Round of 64: (21) Kendrick Lamar - Good Kid, MAAD City vs. (44) The Beatles - White Album Bracket • Page 2

I still haven't voted, finding it get hard to compare apples to oranges here specifically

 

Apples to Dominoes.

 

it’s all just calories

 

Impossible to compare the songs, which are all of high quality. I tend to favor artists who swing for the fences. Kendrick did it in this instance better than the Beatles did.

 

that feels like an absolutely wild statement to make about the white album of all Beatles albums, but I suppose I get how some of the others are more deliberate home run attempts

 

I get why that reads strange. But the way that The Beatles did it on the White Album was by writing an absolutely insane number of great songs in different styles and smushing them all together. It's impressive but it's not a considered effort in the same way as GKMC (which is about my third favorite Kendrick album).

 

GKMC is the best Kendrick album.
The Beatles is the 4th best Beatles album.
Kendrick for me.

 

What’s wrong with it

 

That implies people have listened to other hip hop albums. You know most haven’t really, especially not from the era or scenes of which Kendrick is obviously inspired by (or unknowingly similar to, which I doubt).

 

I once again highly recommend this Kendrick Lamar’s Anxiety Era

 

To think that the only people calling GKMC a classic only think so because they don’t listen to any other hip hop is so obviously off base that the condescension of it just comes off as comical more than anything. It’s not as if the only people who think so are the types to be like “I normally hate rap but LOVE GKMC.” It’s pretty universally beloved across the board. If anything I feel like one of the biggest points of praise that many have for it *is* that so much of it is Kendrick’s attempt at making an older “style” of record

 

People who have listened to a lot of other hip hop from a variety of eras might have their own reasons for calling GKMC a classic, but most that call it a classic on the internet are definitely not those people. It’s not hard to spot. I again recommend that podcast episode, as they talk about precisely that. I’m not trying to be condescending.

 

I am listening to it and the only thing they seem to be saying that comes close to what you’re saying is that people may have thought Kendrick was the first to rap about X topic but he actually wasn’t. They aren’t really denigrating his music itself at all though, like they themselves don’t seem to be arguing against the idea that GKMC is a “classic” or anything lol, they’re clearly big fans. Especially when it’s not like you need to be the *first* to do something for your music to be considered great or anything

 

Right, but a lot of the things you read about Kendrick are people saying that he does things that haven’t been done. I’ve seen it on this board plenty too. I don’t remember the details but I definitely saw someone in a Kendrick thread quote some random line from the last album, something that a lot of rappers could have written in the last 30 years, saying that it is a new milestone in writing for the genre, and that post definitely had likes lol

 

Again I’d ask: what exactly is bad about GKMC? How is it not deserving of being called a “classic”? I feel like you’d be hard pressed to find many hip hop fans who say they outright dislike it or anything. It’s not even my personal favorite or anything, though beyond any single song, taking the album album as a whole I think it does work and flow better than the vast, vast majority of hip hop albums, including tons of classic older albums whose structure it’s mimicking

 

I think I am just still lashing out because Enter the Wu-Tang did not make its year list but this of course has lol

 

Also as I think about it more, even if an album/artist sucked absolutely ass, if they were ultimately responsible for helping get a lot of people interested in a genre in the first place, I don’t think that can really be discounted as far as a conversation about something being a “classic” goes lol

 

I think it’s just another good rap album, but it does nothing that makes it a classic, except for, arguably, the impact it had

 

See my post right after yours (written before I saw this)

 

I haven’t listened in like a decade but I don’t dislike it, just don’t think it’s a “classic”. Lucky Moose hits most points I’d make

 

This is a snobbish, shitty thing to say. It has a 91 on MetaCritic, the #1 ranked album of 2012 on Best Ever Albums, was nominated for an Album of the Year Grammy, made the Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, was pitchfork and Complex's #1 album of the year, and I could go on.

You can think it's not a special album. That's fine. But to haughtily act like anyone who considers it a classic just doesn't know hip-hop is some dumb bullshit. Goes for you, too, @OhTheWater

 

For me personally, GKMC is a classic because it is the only hip hop album I have ever heard

 

In my defence, both the Grammys and Rolling Stone famously know absolutely nothing about hip hop

 

I didn’t say anywhere near that? I’ve written at length about my confusion and frustration with the immediate canonization of that record since like, day 1. Those dumbass lists mean nothing, and you know that too

 

I also want to once again point out that I specified that I am not particularly annoyed by people who know enough about hip hop calling it a classic or whatever. I think they are wrong, but taste is taste. I am annoyed at all these people calling it a classic even though they have absolutely no context. So I also did not say that ONLY people who don’t know hip hop call it a classic. But there’s a lot of them.