With Drunk, Thundercat gets a little more real even as his music gets a bit more cerebral. True to the album’s name, the music is self-deprecating, anxious, spaced out, and hilarious — often during the same song.

“A Fan’s Mail” sees Thundercat dreaming about turning into a cat (and literally meowing about it). “Uh Uh” has some unreal bass lines that feel like the product of Nintendo and cosmic drugs. “Walk On By”, which features Kendrick Lamar, sounds like it belongs on To Pimp a Butterfly. But “Show You the Way”, the preceding track, is a soft rock track that features both Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins.

Despite their myriad of differences, these songs are united by their common love of jazz and jazzy experimentation. Make no mistake, even when he’s experimenting with synths and pop beats on album standout “Friend Zone”, Thundercat is channeling his favourite jazz icons.

All of this makes Thundercat’s latest record as hard to classify as always. But one thing is certain: Drunk is certainly more upbeat than Thundercat’s last record, The Beyond / Where Giants Roam. While They Beyond dealt with death and transcendence, and what happens in “the beyond” after our lives are over, Drunk seems to embrace our morbidity in life and celebrate it (with a healthy dose of partying and drinking). Hence the title.

In a lot of ways, Drunk feels like a reaction to 2016. The songs aren’t all politically charged, but there are many that deal with being black. Thundercat’s take on this is racially charged, of course, but also lyrically ironic (which isn’t surprising). But on the flip side of that, Thundercat’s leaving his wallet at the club and getting drunk and friend zoned as he tries to sort out the mess that is life.

It all feels like a poor way or dealing with stress — which maybe we can all relate to, at least a little bit.

In it all of its idiosyncrasies, Drunk feels like Thundercat being his most relatable — even if it is drowning in experimentation. It’s a can’t-miss record that celebrates life and runs away from it, often in the same breath.

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Partially, that was to avoid being reactive: while it’s easy to hop on the same bandwagon as everybody else and claim a record to be the best of the year, it’s also very easy to make a mistake with claims like that and look foolish later. Hindsight is 20/20, but I needed time to step back before saying anything that would look ridiculous later.

At this point, it seems conclusive — and even President Obama agrees — that Lamar owned 2015.

What’s not as conclusive is how important To Pimp A Butterfly will be five years from now. I’d go so far as to say that the album is the most important of the decade thus far. It’s not just its jazz experiments — although that’s definitely a part of it — but it’s also the album’s cultural significance.

As Lamar explores his status as a rich black man exploring Africa for the first time and going back home to Compton, he incidentally sheds light on his generation’s biggest plight in cities like Ferguson. As black people (and other non-white nationalities) are mistreated and abused by police, To Pimp A Butterfly feels like a call to act — and a call to recognize each other as people. It’s an incredibly important record that shines a light on the way music can speak for our culture, and how it draws attention to the real issues we otherwise might not have even noticed.

The standout from the record is, no doubt, How Much A Dollar Cost. Against a laid-back jazzy beat, Kendrick discusses an encounter with a homeless man who asks him for money and reveals himself later to be God. Kendrick’s lyrical and rhythmic abilities as a rapper here are unparalleled, as he explains and justifies his behaviour despite knowing he’s sometimes no better than the white racist.

It’s not just that song, of course. Alright has become the theme song for the Black Lives Matter movement. The Blacker The Berry is powerful, and Kendrick’s live performances of the song seem to generate a simultaneously rabid and uncomfortably tense response from its audiences. And at the end of i, Kendrick breaks out a spoken word performance that’s hard to top.

But top it he does, with a so-well-done-it-feels-real interview with Tupac that Lamar scraped together with a bunch of unreleased tapes. It caps off an unbelievable album on a somber note: some things never change.

It’s more than the lyrics that make the album stand out, though: the music itself is incredible. To Pimp A Butterfly is one of the jazziest hip hop records ever made. It’s not a jazz record, but it has so many of the greats on it (like Terrace Martin and Thundercat) — as well as some new faces (like the immensely-talented Kamasi Washington). And it oozes the same sort of sexual, raw, and kinetic energy that the best jazz records eked.

Not to mention the way Kendrick Lamar uses jazz’s best inclinations to continually surprise the audiences with unpredictable beats, rhythms, and song structures. It makes To Pimp A Butterfly immensely rewarding with deeper listening.

There’s a point in the album, around the For Sale? Interlude, when you realize you genuinely have no idea what Kendrick is up to or where he’s going with the whole record. It’s full of surprises. And by the time it’s done, you let out a giant exhale, no matter how times you’ve heard it before. While Alright and King Kunta are great singles, it’s clear that the album is best when you listen to it from beginning to end without skipping a track.

Every ten or fifteen years, an artefact comes out of our pop culture that seems to be the perfect depiction of something happening in our society. It happened fifteen years ago with The Lord Of The Rings, a film trilogy that seemed perfectly time to capture our fears and hopes concerning the War on Terrorism. With To Pimp A Butterfly, we have something similar: a time capsule that is perhaps the closest thing to a perfect record that we’ve ever had, but it also means so much more. It’s our time, no matter how bad it is, recorded onto vinyl. It’s a thing of beauty.

The post Kendrick Lamar: To Pimp A Butterfly appeared first on Unsung Sundays.

But then I listened to the album, and you know what? Three hours doesn’t feel that long.

The Epic truly lives up to its name: it’s 170 minutes long. Even on CD, it’s spread over three discs. (On vinyl, it’s three records with two sides each.) It’s long.

It’s also epic in a scope that goes beyond the track listing: Kamasi leads a ten-part group that includes names like Thundercat and Miles Mosley. And beyond those ten band members, there’s also a twenty-person backing choir — and a thirty-two piece orchestra. (But who’s counting?)

Despite all this, the album never falls under the weight of itself, which is an accomplishment. More importantly, though, it doesn’t feel three hours long.

Let me clarify a little bit here: three hours is a long record, and The Epic is very long. But if somebody told you they could tell you everything you needed to know about a topic, and it would take three hours, would you consider taking them up on their offer if the topic interested you?

That’s how The Epic is, except the topic at hand is jazz music. Over the course of three hours, Washington will inaugurate you with the basics and surprise you by teaching you some advanced jazz skills as well. The length of the record is a small price to pay for what you’re getting in return.

Washington’s been playing jazz with a lot of people for a long time, and he’s well aware of the form. In fact, The Epic includes some classic material. But what makes Washington so approachable is his ability to appropriate other genres into his understanding of jazz, giving the album moments that feel funk-inspired, or soul-like, or even influenced by hip hop.

It’s a unique combination only Washington could be blessed with, thanks to his extensive repertoire. Prior to this album’s release, he was most well-known for playing saxophone on Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly. His hip hop influence is obvious. But for a moment, it looked like that would be what he was known for. The Epic will silence everybody who thinks of him as a one-trick wonder.

The wonder we see in Kamasi Washington and hear in The Epic are nearly inseparable from one another: Washington is the equivalent of a musical chameleon, playing phenomenal, complex music that pushes genre forms forward regardless of who he’s playing with. That ability to shape shift is so jazz-like, it shouldn’t be surprising that The Epic lives up to its name.

For once, though, it’s nice to be surprised: The Epic is epic non-ironically, and it’s going to launch a public conversation around jazz we haven’t had together in many years.

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