Kendrick Lamar will kill your favorite rapper for money

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBvngg87998

This has got to be the flow of the year and I figure he deserves a thread of his own like Lil B.

Wiki says Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre and Game crowned him the "New King of the West Coast" in August and also that Lamar has seen Tupac in a dream telling him to "Keep doing what you're doing, don't let my music die".

I'd like to see if this goes somewhere!

the fuck your ethnicity beat has been in my head for the last couple of days

yeah, i guess besides being really good it has sort of an embracing feel

i like this guy

need to finally download his album plus maybe a mixtape or two

Lamar has seen Tupac in a dream telling him to "Keep doing what you're doing, don't let my music die"

say no more

did i miss some era of pac's career when he was in freestyle fellowship or something?

kendrick is good... he def seems like a cool person, like hanging out w/ currensy & kendrick would just be really fun

"rigamortis" is really cool too, would like to see him do it w/ an actual live band

album is sneakily one of the better rap albums of the year too, certainly for a debut

Yeah, def. top 5 rap albums this year.

He has this knack for pulling off corny backpacker shit w/o coming across at all like a corny backpacker. But really, he's exactly the black hippy he claims to be.

Thing about this dude is he's not only a skilled rapper, obviously, but his beats/tracks are SO much more interesting (to me, at least) than, like, A$AP Rocky, Spaceghost, Mr. Exquire, and most of the other current, blog-buzzy hip-hop acts. And I like what Clams Casino is doing; I like the Rainforest EP. But I don't know ... I was trying to listen to that Spaceghost record the other day, and I didn't hate it, but ... just how dumb are we gonna allow the rhymes to be before we say enough is enough?

To me, this guy elevates up into the Shabazz Palaces / Serengeti realm rather than all the buzz stuff that just doesn't hold up.

(Tyler/Goblin/OFWGKTA left out of this post on purpose. Dig the beats, but overall, not for me.)

am i the only person who thinks "The Recipe" is kind of a shitty, awkward-sounding song?

yeah, i'm not really a big fan of it

it's okay, nothing really special

the part where dre raps is still just really ill fitting

I put it on my "faves of 2012" playlist without really listening to it and it really doesn't belong there

lol

the production is gorgeous enough to overcome the not-especially-memorable rapping imo

tho obv it's no "cartoon & cereal"

see it doesn't sound very gorgeous to me! drums are so clunky

hmm never noticed the clunkiness before, the strings are what i think of though

just listening to it now, Dre sounds like Kendrick's bored grandpa and Kendrick sounds like he's imitating Lupe Fiasco poorly

Man, you guys are jaded! This track doesn't fill you with joy? The stings? Kendrick's kinda weird sorta singing voice? His constant flow switch-ups? The no-hurry pacing? The shameless summeriness of it all? None of this does anything for you guys?

like I said, it's okay

and the Lupe Fiasco compare is just harsh! I mean, yeah, dude is in entertainer mode here, but the shit coming out of his mouth still makes sense

i had no concept of it being summery in any way until i listened close enough to figure out what the words in the chorus were. the flow in KL's first few bars is really really awkward imo.

I actually like how off the drums are, too. They're mixed to sound the way all drums do when you're driving really fast with the windows down and the radio turned way up

i didn't really get into it until i heard it on the radio driving down the freeway and then i decided i loved it

recipe is awesome

'drums are so clunky' this sounds like criticism for dummies type shit

recipe is one of the best songs of the year imo

i would like it way better if it just didn't have dr. dre on it

i dont see why this is the best he's sounded in years

ive said this elsewhere (or here maybe, too, i don't remember) but dre's parts on it sound 100% like kendrick karaoke, which makes sense since kendrick of course wrote the verses.

but idk i find it distracting and kinda embarrassing... not as much as "i need a doctor" but it def has the feel to me of an old baller trying to do a bunch of and 1 tricks or something

Yeah, I agree with that; the verse is not Dre's voice (in so much as Dre even has a voice these days). I give it a pass, though, just because his presence is so iconic and it's a key part of the song's Visit L.A. sales pitch

Dre's verses have always been karaoke

u sound young

he used to be better at hiding it

thats silly. ppl used to criticize his rapping all the time & they were wrong then too

xpost I dunno, 2001 was pretty much all Dre karaoke and it was awesome in part because of that (this was the beginning of his "so what if I use ghostwriter? no shame in it phase.") I think the problem is he's never had a ghostwriter with a voice as distinct as Kendrick's

i dunno, he used to seem less slavish in his imitation of his writers. i kind of put the fault on kendrick for writing dre something so obviously in his own voice tho.

eminem?

xp i don't buy that. jay-z, eminem, snoop, cube, doc?

yeah, eminem/snoop/cube were all strong voices too, obviously, but their personas heavily overlapped with Dre's in a way that Kendrick's doesn't. They all have their quirks, but there are a lot of interchangeable verses among the four of them. Kendrick is a real outlier

i kind of put the fault on kendrick for writing dre something so obviously in his own voice tho.

yeah, this is kind of true, but I give him a pass since I like the verse well enough anyway

i dont think kendrick is an outlier, its just a new voice
'forgot about dre' is super obviously a bunch of em verses in like every way, we just give it a pass cuz we heard it a bunch & its a dope song

yeah i don't know how you could consider kendrick's flow more distinctive than now "eminem" dre's verse in forgot about dre was

i dunno, maybe it's just that i didn't realize he didn't write his own raps at the time, but dre sounds way more "himself" on the chronic and 2001 to me.

totally agree; the ghost verses on "Forgot About Dre" were all angry and defensive, so they played on the popular image of Dre in a way that was believable enough

it must have been hard for eminem to channel than angry and defensive vibe dre wanted

for me it's less about the content than the rhythms

otm

some spin on the ball here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwamhuY6Yy8

Oh Azealia

She’s not wrong. Extra points for (surprisingly) bugging up Homeboy Sandman.

"she's not wrong"

right. the author cannot be wrong about their own fantasy world.

azealia far from boring, give you that much

"women and geminis know things" not her best work (grimes smelling like a roll of nickels)

Azealia bringing Biden into the beef is exactly why calling someone a pedophile in a sing-song catchy way isn't so different from what Trump does (even with hints and allegations).

lol, okay. now i've heard it all

Yay new display name time

(even with hints and allegations).

If you’ll be my bodyguard

Why do we have to pay any attention to Azealia Banks

The answer lies in the ending of a much more confusing version of "Death of a Salesman"

I’m very interested in how any of these songs chart.

not like us and euphoria are both gonna be in the top 3, idk about family matters but you'd think it'll be way up there too.

Euphoria debuted at #11 on the Billboard 100
Push-ups is at #17

twitter is once again shadowbanning chart data, so we may never know

That #11 is from only two days of streaming though

"Not Like Us" will be eligible for next week's chart but was only available for 5 days of that week

saw that it had the most streams for any rap song ever with some criteria that i dont remember

It had most streams for a rap song in a single day-- 6.8 million

Seems like its been consistently the #2 most streamed song on Spotify (behind something called "Million Dollar Baby")

These are global Spotify numbers for that week, but:

Espresso- 67.8 million
Not Like- Us 60.2 million
Million Dollar Baby- 59.5 million
Euphoria- around 50 million

not like us has been number one on apple music since its release but they don't share streaming numbers

Seems like its been consistently the #2 most streamed song on Spotify (behind something called "Million Dollar Baby")

The #Hot100 top 10 (chart dated May 18, 2024)

— billboard charts (@billboardcharts) May 13, 2024

xpost Yeah, that’s a good song. Not what I was expecting.

https://www.stereogum.com/2263317/kendrick-lamars-drake-diss-not-like-us-debuts-at-1/news/

all of those are diss tracks, which makes Kendrick the king of disrespect.

King of Dissful Thinking

And it’s only taking into account the first four days or so? With current numbers It will probably be remain in #1 for three weeks straight.

yeah, not that it's a completely reliable metric but "not like us" has been in last.fm's top 5 trending since it dropped, usually at 1 or 2.

i don't really know last.fm too much but i'd say it feels pretty reliable in the context of all the other data out there

lol i just realized we are totally nate silvering kendrick right now like fuckin primary polling

i dont know from charts but i found myself at a club on saturday and can confirm that when the DJ dropped "not like us" the entire place went absolutely nuts like nothing else all night

I was at a New Hampshire diner and they were happy that Kendrick was going after pedophiles but wanted to know more about his Border policies.

dis records arent real life!

it will probably be pushed out of #1 for at least a week by the new post malone/morgan wallen song :(

The best top ten in recent memory.

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/dj-akademiks-sued-rape-defamation-ziya-abashe-1235019646/

wait what if kendrick lamar is my favorite rapper

o snap

Are post malone and morgan wallen beefing?

if a tree falls...

More like if a chair falls

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvtCNC_VkEg

#keepitcanadian

buddy gotta keep it canadian

keep it canadian by apologizing

Drake Off, eh

"Not Like Us" is gonna have a fight on its hands going forward what with Richman nipping at its heels and that Morgan Wallen/Post Malone track doing crazy numbers.

yeah, MDB is streaming ahead of NLU globally. The Post Wallen song had a big first day then dropped to 4th in succeeding days.