10. Kendrick LamarTo Pimp a Butterfly
My first interest in hip-hop was The Notorious B.I.G and I was attracted to the tonality of his voice. But then I started listening to Flying Lotus and I love the avant-garde nature of that. It is jazz and it is very space age, and so when I heard To Pimp A Butterfly and I heard Flying Lotus’ arrangements on there it really piqued my interest. I started analysing the album, listened to it over and over again, and I thought that this was something impossible to classify. This is a masterpiece because it is avant-garde, it is experimental, it is multi-genre, it has everything you can imagine in there.
I am also very drawn to the sound of Kendrick Lamar’s voice. I like the kind of soft quality to it and also I think his words are true poetry. I also like the fact that he is one of the artists that publicly talked about the use of certain language and the treatment of women in the words, and he has taken a stance against the clichés of the language in that world. I know he is seen as a hip-hop artist but to me he is a genre-less experimental artist working with hip-hop and rap.
