Kendrick Lamar tops music-award nominees,
Rapper one nomination away from tying all-time record set by Michael Jackson in 1984
At the 56th Grammy Awards last year, the narrative surrounding Kendrick Lamar was nothing short of front-runner status.
His genre-defining debut good kid, m.A.A.d city, which topped countless best-of lists and was deemed a rap classic, was seen as a lock for multiple hip-hop categories and a dark horse for the night’s biggest honour, album of the year. But Lamar went home emptyhanded, eclipsed in rap categories by pop-minded Seattle hip-hop outliers Macklemore & Ryan Lewis.
However, following that controversial snub, the Compton, Calif.-born rapper has made Grammy history. Earning 11 nominations — including two in the major races, album and song of the year — Lamar is the most nominated artist heading into February’s ceremony.
Solidifying his status as a leader in a new generation of hip-hop wordsmiths, he unseated Eminem to become the rapper with the most nominations in a single night. (Michael Jackson, with his 12 nods in 1984, still holds the overall all-time record.)
Lamar’s achievement is all the more impressive because he did so with To Pimp a Butterfly, a rap album so challenging and musically complex that fans and critics are still chewing on it nearly nine months after its release.
While good kid, m.A.A.d city was a brilliant concept record that traced Lamar’s coming of age in gang-and-drug infested Compton, much of it conformed to the mores of a classic hip-hop album. To Pimp a Butterfly ignored much of a traditional framework.
The ideas are tough, the lyrics as fiery as they are deeply complex and the instrumentation is heavy and often scattered. The album is far more challenging than anything on radio — or any rap album among this year’s nomination class — but it’s also far more interesting than anything out there. It’s that challenge from Lamar that makes his Grammy bounty all the more impactful.
As the deaths at the hands of law enforcement in Baltimore, Cleveland, Staten Island and elsewhere have reignited the ongoing debate over the use of lethal force disproportionally against blacks by law enforcement, Lamar’s album — much like that of D’Angelo’s muscular “Black Messiah” — was unapologetic in its blackness, speaking directly, and exclusively, to a black audience.
In the age of #BlackLivesMatter, Lamar (and D’Angelo, who also landed multiple nods, including Record of the Year) provided the intense, but necessary soundtrack.