By Brenden DelaRua
Just in case the movie wasn’t enough of a smash hit, Black Panther: The Album Music from and Inspired By is filled to the brim with creative beats and hard hitting, socially conscious lyrics.
Kendrick Lamar teamed up with Anthony “Top Dawg” Tiffith and Ryan Coogler, director of Marvel Studios’ Black Panther, to drop a 14-track album inspired by the motion picture.
The album features many accomplished artists, including SZA, 2 Chainz and The Weeknd.
Black Panther is a heroic masterpiece with an underlying theme of black empowerment. The album shares this theme, outlining the struggles and motivations that African-Americans face in today’s world.
“They tryna tell us that we all equal. We get no justice so it ain’t peaceful,” rapped Mozzy in his verse on the track “Seasons.”
Throughout the album, Lamar acts as different characters from the movie to set the scene of the music.
During the opening track “Black Panther,” an empowering song with reference to “kings,” Lamar raps “I am T’Challa,” filling the role of the movie’s protagonist. Later in the album during the track “Paramedic!” Lamar opens with the statement “I am Killmonger,” the movie’s antagonist, and the song holds a more aggressive tone, which is a fitting mindset for the cocky villain.
The album also has a few superb melodic rhythm and blues moments.
One track, “The Ways,” featuring Khalid and Swae Lee, has a more generic meaning of a love song, but Khalid fits a carefree vocal melody over the mellow beat. The song carries notes of empowering women, shown in the chorus’ lyrics, “Power girl, I really wanna know your ways.”
Swae Lee’s contribution to this song has a reverbed and auto-tuned vocal effect, which complements Khalid’s vocals from the first half. Swae Lee sings, “Your body and your mind is your contribution,” reinforcing the theme of women empowerment.
The other R&B track on this album sends a very different message.
“I Am” by Jorja Smith touches on the discrimination that African-Americans endure singing, “Sometimes we ain’t meant to be free” and “You been blind to the subject.” Smith’s vocal melodies flow very well with the song and tucks meaning within the music.
The standout tracks are “All The Stars,” “King’s Dead” and “Pray For Me.” The production on these tracks by Matt Schaeffer is astounding.
“All The Stars” is the album’s first pop song with a powerful verse from Lamar and an uplifting chorus by SZA.
“King’s Dead” has a hard-hitting beat paired with a perfect Lamar chorus to get stuck in your head. “I made 500 thou and then I freaked it”– What does that even mean?
Future gives a feature with some falsetto lyrics which is interesting, for lack of a better word. Finally, “Pray For Me” caps off the album.
The Weeknd sings about struggle while Lamar raps about empowerment — the two main themes of the album. Lamar, Top Dawg and Ryan Coogler made an outstanding album to complement the major motion picture.
Header photo courtesy of Interscope Records
