{"id":1408,"date":"2018-02-23T11:09:08","date_gmt":"2018-02-23T16:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/theogony\/2017-2018\/?p=1408"},"modified":"2018-02-23T11:09:08","modified_gmt":"2018-02-23T16:09:08","slug":"black-panther-the-album-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/theogony\/2017-2018\/2018\/02\/23\/black-panther-the-album-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Black Panther: The Album Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

The widely anticipated movie <\/span>Black Panther<\/span><\/i> released February 16, 2018 with rave reviews. A week prior, Marvel teamed up with hip-hop record label Top Dawg Entertainment (TDE) to release <\/span>Black Panther: The Album<\/span><\/i>, with its curator being the widely acclaimed and Grammy award-winning rapper, Kendrick Lamar. The soundtrack is made up of features of other TDE artists, loosely singing about <\/span>Black Panther<\/span><\/i>. It is one of the most successful soundtracks of the decade.<\/span><\/p>\n

The larger-than-life initial and final songs of the album superbly underscore the promotional reality of the soundtrack. The title track booms with dusky pianos and a booming rap by Lamar, while a smooth, vaguely apocalyptic \u201cPray for Me\u201d opens the field to include the hopeless, non-fiction dystopia of the movie. \u00a0The opening title track finds Lamar at his most explosive. The beat pounds beneath him as he makes parallels between his own internal conflicts and the movie’s protagonist T\u2019Challa\u2019s weighing burdens that come with being a leader of people. The finale of the album, the tag-teamer, \u201cPray For Me\u201d with Kendrick Lamar and the Weeknd, is merely a watered-down version of the Weeknd\u2019s most recent solo work, <\/span>Starboy<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Between those bookend songs is an beautiful, expansive urban-pop atmosphere where every participant knows what they are bringing to the table. On \u201cX,\u201d where producers Illmind and Sounwave recreate an almost 2001-era Dr. Dre beat, the mood is lively. South African artist Saudi lays down his beautiful Jamaican Creole, while rappers Schoolboy Q and 2 Chainz go through autobiographies on their fame. On \u201cBloody Waters,\u201d Anderson Paak singing coolly while Ab-Soul rapping more militant mixed with interludes of tropical hummings by James Blake. The slow and love-laced \u201cThe Ways,\u201d where Khalid and Swae Lee serenade about perfection of romance seems to breeze in from Drake\u2019s <\/span>More Life<\/span><\/i>. <\/span><\/p>\n

The tense, scarred \u201cOpps\u201d brings in Vince Staples and Johannesburg-based newcomer Yugen Blakrok to rap over production made up of splintered percussion and synthesizers; sounding like a cut from Kanye West\u2019s <\/span>Yeezus<\/span><\/i>. It makes for a mesmerizingly cold few minutes with each rap sounding more and more unsympathetic. On the warmer side of the album, singer Jorja Smith smolders in the blues-inspired \u201cI Am\u201d while the sweet, sweeping \u201cAll the Stars\u201d catapults SZA\u2019s hopeful wonder and Lamar\u2019s relation to love and the night sky. Sadly, \u201cAll The Stars\u201d is still underwhelming, with both its powerhouse artists making a more generic R&B ballad.<\/span><\/p>\n

The tie-ins to the film can be tenuous, but Lamar and company bring 50 minutes of big-time team-ups and crossovers creating music across three continents: rap, R&B, Afro-soul, and pop from around the globe. The album is a taste of the film\u2019s broader vision of black excellence. It makes sense that an album created for the Marvel Cinematic Universe is just as excellent yet convoluted as the movies within the universe are. In their first roles as small players, the TDE roster delivers a product benefiting the whole. Some tracks stop with the bending of genres and bolstering lyrics for more generic and pop-friendly vibes. There have to be some hits, after all.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The widely anticipated movie Black Panther released February 16, 2018 with rave reviews. A week prior, Marvel teamed up with hip-hop record label Top Dawg…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":1417,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[35,34],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/theogony\/2017-2018\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/black-panther-770x470.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p99Jai-mI","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/theogony\/2017-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1408"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/theogony\/2017-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/theogony\/2017-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/theogony\/2017-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/theogony\/2017-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1408"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/theogony\/2017-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1426,"href":"https:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/theogony\/2017-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1408\/revisions\/1426"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/theogony\/2017-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/theogony\/2017-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/theogony\/2017-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/theogony\/2017-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}