Released: 2018

Genres: West Coast Hip-Hop, Pop Rap, Trap, Conscious Hip-Hop, Hardcore Hip-Hop

The Musiquarium’s Black Panther Review Score: 8 out of 10

After becoming one of David Bowie’s final influences with 2015’s To Pimp a Butterfly and winning a Pulitzer Prize, Kendrick Lamar was the most important rapper in the world other than Kanye West. It seemed only natural to get Kendrick to curate a soundtrack for Black Panther, a Marvel film that featured an almost all black cast, which was a big deal for African-American representation in a major blockbuster film of this scale.

The album features a stellar cast of artists, including The Weeknd, Travis Scott, Future, Vince Staples, SZA, Schoolboy Q, 2 Chainz, Anderson.Paak and token white guy, James Blake. Everyone brings their A-game, and the instrumentals are very fitting of the Afro-centrism of the movie, without delving into self-parody or sounding too stereotypical.

Kendrick Lamar appears on every track, despite only being credited on six of the fourteen tracks. For this reason (along with his overall contributions), Black Panther feels like a Kendrick Lamar album proper and though it’s filed under various artists, it’s an essential part of Kendrick’s discography. The Black Panther OST is a zeitgeist moment of where rap music and the superhero movie boom had intersected.

For credit breakdowns and historic release details, view Kendrick Lamar on Discogs.

Back to the 2018 Album Guide or the Kendrick Lamar Reviews page.

Written by Brett Nippard