Most importantly, the album set the stage for their eventual move to Nas headed Mass Appeal brand and the Run The Jewels 2. There’s a reason why the album received 2013’s Album Of The Year. El-P’s production grew even more evolved while Killer Mike’s rhyming became even more chaotic and accurate. The a-ha moment the following year came in fashioning themselves an actual group in the form of Run The Jewels. West.īefore Run The Jewels, both Killer Mike and El-P collaborated for something that would become a breakout moment for two artists at crossroads within their careers, R.A.P. Every other song was a careful exposition of pop/rap sensibilities (the dominant form of rap during the 2000s) and it culminated in an overly serious rehash of “Who Will Survive In America.” The answer was Mr. Once again he switched his entire aesthetic, crafting a back handed apology in “Runaway” and skewering SNL for poking fun at the artist on “Power” during his time away. So much went into the making of this record (the famous Hawaiian studio sessions, the flying out of classic and up-and-coming artists and producers to the island etc.) but it was the mythos he created around himself that pushes this album into the rap canon. After a few forced non-apologies and months of laying low the emceeĮmerged with an album that was an artistic achievement. Well, that and the idea that he actually takes awards seriously, which in itself is bizarre. In his defense, the Henny (and maybe Amber Rose) made him do it. West in a wet suit of shame as artists and pundits decreed him the worst human in the history of humans for his interruption of Swift at the MTV Music Awards. The Taylor Swift incident stained the mercurial Mr. Like DX Editor-in-Chief Justin Hunte said, “ To Pimp A Butterfly” is ambitious in its attempt to inspire a generation to change the world for the better and poignant enough to actually do so.” Kanye West – My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy The end result was an album that mixed Black Nationalist themes with production damn near scoping the entire history of urban music. By the time the release date was surprisingly moved up to a Sunday night in late March, all Hip Hop could do was stand and watch. Dot’s future release called bits and pieces “unapologetically black.” Of course, the lead up to what would be called To Pimp A Butterfly would only add to the hype starting with the extremely aggressive “The Blacker The Berry,” reveal of the now iconic cover art of his homies in front of the White House and tracklist. Even artists as big as Pharrell with knowledge of K. Was the TDE star going to go commercial or be affected by his controversial Grammy loss? Then there was the polarizing single “i,” released at the end of 2014. There was lots of anticipation and questions for Kendrick Lamar’s follow-up to his groundbreaking sophomore album good kid, m.A.A.d city. Still, others changed the shape of the genre’s entire sound. And while some albums are culturally important, others are artistically and entrepreneurially so. So whether it’s Beyonce dropping an album completely out of the blue or Jay Z selling a million records before his album officially spilled out into the streets, the music business has changed almost as dramatically as the artists making the tunes. The youth culture has gotten both more commercial and more private as virtual communities fill in the gaps between Internet culture and real life ones, and the music has followed suit, becoming both more personal and more sprawling and more referential. The ‘10s have been an amazing time in Hip Hop and rap music. Make something not so great and you may get skewered to high heaven, especially if your art is considered derivative or nonsensical. Create something great, and the people will love you for it, usually. It is your moment in the Hip Hop sun the moment you finally get to have the floor in the rumbling, jubilant mess hall of your genre. It’s a stop in time, a signpost along a dirt road of art or the paper chase or whatever reason you’re in the game. The album is the still the magnum opus of anyone’s career.
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