Results for "#kendrick"

Anyone who has ever tried to do anything creative has likely experienced "creative block". Even writing this now is a struggle for me. I haven't felt like I had much to write about recently but I want to explore this topic. The first question we must answer is what it means to be creative and what is the job of an artist. In its simplest form creating art is merely taking one's experiences and influences and turning them into a tangible product. All artists do this, knowingly or not. All artists make things they desire to see outside of their heads. The things they desire to make are a direct result of their own personal experiences causing them to favor certain things. By examining the output of an artist we are able to get a greater picture of what life was like for that creator and what they were going through when they created their work. I think on some level all creators are aware of this. They know deep down that what they make reflects them and their life in some way. Even when they aren't making work that would be categorized as "serious" or "deep". People don't ever stop having experiences, people don't ever stop picking up new influences. But at some point, we don't know how to express these things and feel like we have nothing to express at all. Creative Block often times manifests itself as a lack of motivation but I think it's deeper than that. When someone experiences Creative Block it isn't because they don't know what to make, the answer is often right in their face. It's due to discomfort in wanting to share their experiences with the world. To bring this back to Kendrick Lamar, I think there's a lot we can learn from seeing his experience with Creative Block. There was a 5-year gap between Kendrick Lamars Damn and Mr. Moral and the Big Steppers. Obviously, Kendrick Lamar's life didn't stop in those 5 years. He was still learning and growing as a person so what prevented him from coming out with a new album sooner? For the first time since the early days of his career, he had to write about his present life. Every major release from Kendrick Lamar leading up to this album spoke about a past event in his life. While surely traumatic, the events Kendrick Lamar chooses to explore in his previous work are all topics he's already processed. He is able to see them clearly and make connections that he likely wouldn't have been able to make in the past. Mr. Moral and the Big Steppers was different, it explored issues that Kendrick Lamar was actively living through and will likely continue to live through for the rest of his life. Making such a large project about something so vulnerable where you know there will be millions of eyes examining every aspect of it is a tall task. Coming to the conclusion that the life in front of you is the story you have to tell is an even taller order, especially when everyone around you thinks you've made it. This likely caused a large sense of discomfort for Kendrick Lamar and lead him to believe he didn't have a story to tell. A great example of this is his leaked track Hooligans where he flat out says "I got something to say, which is nothing to say". Listening to the plethora of Kendrick Lamar leaks and demo tracks in between Damn and Mr. Moral and the Big Steppers might make you think he didn't know what direction to go in for his next project. You, the person reading this, might not know what direction to take for your next project. I can assure you, the answer is almost always right in front of you.

1. To Pimp a Butterfly 2. Good Kid M.a.a.d City 3. Mr Moral and The Big Steppers 4. Damn 5. Section 80

I encountered a really interesting theory on TikTok regarding the storytelling devices used on Kendrick Lamar's first two albums and I wanted to expand it to the rest of his discography. To paraphrase the existing portion of the theory Section. 80 is a book (the campfire motif), Good Kid Maad City is a movie (the linear story telling), and To Pimp a Butterfly is a poem which I shouldn't have to explain. That leaves Kendrick's two newest albums to examine. Mr Moral and the Big Steppers is a play centered around therapy, most evident in songs like We Cry Together, Worldwide Steppers, and Auntie Diaries. Despite arguably being his most approachable album, Damn was the hardest for be to figure out. Initially I thought of it as a journal taking a deep dive into each of Kendrick's emotions. Unfortunately the lack of a linear story-line largely ruled this device out. Each song on this album seems to live in it's own self-contained world. The only thing comparable to this style of story-telling is a TV Show.