To Pimp a Butterfly
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To Pimp a Mockingbird: A Lesson Plan
Literacy, you know firsthand, is a tool, is a motivator, is the beat of education.
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The Rumpus Interview with Rion Amilcar Scott
Rion Amilcar Scott discusses his story collection Insurrections, father relationships, hip-hop, knowing when to abandon a project, and choosing not to workshop certain stories.
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A Language Only We Can Hear
Kendrick Lamar’s debut album “Good Kid, M.A.D.D. City” contains the basic, essential elements of a novel: a protagonist faced with an antagonistic outer world, plot and its arc—from opening scene to crisis to climax on down to denouement, a narrative…
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Obama Answers the Big Question
Kendrick or Drake? YouTube vlogger Adande Thorne asked President Obama the big question, and Obama went with Kendrick Lamar. “Got to go with Kendrick,” President Obama responded, as reported Consequence of Sound. The President continued to say, “I think Drake…
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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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Sound & Vision: Tony Visconti
Legendary producer Tony Visconti talks to Allyson McCabe about working with David Bowie, his own touring musical super-group Holy Holy, and his thoughts on the music industry today.
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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 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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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…