Most Overrated 2015: Kendrick Lamar

I like Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly  a whole lot, when the first single dropped “The Blacker The Berry”, I was ready to anoint it album of the year sound unheard. But when I heard it, it was too weird to be great. It was too clever to be cool. It was too deep to be meaningful and songwise? There weren’t enough. It was a rap album for people who thought Flying Lotus has something to say with his impenetrable tech wiz instrumentals. It is like they all listened to A Love Superior and missed the point.

And if that overstates the case, if it feels asinine to  whine about an album with songs as great as “i”, “i”, “Berry” “hood politics”, all i can add is the fun of the boom boom is the alternative to this plain and simple. I found it tough going, and while I loved it enough to put it on my “best of 2015”, I sure didn’t like it enough to put it near the top.

Worse, and it might be just bad timing, but the three times I saw him live he was terrible. The last one, on stage at midnight, was brutal DJ plus rap, the other two times, opening for Kanye West, he was terrible.

Finally, if Taylor Swift invites you on her song, for fuck’s sake bring your “A” game. His verse on “Bad Blood” sucked.

Between the three,  Kendrick has emerged as the artist of 2015 and he really doesn’t deserve it. Just rap wise, I prefer Drake, Vince Staples, A$AP Rocky, Chinx, Chance The Rapper, and quite a few others. This isn’t to tear Lamar down, it is to question why Yahoo Music ONLY had Butterfly on their best of lists… because he is a name to drop, that’s all.