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Kendrick Lamar has all but confirmed that the follow-up to To Pimp a Butterfly is on the way.
His Instagram account this morning contains just one post, a marbled black square bearing the numerals ‘IV’.
Update 24/3: He's dropped a track, 'The Heart Part 4' which serves to tease a new album dropping 7 April
This would seem to reference the albums that came before it: 2011's Section.80 (I), 2012's Good Kid mAAd City (II) and 2015's To Pimp a Butterfly (III).
This canonisation of his work does not include his mixtape Overly Dedicated (2010), nor the compilation album untitled. unmastered. he put out last year.
Last month, the vinyl used for the original production of To Pimp a Butterfly was added to the Harvard Library in acknowledgment of its cultural significance.
Little is known about the nature or genre of Kendrick's next album - his last two releases having seen him experiment with funk and jazz - as he gives few interviews and isn't particularly active on social media.
He did, however ,say shortly after the release of TPAB : "I know exactly what I want to say next. Everything is going to make sense – not only to myself but to anybody who wants to understand life and music. Everything will make a little more sense."
Capping off months of very strong features, K-Dot most recently contributed a guest verse to The Weeknd's 'Sidewalks'.
“He’s a genius. He is really a genius," The Weeknd said of the collab .
Kendrick Lamar's albums, rankedShow all 4 1 /4Kendrick Lamar's albums, ranked Kendrick Lamar's albums, ranked 4th: Overly Dedicated (technically a mixtape, but the breakthrough one) - Tracks like 'Michael Jordan' and 'Alien Girl' felt a bit stock and Kendrick had yet to really find his voice and musical style, but you could see the potential there on this debut. P&P is still a banger, the use of samples is so effective in 'Opposites Attract' and on songs like 'Average Joe' he cut his teeth on recounting stories from his gangbanging days with a critical eye. "I don't do black music, I don't do white music, I do everyday life music." - prophetic.
Kendrick Lamar's albums, ranked 3rd: Section.80 - Kendrick's storytelling really came into its own with this record, telling the stories of beaten girlfriends and prostitutes solicited by corrupt police. Bangers were plentiful ('A.D.H.D', 'Ronald Reagan Era', 'The Spiteful Chant'...) and K-Dot's interest in jazz started to blossom in songs like 'Rigamortus' and the incredible 'Ab-Souls Outro'. "I'm not on the outside looking in / I'm not on the inside looking out / I'm in the dead fuckin' centre, looking around"
Kendrick Lamar's albums, ranked 2nd: To Pimp a Butterfly - The fact that this is one of the best albums of our generation and yet only Kendrick's second best album (imo) speaks volumes. An unbelievably well-orchestrated odyssey of a record that came as such a fresh and different proposition when we were all busy bumping dancefloor-orientated Drake tracks. 'Alright' became anthemic for the movement against police brutality, and 'u' gave us one of the most tearjerkingly personal insights into the human psyche ever committed to record. Masterful instrumentation pinned down by an intricate flow. I immediately wanted to hear it on vinyl and I don't even buy vinyl.
Kendrick Lamar's albums, ranked 1st: good kid, m.A.A.d city - You could very legitimately argue that TPAB is Kendrick's finest album to date, but to me, GKMC is just absolute magic. It is such a cohesive record from start to finish, transporting you from wherever you are listening to the streets of Compton, a real 'day in the life'. I'm as rapt listening to 'The Art of Peer Pressure' as a child is to a ghost story, and 'Sing About Me, I'm Dying of Thirst' manages to completely enthrall for all of its 12 minutes. 'Backseat Freestyle', 'Money Trees', 'Swimming Pools' and 'm.A.A.d City' were all people were waiting for to come on at house parties that year, the pitch-shifting verse in the latter being a huge highlight for me. TPAB's politics was overt, but I like how subtly it was embedded in this record.
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