Lamar raps about conflict between hopeful choruses from SZA. “Black Panther” does include the mandatory action-film pop anthems. He’s superbly abetted by his frequent collaborator Sounwave (Mark Spears), the producer or co-producer on almost every track, who shifts the atmosphere constantly - often within a single song - deploying ratchety trap percussion, menacing electronics, blurry pitch-shifted samples, and even a rock guitar. “Black Panther the Album” is very nearly as densely packed - with ideas, allusions and ambitions - as one of Mr. Lamar is this moment’s pre-eminent rapper: furiously inventive, thoughtful, virtuosic, self-conscious, musically adventurous and driven. That’s a loose enough rubric to give the album’s executive producers, Kendrick Lamar and the CEO of his label, Anthony Tiffith, known as Top Dawg, the leeway to build a coherent album that juggles multiple missions.Īfter four studio albums and many other releases, Mr. All the symbolic weight attached to “Black Panther” - as a major Hollywood blockbuster with an African superhero, an African-American director, a majority-black cast and a vision of a highly advanced, self-sufficient, colonialism-free African kingdom - extends to “Black Panther the Album,” a collection of songs “from and inspired by” the film.
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