to a close. And amid performances good (Alabama Shakes) and bad (that Lionel Richie tribute, good God) and just WTF (the Hollywood Vampires????), they did hand out some awards.
On Monday night, Kendrick Lamar performed a medley from his Grammy Award winning album To Pimp A Butterfly, including “Blacker The Berry” and “Alright,” demonstrating what a show from an artist with vision should look like.
Following the release of songs like “Real Friends” and “No More Parties in LA,” Kanye West, according to Kanye West, has completed “the best album of all time.” Do you believe him? You want to, right?
“Pink fur got Nori dressing like Cam” is obviously the best line of this track on listens 1-10, and despite it, Kanye sounds less like a dad here than on any other tracks he’s teased from SWISH, out February 11, so far. “No More Parties in L.A.” is the fruit of a My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy-era session, and…
God damn, that’s a smile. Here’s another.
Kendrick Lamar, with the live backing of the Roots, performed about five minutes of straight mellifluous bliss, while debuting a new untitled song on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon on Thursday.
This year’s Grammy nominees are out, and for the most part, it’s business as usual: a bunch of people who topped sales charts, a couple of wild cards and seemingly random choices (Meghan Trainor, Best New Artist?) and Taylor Swift.
Y: Alessia Cara’s “Wild Things” is a worthy theme song for people who like to stare blankly at so-called cool kids, and it’s the perfect follow-up to the antisocial-butterfly message of “Here.” It’s hard not to feel a kinship to lyrics like, “We will leave the empty chairs/to those who say we can’t sit there.” [Fader]
Kendrick Lamar performed hits from his sophomore album, To Pimp A Butterfly, on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert Wednesday night, wearing fresh cornrows and an all-black outfit with two modest necklaces.
A bright spot on an otherwise bleak album, Kendrick Lamar’s “Alright” instantly feels necessary. Besides being the most celebratory jam on To Pimp a Butterfly, it’s a modern-day liberation anthem. It’s that first salvational gasp after nearly drowning. Yet, for such a happy song, “Alright” is innately sad. By design,…
