Kendrick Lamar
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What Hip-Hop Owes David Bowie
The Internet has been (rightfully) full of David Bowie tributes in the last week, including a series of pieces about the icon’s influence on hip-hop music. Noisey traced Bowie’s public admiration for hip-hop, beginning with the 1993 clip of Bowie…
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This Week in Posivibes: One More (Great) List
Aquarium Drunkard put out their list of 2015 favorites and like many things they do, it’s pretty comprehensive, respectable, and a great way to catch great music that you’ve missed. Included in the list are Jessica Pratt, Yo La Tengo, Destroyer,…
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Funk Will Never Die
George Clinton spoke to VICE about his work with WOKE, Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly, and how “funk is always gonna survive.” Read the full interview here.
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Kendrick Lamar and J. Cole Collaboration
The rumors circulating about a collaboration between Kendrick Lamar and J. Cole may have been confirmed: in a post highlighting the freestyles that the two rappers put out in honor of Black Friday, Lamar’s sister might have accidentally leaked info…
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Kendrick Lamar and His Orchestra
If, like us, and you were unable to score a ticket to see Kendrick Lamar perform with the National Symphony Orchestra this week, you can watch him thanks to a series of clips posted by The Fader. Watch one after…
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Kendrick Lamar at the Kennedy Center
Kendrick Lamar is collaborating with a symphony orchestra for the first time in preparation for his October 20th performance at The Kennedy Center, according to the Washington Post. The performance will feature songs off of the rapper’s sophomore record, To Pimp a…
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An Anthem for Black Lives Matter
Kendrick Lamar has paired with Dr. Dre to make what may be the #BlackLivesMatter anthem we’ve all been waiting for. On Compton, Dre’s controversial soundtrack to the upcoming N.W.A. biopic Straight Outta Compton, the track “Genocide” says in its chorus:…
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To Pimp Postmodernism
Over at the Los Angeles Review of Books, Casey Michael Henry considers Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly a new bid to revive a “Black Postmodernism”: Not only does the album fulfill many specific qualities of postmodernism, and postmodernism specifically shaped…
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The Rumpus Interview with Tyler Gartzman
Rapper Tyler Gartzman talks about getting high, hypothetically making out with George Bush, not getting laid since high school, and how a white, Jewish kid in Atlanta became a talented hip-hop wordsmith.
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“A Humiliated Boy’s Idea of Manhood”
What do Raymond Chandler’s protagonists have in common with hip-hop artists? At The Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates investigates: “I’ve had the privilege of reading The Big Sleep, between bouts of dabbling with the new Kendrick Lamar. Both works are technically impressive. And both…
