The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Kendrick Lamar · executive producers Dr. Dre and Anthony Tiffith · Top Dawg, Aftermath and Interscope · about 79 minutes
Mode
West Coast hip hop rebuilt on live funk, jazz and spoken word, with free passages and a structural poem in place of hooks
Mythos
The pact with the tempter; the slave crowned; the god in a beggar; the descent to consult a dead prophet; the caterpillar and the butterfly
Phase
Sixteen tracks; a poem that grows at intervals and is read whole at the close; a pair, u and i, nine tracks apart; a dialogue with the dead to end
Presentation
Album; sixteen tracks, about seventy-nine minutes, issued a week ahead of its announced date
Register
Bass, horns, keyboards and strings from Los Angeles jazz players, samples and sung refrains; one rapper’s voice changed for each speaker and state
Scale
One man’s crisis, carrying his family, his community, his country’s history and his music’s lineage
Governing Proposition
A rapper at his breakthrough follows it with a long record built on Los Angeles jazz players, funk and spoken word, and threads it on a poem that grows a line at a time until, read whole at the close, it is revealed as spoken to a dead man: success as seduction, self-hatred as the last institution, survival as guilt as much as gift, and a love of self that is also a love of one’s people, asserted at the end more than shown.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The record opens with a contract. Wesley’s Theory is glittering P-Funk, George Clinton’s voice among its layers, and inside the glitter a bargain is struck, and fame is its offer. Uncle Sam speaks for the bargain, and later, in For Sale?, the tempter appears as Lucy, Lucifer in a woman’s name, with her paper to sign. A man from Compton has made it, and the first thing success brings him is a seduction by the powers that held his community down. Everything that follows is the long work of reading that contract and getting out of it.
Top Dawg Entertainment, Aftermath and Interscope released the album on 15 March 2015, a week ahead of its announced date. The executive producers were Dr. Dre and Anthony Tiffith, and the producers a large roster, among them Sounwave, Terrace Martin, Flying Lotus, Pharrell Williams, Boi-1da and Knxwledge. The band is Los Angeles jazz: Thundercat on bass, Kamasi Washington on saxophone, Terrace Martin and Robert Glasper on keyboards, with Bilal and Anna Wise among the singers. George Clinton, Snoop Dogg, Rapsody and Ronald Isley appear. Sixteen tracks run about seventy-nine minutes.
The architecture is a poem. Early in the record a spoken verse begins, and it returns at the close of track after track, a little longer each time, until in Mortal Man it is read whole. Around it the tracks are paired and placed: u, sixth, and i, fifteenth, a titled pair nine tracks apart; two interludes; the public poles of Alright and The Blacker the Berry. The form is a confession that grows as it is spoken, and only at its end does the listener learn who it was spoken to.
Movement II
The sixth track is the record’s hell. A man in a hotel room, drunk, over a bed of jazz, screams at himself and then weeps. The voice breaks and is left broken. Its refrain (“Loving you is complicated”) is addressed to the self, and the charge is specific: among his failures is a younger sister he accuses himself of failing. It is the most frightening thing on the record, and it sits directly before Alright, so that the hope of the next track is heard as the answer of a man who has just said this.
What the record discloses can be stated and it holds. A Black American man raised among violence is courted, once he succeeds, by money, fame and the institutions that held his community down, and the deepest of those powers is the self-hatred he carries in with him. His survival is a guilt as much as a gift. The way out is a love of self that is also a love of his people. Each part is shown somewhere on the record, and u shows the hardest of them: that the enemy has moved inside.
Nine tracks later, i answers. It is placed as a live performance, and the performance is interrupted by a fight. The love of self is tested at once by the community it is for, and that is the record’s best stroke of form. But the answer itself is a sermon, direct where the rest of the record is dramatic, and the butterfly that names the album is explained rather than enacted. The condition is shown. The cure is asserted.
Movement III
At a gas station a beggar asks the speaker for money, and he refuses. The story is told in a patient voice, a man justifying himself, and the beggar is revealed as God. It is one of the oldest of stories, the stranger turned away who was the divine, set in the present, and at the end Ronald Isley’s voice enters as the voice of the refused God. Grace is held at height, and the speaker has already failed the test.
The record builds its myths, more than one of them, and they bear load. The pact opens it. King Kunta crowns a slave who was maimed for running, and the record passes through the hotel room’s hell to a return to Africa in Momma. The gas station is its theophany, and Mortal Man will be its descent to consult the dead. Over all of them stands the metamorphosis of the title, the caterpillar that becomes a butterfly, and the particulars stay particular: Compton, a hotel, a gas station, a sister.
The figures are carried by the sequence, not merely named. But the record cannot leave its largest figure alone. The butterfly is read out and explained at the close, and Lucy is close to an emblem. Where the record trusts its stories, the beggar and the hotel room, the myth is enacted; where it explains them, it is stated, and the statement is weaker than the story.
Movement IV
Alright is the record’s uplift, its chorus rising over a bright, spare beat into something nearer a hymn than a hook (“We gon’ be alright”). The Blacker the Berry is its opposite pole, fury raised to grandeur and turned at the last on its own speaker, the “biggest hypocrite of 2015”. Between them they give the record’s public range: a hope sung by a man who has just been shown to despair, and a rage that names its own complicity. Alright became a chant of the protests against police killings that followed, sung in the street. Few records reach that far.
The turn the record makes is from its maker’s own first major record, good kid, m.A.A.d city of 2012, a cinematic narrative on a commercial sound, and from the trap that dominated the hip hop of its year. It was built on live funk, jazz and spoken word, with Los Angeles jazz players as its band, free passages, a poem in place of hooks, and a closing dialogue with a dead man. A rapper at his breakthrough made a long, dense record unsuited to radio, and risked his audience. The turn was a return to a lineage: P-Funk, the Last Poets, Gil Scott-Heron, the jazz rap of A Tribe Called Quest and the Roots, D’Angelo’s Black Messiah three months before, and Flying Lotus’s own work.
Lamar’s voice carries the making. He changes it for each speaker and each state: the drunk and breaking voice of u, the clipped fury of The Blacker the Berry, the patient narration of the gas station, flows that bend across the beat. The horns and strings move from colour to structure, and the production keeps live players, samples and voices legible through many hands. The second half sags. Hood Politics, Complexion and You Ain’t Gotta Lie say what the record needs at a length it does not compel, Institutionalized restates the opening at lower heat, some mixes crowd, and a few hooks are weak.
Movement V
The last track reads the poem whole, and then a dialogue begins. The other voice is Tupac Shakur’s, built from an old interview, and the confession that has grown through the record is revealed as a conversation with the dead: a young man consulting a prophet who cannot be reached except through tape. At the end the speaker puts one more question and calls to him. Nothing answers. The record ends in the silence after the call.
The record has been taught and written about at length, and it keeps its questions open: whether the butterfly is freed or sold, as the title says it is pimped; whether The Blacker the Berry indicts its speaker or his listeners; whether the conversation with Tupac is homage, séance or a refusal of the prophet’s role. The players of its band, Kamasi Washington and Thundercat above all, found a wide audience in its wake. Eleven years is a short span, the main course of rap did not take up its method, and a share of its presence travels with its maker’s later standing.
What it holds is wide for a record. The mother and the sister; the contract, the dollar and fame as work; Uncle Sam, the institutions and the police; slavery, Africa, the lineage of Black music and the dead; Lucifer, the God in the beggar and the church; gang violence and colourism. One consciousness and one poem join them, and they bear on one another. Every order passes through one speaker’s crisis, and the natural order is a caterpillar and a butterfly. The last sound is a name called into silence, and the silence is the record’s last word on what the dead can give the living.
Act III · The Twelve
Sixteen tracks in about seventy-nine minutes, and the spine passes the subtractive test while the flesh does not entirely. Wesley’s Theory must open: it sets the pact of fame. u and i are required as a pair, the self-hatred and its answer. Alright and The Blacker the Berry are the record’s public poles, hope and a fury that names its own complicity, and Mortal Man is the record’s reason, the poem read whole to a dead man. How Much a Dollar Cost carries the theology. The test bites in the second half: Hood Politics, Complexion and You Ain’t Gotta Lie say what the record needs at a length it does not compel, and Institutionalized restates the opening at lower heat. Length is not charged; perhaps a sixth of it is permitted rather than required.
Score: 8.2 / 10
The disclosure can be stated and it holds: a Black American man raised among violence is courted, once he succeeds, by the powers that held his community down, money, fame and the institutions, and the deepest of them is the self-hatred he carries in; his survival is a guilt as much as a gift, and the way out is a love of self that is also a love of his people. Each part is shown. u is self-hatred in a hotel room, the voice breaking (“Loving you is complicated”). The Blacker the Berry turns its fury on its speaker, the “biggest hypocrite of 2015”. How Much a Dollar Cost finds God in a beggar refused, and Alright states the hope (“We gon’ be alright”). The sound discloses the inheritance it claims. Held off the top because the answer is asserted more than shown.
Score: 9.0 / 10
Elevation comes often and in every temperature. u is terror, a man coming apart over a bed of jazz, drunk, screaming, then weeping. Alright is uplift, its chorus rising over a bright, spare beat into something nearer a hymn than a hook. The Blacker the Berry is fury raised to grandeur, and its last word turns it on itself. How Much a Dollar Cost holds grace at height, Ronald Isley’s voice entering at the end as the voice of the refused God. These Walls is warmth, and the close of Mortal Man, the poem read whole, the question put to the dead and the silence after it, is the summit. Held below the top by frequency: the interludes, Institutionalized, Hood Politics and You Ain’t Gotta Lie stay level, and a register that argues more than it soars keeps several tracks on the plain.
Score: 8.7 / 10
Myth is built, and in more than one pattern. The pact: Wesley’s Theory and For Sale? give the tempter as Lucy, Lucifer in a woman’s name, with her contract, and Uncle Sam as the voice of the bargain. The descent: King Kunta crowns a slave who was maimed for running, and the record passes through the hotel room’s hell to the return to Africa in Momma. The god in disguise: How Much a Dollar Cost is the old theoxeny, the stranger turned away who is the divine, set at a gas station. The descent to the dead: Mortal Man consults a dead prophet, and the last call to him goes unanswered. The metamorphosis that gives the title is load-bearing. Held below the top because the butterfly is read out and explained rather than enacted, and Lucy is close to emblem.
Score: 8.6 / 10
The inheritance is the West Coast rap of its maker’s first major record, good kid, m.A.A.d city (2012), a cinematic narrative on a commercial sound, and the hip hop of 2015, dominated by trap. The turn: a major-label record built on live funk, jazz and spoken word, with Los Angeles jazz players as its band, free passages, a poem in place of hooks for its structure, and a closing dialogue with a dead man made from an old interview. The stake was real: a successful rapper followed his breakthrough with a long, dense record unsuited to radio, and risked his audience. What holds it near the bar is the lineage it returns to: P-Funk, the Last Poets, Gil Scott-Heron, the jazz rap of A Tribe Called Quest and the Roots, D’Angelo’s Black Messiah three months before, and Flying Lotus’s own work.
Score: 8.6 / 10
Change the form and the record loses what it knows, because its knowledge is gained as the poem is: a fragment at first, read again a little longer each time, and only in Mortal Man revealed as addressed to the dead: the confession was a conversation with a lineage. The pairing of u and i, nine tracks apart, is the arc from self-hatred to self-love, and i is placed as a live performance interrupted by a fight, the love of self tested at once by the community it is for. The jazz and funk are not colour: they are the inheritance the record claims, so the sound carries the argument about where the self comes from. The sequence is counted here, once. Held from the top by the slack middle of the second half, where tracks become containers for a theme.
Score: 8.7 / 10
Evidence rather than promise, over eleven and a half years, and more than its age usually brings. The record has been taught and written about at length. It holds its questions open: whether the butterfly is freed or sold, as the title says it is pimped; whether The Blacker the Berry indicts its speaker or his listeners; whether the conversation with Tupac Shakur is homage, séance or a refusal of the prophet’s role. The recording yields on return as well: the parts of the band, the voices Lamar puts on for each speaker, the samples and their lineage. What holds the figure: eleven years forecast more than they show, and part of the yield is the decoding of reference, which, once done, is done.
Score: 8.4 / 10
The field is hip hop and the popular album of the 2010s. The intrinsic force is the larger part: the record showed that a major-label rap album could be built with a jazz band, a structural poem and free passages, could carry the history of Black American music as its sound, and still be widely heard. What holds it at the bar is that in eleven years the main course of rap did not follow its method, and that part of its reach is its maker’s later career. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: Alright became a chant of the protests against police killings that followed, sung in the street, and the Los Angeles jazz players of the record, Kamasi Washington and Thundercat above all, reached a wide audience in its wake, though their own work shares that credit.
Score: 8.5 / 10
Survival is weighed over eleven years and seven months, on what can be shown. The form is whole: the album as released is still the record sold. Presence is wide and continuous for its age, in sale and streaming, in Alright as a song still sung in protest, and in the record’s place whenever its decade is counted; popularity is credited as presence, not proof. The fabric is little fixed to 2015: live players and older samples rather than the period’s production signatures, though the politics of 2014 and 2015 give its words a moment. What holds this lowest of the twelve is time itself, and a charge: eleven years is a short span, and a share of the presence travels with its maker’s later standing. Far below what has lasted a century.
Score: 8.0 / 10
Command of the recorded medium, with the words weighed elsewhere, and the making is load-bearing. Lamar’s delivery is the instrument: a voice changed for each speaker and state, the drunk and breaking voice of u, the clipped fury of The Blacker the Berry, the patient narration of How Much a Dollar Cost, flows that bend across the beat. The horns and strings move from colour to structure, and the production keeps live players, samples and voices legible through seventy-nine minutes and many hands. The faults fall on a share of the record: some mixes are crowded, a few hooks are weak (Institutionalized, Hood Politics), the interludes are thin beside the songs, and the craft does not always justify the length. Its range of voices is the making’s summit.
Score: 8.8 / 10
One law governs the record: the self under seduction, by money, by fame, by institutions and by its own self-hatred, and the long work back to a love of self that is also a love of others. The two most distant elements obey it. Wesley’s Theory, glittering P-Funk with George Clinton, and Mortal Man, a spoken poem and a dialogue with the dead, are the beginning and end of one passage: the pact signed and the lineage consulted. For Free?, a free-jazz rant, and These Walls, a smooth love song with a revenge inside it, are the same bargain, the body as currency. The range is wide: funk, jazz, soul, spoken word, an interview tape, a live performance. The law strains at Complexion and You Ain’t Gotta Lie, which obey it by theme more than by the record’s own physics, and at the sermon of i.
Score: 8.7 / 10
Judged on what the record holds, with no discount for the album form beyond what the definition asks. Consciousness is held fully, its depression and its recovery. The family: the mother whose sayings give You Ain’t Gotta Lie its subtitle, and the younger sister the speaker of u accuses himself of failing. Money and labour: the record contract, the dollar refused, fame as work. The state: Uncle Sam, the institutions, the police. History: slavery in King Kunta, the lineage of Black music, Africa in Momma, Tupac and the dead. The sacred: Lucifer, the God in the beggar, the church. The community: gang violence, and colourism in Complexion. One consciousness and one poem join them, and they bear on one another. What holds the figure: every order passes through one speaker’s crisis, and the natural order is a caterpillar and a butterfly.
Score: 8.2 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.5 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Unconcealment at 9.0, then The Made at 8.8, and The Sublime, The Living Form and The Inner Law at 8.7. A disclosure stated from more sides than most records attempt, success as seduction, self-hatred as the last institution and survival as guilt; a voice changed for every speaker and state; elevation in every temperature, from the hotel room to the call to the dead; a form whose knowledge is gained as its poem is; and one law holding funk, free jazz, a love song and a séance.
Limiting Dimension
The Imperishable at 8.0: eleven years of wide presence, part of it travelling with its maker’s later standing, is a short span. Below the rest, The Inevitable and The Encompassed at 8.2: a second half in which a sixth of the running time is permitted rather than required, and a wide span of orders that all pass through one speaker’s crisis, the natural order reduced to an emblem.
The Necessity Cap clears at 8.2 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears with room: The Living Form at 8.7, The Made at 8.8, The Inner Law at 8.7, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet: The Unconcealment at 9.0, The Archetypal Deep at 8.6 and The Swerve at 8.6 clear the bar of 8.5, and Pressure on Tradition meets it exactly at 8.5, but The Imperishable at 8.0 falls short. The Universal Minimum is met (no axis but The Encompassed falls below 8.0, against 7.5) and The Encompassed, which is exempted, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 8.2. Four of the five summit conditions are met; the summit is withheld on the Epochal Gate, and the aggregate, at 8.5, stands below it as well.
Basis · the standard album as released by Top Dawg Entertainment, Aftermath and Interscope on 15 March 2015, sixteen tracks in sequence, about seventy-nine minutes; executive producers Dr. Dre and Anthony Tiffith; judged from knowledge of the recording, its words and its reception. No recording or lyric sheet was in hand. The album is the unit; no variant edition of consequence is known. The singles, their videos and the stage performances are evidence, not the object. Songs are cited by title, the album’s language is otherwise paraphrased, and words are quoted only where certain and never beyond four words. Facts that could not be verified, among them the track timings, the production credit of each track, the sources of several samples, which tracks each fragment of the poem closes, which tracks particular players carry, the arrangement credits, and the date and occasion of the interview heard in Mortal Man, are not given.