Is hip-hop taking back the concept album?
Well, it seems like the concept album has come full circle. Where the 70s left off with dark, masterful opuses like Dark Side of the Moon and Ziggy Stardust, the 90s riffed teen angst and globalized anxieties in albums like Smashing Pumpkins’ Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness and Flaming Lips’ The Soft Bulletin. It seems like the sweeping, epic narrative rock album had lost its tract in the past decade, save for a handful of excellent records like The Antlers’ Hospice, but a kind of innovative shift in the concept album is happening in an unexpected place – young rappers trying their hand at the high-concept narrative record.
Now, there’s no suspect lack of concept albums in this decade and the last, but its narrative purpose and cultural impact has definitely shifted, especially in hip-hop. There are two distinct traditions that contemporary hip-hop works in: early conscious rappers such as Grandmaster Flash and Mos Def’s early work that seems to approach the subversion of economic and social marginalization through utopic, communal ideals, and the chilling songs of bleak bravado in mafia/gangster culture by artists like Jay-Z and Raekwon.
In the 21st century, and this decade in particular, the gap between these two traditions – the yearning for ghetto salvation and the cynical retribution of the hustle – is being narrowed by a slew of young rappers and excellent albums. One way to hear this shift is to give attention to the production of albums like Kendrick Lamar’s contemporary classic Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City and Schoolboy Q’s Habits and Contradictions, both artists belonging to the Black Hippy collective.
Kendrick’s record is a concept album in the strictest sense of the word, and even the title speaks for itself. It’s a story of a decent kid who tries (and often falters) in being just that – weighed down by the violent necessities of life in Compton. While compellingly bleak in its lyrics and temporal scenarios in songs like “The Art of Peer Pressure,” and “Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst,” the production of the album’s music ties the whole brilliant thing together as a narrative work. Each song blends seamlessly to create a cohesive sonic space unique from the usual bricolage style of hip-hop production, jumping from one emotional space to another in between tracks until its resolution.
Schoolboy Q’s album, on the other hand, is less a concept album than a series of reflections tied together by the realities of living under marginalization, but nonetheless exemplifies the merging of these two traditions noted previously. Q’s album jumps between moods and stories, like the move from the heavy-hitting “Sacrilegious,” to the optimistic “Blessed,” and avoids the resolution that Kendrick’s album does. However, this makes the dissonance between salvation and cynicism all the more jarring, especially when listening to the two albums back to back.
In short, these two young artists, and many others, are making albums that draw on their respective traditions to create something new out of them – this “newness” is marked by a bridging of conscious hip-hop’s optimism and “gangsta” rap’s cynicism, making the chaos of the ghetto narrative as cohesive as ever.