Switched on Pop - Kendrick Lamar and the big samples

Episode Date: May 24, 2022

It’s been five years since Kendrick Lamar released his Pulitzer winning album DAMN. Having established himself as a modern rap virtuoso whose songs have become anthems fueling social movements, expectations run high for his latest release. So when he dropped his new album Mr Morale and the Big Steppers, people tuned in - it is the biggest album drop of 2022 so far. Lamar moves his focus presumably from the societal to the personal on the double LP. His words arrive seemingly from therapy sessions meditating on family, infidelity, and the healing power of nature. The album has some bumps: platforming artists with a problematic past and an inelegant attempt at LGBTQ+ allyship. But nothing on the record is quite straight forward. Lamar doesn’t always say exactly what he means. He frequently shifts voices and puts on different characters. In musical interludes on the record, the sound of tap dancers points to the performative nature of recored music. Rather than give us direct meaning Kendrick leaves breadcrumbs for us to follow. To unravel his lyrics its necessarily to also examine the underlying production. The samples on Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers aren’t used just for their sound, in many cases they unlock the song’s meaning. Switched On Pop picked six stand out samples for close listening to hear the intent hidden in the music.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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And I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. I really can't believe that it's been five years since Kendrick Lamar released his critically acclaimed album, Damn. I know it feels like just yesterday. I was breaking it down with Amber Mark. Oh, yeah.

Wow. It's been a minute. But he's back. He has a new album, Mr. Morrill and the Big Stepers, and it's a big project. Tell him. Tell him your... I've been going through something.

1,8555 days. I've been going through something. Be a friend. right. There are a lot of expectations here. You've got one of the most acclaimed living rappers who has narrated the plate of Black America, has given people protest anthems, it's even won a Pulitzer Prize for music. And for someone who has commented so broadly on what America is about, this album turns to an inner narrative. The music is often intimate. The lyrics are often literally about therapy. They're therapeutic. The issues are broad, ranging.

from infidelity to celebrity worship, to the healing power of nature. And it has some bumps as well. Platforms artists with problematic pasts. It's got a bumpy critique of so-called cancel culture and an inelegant attempt at trans and queer allyship. But nothing on this record is quite straightforward. You know, Kendrick doesn't often say exactly what he means. He's someone who uses different voices and puts on different characters.

Instead of giving us direct meaning, he's often leaving us. breadcrumbs that we have to follow. We've got to seek out clues to dissect what's going on in this record. And this is a unique record because people were like, hey, you can't review this thing just a day after it's dropped. It's going to take time to unfold. People are still uncovering the layered meanings within Mr. Morrell and the Big Steppers. I thought that where we could add to the conversation is looking at the sounds and specifically the samples of this record. Because just in the same way that his lyrics require a close read, the music soundtracking it often influences the meaning of the song, reveals things that we might not otherwise find. So today I've selected some of my favorite

samples off of Mr. Morrell and the Big Steppers. Cool. I want to listen back to them with you. Listen to the original, listen to the sample, and see if we can find some hidden meaning within in each song. I feel like there are multiple points of entry into this 70 plus minute opus, and I'm excited to tackle some of the sonic dimensions of it. Where are we going to start? Begin with a song worldwide stubborn. I am not for the faint of heart. My genetic bill can build multi-universes. The men of God playing baby shark with my daughter, watching for sharks outside at the same time. Life is a protector father I kill for. This is a song where he actually talks about going to therapy, and it

feels like it could just be a therapy session. We have discussions of having children, examining past infidelities, building his relationship to higher powers, making amends. And backing it all up is this sample from a Nigerian Afro rock group from the 60s called The Funkies, and their song, Breakthrough. Hmm. So that's the main sample, but I think we should hear some of the lyrics in Breakthrough, because I think they speak to what's going on, McKendry. So the funkies are singing about being in an invisible prison. How can they be set free? That's super interesting.

So when you listen to the lyrics from this sample, there's a kind of thematic connection. Both of these songs are seeking some kind of liberation. Maybe one is more literal and the other is more figurative. But that's a strong connection. You know, even though this record takes a more internal lens, there's also a lot of commentary about larger societal issues as well. And so I think the mirror of personal liberation, societal liberation, those themes that Kendrick has tackled since the beginning of his career, those are very much in this album. You know, there's another interesting connection, too, with this sample. Kendrick's not the first to use it.

It may be a nod to the producer Madlib. There's a track called Brothers and Sisters that uses the same sample. Some more mash-up record that Madlib did, taking 60s and 70s African records, putting them together. Kendrick actually flew off to West Africa immediately upon releasing this album. Supposedly to film a documentary, but potentially also to escape the press and the paparazzi and all the dialogue around the record. Drop the album, fly off halfway around the world. close to the source of the sample that he's working with. I love hearing how Madlib uses that sample differently, very different context, and yet one

thing that's similar between Kendrick's treatment and Madlip's treatment, both of them constantly switch between different samples in this way where you're listening to one thing, and then all of a sudden, like something new comes in. Beat flip, yeah, which is a really, really interesting aesthetic and maybe a really way that those two exist in the same universe as well. Yeah, we get one of those on worldwide stepers about two minutes in. There's also a perspective change. Eight billion people on earth, solid murderers, non-profits, preachers and churches in church,

crooks and burgers. Hollywood, corporate and school, teacher philosophies. So we go now to 8 billion people, everybody in the world, all these institutions that he names, and we get a new sample. from a group called Soft Touch, their 1976 song Look Up, Look Down. And like with the Funkies, I think we should hear a little bit of lyric. Cool. Oh, look down.

Look around you. Can't you see good? So in a song about revealing his infidelities, he's using a sample that's saying, hey, I'm around, watching you. so love you i love hearing those vocals it's like honestly not the most pitch perfect soul performance i've ever heard not quite but in a way that makes it even more endearing it's like it's vulnerable here are these musicians like trying trying to hit something and they don't quite reach it and there's something kind of beautiful about that i feel like kendrick's also reaching for something on this album and maybe not always you know achieving it i'm going to reach for a mixed metaphor and say that we

have to peel back another layer of an onion. What do you bring an onions here for? Cut another layer of the yam. How about? We'll stick to the breadcrumbs. This is actually, again, not the first use of this sample. We can hear Lookup, Lookdown, also on a piece called Unstoppable Threats from 2005 from DJ Mugs and Jizzo.

Listening to slinged out goodies and timberlands and hoodies with the rhythm that came from the streets. I was a young one at the time. I started mic tripping. The hook of the song says, this is not pop. This is hip-hop. This is rhythm that came from the streets. So nodding to unstoppable threats might also reveal something about this album, which has been maybe rightly noted for a lack of hooks.

An album that might not play well on pop radio. It doesn't have song like Loyalty featuring Rihanna off of Dam, which, funny enough, used a Bruno Mara sample, 24-kart Golden. I forgot about that. Much poppier sort of record. And so there are, yeah, here we have again layers of meaning. We have the sample, which is about singing to a girl. But it's also about the origins of the music that he makes

and why he might not be making a pop statement this time around. It's so fascinating to hear more of these samples because it supports what you're saying in a way. You know, there are parts of these samples that could have been, quote, unquote, hookier in the song. You know, some of these vocal samples. Some of these, like, big orchestral moments. Kendrick and his producers take these, like, micro fragments of the song and sample them in a way that makes it a little more astringent, almost. Yeah, definitely.

Non-profits, preachers and churches in church, crooks and burglars. Hollywood, corporate and school, teacher philosophies. But that supports some of the messages of these songs. Brings me to the next sample that I want to discuss. It's off of the song Crown. It begins with a plotting piano line. You walk around like everything is in control. Kendrick's pondering his role as a mythic figure,

the impossible expectations of being a rap god. That's what I call love. The song has a repeating recitation. I can't please everybody. You can't please everybody. Even quote Shakespeare. Heavy is the head that chose to wear the crown. We've got Henry the fourth references, biblical references, this contrast of a intimate

solo piano performance without a beat, Kendrick on top, figuring out what to do with the expectations of when people see you as wearing a crown. And he's wearing a crown of thorns on the cover of this album, actually. He doesn't wear his metaphors lately. What is this piano sample? It's really haunting. And frankly, not something I expected to hear on this album. This is a piece called Through the Night from the minimalist jazz pianist Duval Timothy.

So Timothy is a producer on Mr. Moral and the Big Stepers. He's on four songs. This is a funny one, though, Nate. This isn't so much maybe a sample as much as it is a reinterpretation. Because even though this piece was released in 2016, the Kendrick version of it is basically the whole piece now with lyrics on top of it. And that he's working with Timothy as a producer, it kind of feels like taking a demo and finishing it. But even though it's not a typical kind of sample, I think it's important to understanding this record. One of the early reviews on the album was from the new statesman who called the album kind of like a one-man stage play.

You can feel that quality. You're stepping into a black box theater. Yeah. Solo piano. Intimate voice. You walk around like everything is in control. And this paired down style of hip hop arrangement is throughout the record. There are a number of tracks that Timothy produced that use this same kind of sound.

United in Grief. I've been going through something. 1,855. days I've been going through something. The interlude rich. Even songs that Timothy didn't produce use this intimate piano sound, one of the most powerful songs about revealing some of his deep personal early childhood trauma, like the song, Mother I Sober.

I'm sensitive. I feel everything. I feel everybody. One man standing on two words. He'll everybody. Transformation. This album does have trap songs. throwback hip-hop kind of songs, even some R&B-ish kind of things.

But I love these paired back piano arrangements. I think these piano sounds are very powerful and fitting for the record. One of my favorites that kind of takes the piano ballad and gives it a little more energy on the record is a song called Father Time that Devald Timothy also produced. We're going to check it out right after the break. Maria, you have a podcast now and you need to start acting like it. What's the first step as a podcaster? Well, you have to ask lots of questions.

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The view on immigration from the bottom up instead of the top down. That's this week on America Actually. Every Saturday in your audio and video feeds. All right, I've got another sample for you. Comes from the song Father Time featuring one of my favorite vocalists, Sanfa. I come from a generation of home invasions. Whoa, before we go on, I need to talk about what we hear. right before the sample comes in, sounds like tap dancing, maybe, relating perhaps to the album's title, The Big Stepers,

but also in a way connecting us back to that metaphor you gave us in the first half of like, we're watching a performance, you know, we're watching a show, or we're in the theater, where you can hear the room, you can hear the reverberations of each of these tap dance steps.

That's a really cool moment. It's like a little auditory clue. take exactly what I'm saying on face value, because I'm telling you with this sound, this is a performance. You're going to have to analyze it. Okay, but now we've got to get to the sample. I come from a generation of

home invasions, and I got daddy issues that's on me. Everything them four was that taught me, may have is buried deep. That man knew a lot, but not enough to keep me past them streets. My life is a plot, twisted from directions that I can't see. Daddy issues all across my head. Totally fuck a foul.

I'm teary-eyed. Wow, there's a lot going on there. Yeah, the song is, it's heavy, unwinding issues of intergenerational trauma and patriarchal culture, issues with fathers. In fact, the song opens up with a call to do therapy. You really, you know, therapy. Tomlo. He sounds stupidest. Everybody's stupid.

And of course, the underlying sample is going to comment on the meaning of the song. Let's go back to the sample material. Let's hear it one more time. generation of home invasions and I got daddy and shoes that's on me everything new four was that taught me we're hearing some kind of reverse sound it's off of the song

You're Not There a 1960 track by Hoskinson crowd This is a deep cut Yeah it's honestly shocking to hear some of these samples in their completeness because

they're so chopped up and re-contextualized that it's almost like like you're listening to a different song entirely. Yeah. And yet, I think they are chosen in a way that is not just for their musical qualities, but from the lyrical emotional valence that you get when you choose to do what you've done and actually go through and listen to each of these.

It becomes like almost a companion piece to the record. Yeah, I mean, you take a lyric like, you're not there, which probably originally is a plea to a lover. and it takes on this new meaning as a lyric about parental emotional abandonment. You literally have to reverse the sample to get that. I think it's worth pointing out that finding samples that match your meaning is not necessarily easy. Sampling has become increasingly difficult in the history of hip-hop, right? In 1992, there was a famous court case, Grand Upright Music versus Warner Brothers,

in which it was determined that you have to ask permission before you can use someone's sample. And then in 2005, Bridgeport Music, First Dimension Films, it was said that even if you use the smallest, smallest possible sound, you still need to ask permission. You can't even use like a drum hit from another song, which means no more giant Beastie Boys mashup type records. You can't do that anymore. If you want to get a sample, you got to go pay someone and you have to get the permission. So to find the sample that's fitting and then get the artist's permission, it's a whole process. It actually adds a lot of complexity to building a song. But Father Time actually shows us that maybe that dynamic is changing a bit because this is not an ordinary sample.

This is a sample that Kendrick Lamar and his producers got from a sample clearing service called Tracklib, where anybody can go to Tracklib.com and they can purchase a sample for like 50 bucks. You have to give a portion of your royalties depending on how much of the sample you use back to the original artist. But you never have to ask permission. You can actually just download it and incorporate it into your own song. So if you wanted to, Nate, you could go and grab this exact song, beat flip it, make it your own. It's a tempting proposition. And shows that Kendrick Lamar is actually working with the same tools that are available to everybody else, but he's doing something special with it.

It strikes me that we've heard so many different kinds of sampling on this record so far. We've heard some classic kind of crate digging samples. Yeah. Some samples that have been used by other producers. We've heard samples that are a little unusual and that it takes an entire piano track by Duval Timothy. And now we've heard a sample from like a sample database. This is a collage of every possible approach to sampling so far. I hadn't thought of that.

There are so many different kinds of sampling being revealed here. And the last two I want to share with you are doing something, again, a little bit different. they're actually sampling very contemporary songs. And oftentimes we think about sampling as borrowing from the past. But Kendrick is borrowing from the very recent past on a song like Die Hard. This sample gives us this almost kind of like ghostly R&B vocal. And the song itself is a departure from a lot of what we've heard. It's a little more tuneful.

It's got a melody. It's got like a groove. It's got, it's a little catchy in a way. Where's this one coming from? This song's just a few years old from 2015. Remember the rain from Caja Bonay. Wow, it's like, I'm surprised that's so recent because when I first heard it, I was like, oh, this is from the same era of some of the earlier samples we listened to, you know, 60s, 70s, classic soul.

But this is pretty recent. It's a contemporary song. But it's kind of reaching back to those antecedents. Which makes it a good source to be sampled. And she's singing the lyric, I picked you up when you fell and cut your knee, told you not to cry and held you close to me. It's very sweet lyric.

Seriously. Let's hear how Kendrick interprets that material. Kendrick's almost singing here. Is it safe or not? I'm afraid. A little you relate or not have fate. A little I might take my time. I ain't no saving face this time. I hope I'm not too. up, can I be vulnerable? He's speaking both to maybe a partner and his family, but also all of his fans at the same time. And the underlying sample about holding someone with a skin knee really resonates with me. This is an album that so prioritizes his family. His family is literally on the cover of the record. As a father, the idea of holding someone close when they've got a skin knee,

it is very vulnerable. It's a beautiful little moment. We've heard every type of sample. We've heard kind of every type of song, every type of lyrical message, what's next? What are we going to end? What are we going to end with? Probably the sample that surprised me the most. It comes from a song, We Cry Together. What is that? That is the voice of Florence Welch from Florence in the machine. No way. Wow. So we'll get back to the Kendrick in a second. Uh-huh. But what is he doing taking such a long, sample and putting it beginning of this song and then beat flipping into something else. Let's hear the Florence. It's from her song June.

So somber moment here, because this is a very powerful song. It's the opening of her 2018 album, Highest Hope, and it's processing the terrorist shooting at the Pulse Nightclub, a gay nightclub in Orlando. Wow. And she's offering a message of condolences, really. What can we do making sense of this world, but we hold on to each other. She keeps screaming as louder and louder into this just noise of sound. Whoa. I mean, hearing just the sound of those vocals, the way she stretches out certain words, the way she emotes so strongly, I was already

kind of moved and now hearing what the song is actually communicating. I'm even more moved. Yeah. But again, yeah, like, also surprised. hear it in this context. Yeah. The Florence Welch piece takes a terrible event of terror and tries to figure out, ask us all, how can we process it societally? Kendrick Lamar's use of the sample zooms in from the societal to the personal. This is what the world sounds like. The first voice we hear is the actress Taylor Page saying, this is what the world sounds like. And we get one of the most polarizing songs on the album, a sort of relationship rap battle in which both people are treating each other absolutely terribly. We see

reprehensible displays of masculinity and a relationship in total disrepair. I play the non-ex I can't make Shut up Go text that raggedy I'm telling you all this she got I play the non-explicit version You can hardly hear any of the lyrics

I could not make this choice But what I'm hearing In the connection between The Florence Welsh sample of June And the Kendra Kumar song We Cry together is looking at how The trauma that we create at the individual level plays out on the societal level. We even heard that in the first song that we

listened to on worldwide steppers. Or Kendrick says that we are all killers, no matter the acts. He even says that when he is hosting a barbecue, he is slowly killing people with high blood pressure and cholesterol. Yeah. I caught a couple bodies myself, slid my community. My last Christmas toy driving Compton handed out eulogies. Not because the racks in the park had red gradient, but Because the high blood pressure flooded the catering. So what's the difference between your life when hiding motors? What fatality is constantly jumping between the personal and societal, dealing with traumas at every level.

And I think often exploding questions out more than giving us any sort of answers on this album. It's wild that we've listened to so many samples. Some ways it feels exhaustive. And yet at the same time, it's like only scratching the surface of this record. So many levels here. There's the lyrics that Kendrick is giving us in all of those multivalent references contained within. And then there's the sound effects. There's the samples.

There's the original music. There's the beats. I mean, you can just keep digging down and down. So I guess I want to wrap by encouraging people to go out and continue listening to this record, continue reading about it, continue to try. unpack together everything that is in this sprawling magnum opus. Awesome. I accept the challenge. Switched on Pop is engineered by Brandon McFarland, edited by Jolie Myers, illustrations by Ira Scott Lee, Community Management by Abby Barr,

our executive producers are Hanna Rosen and Ashok Kerwa, a member of both the Vox Media Podcast Network and production of Fulcher. Find more episodes of Switched on Pop anywhere you get podcasts or our website Switched on Pop, and tell us what you're hearing on Kendrick's latest album at Switch John Pop on Instagram and Twitter. I'm excited for next week because we're going to talk about another sample, aren't we? Yes, we're going to go down the big energy lato rabbit hole,

which will take us from Rai Carrey to the Talking Heads and maybe even further. So cool. All right. Until then. Thanks for listening. Convierte your passion in a business with Shopify and bathe records of ventas with the form of pay with a better conversion of the world. Has you heard of bien? The best conversion of the world. The incredible system of of Pago of Shopify

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