Do We Really Give Albums The Listening They Deserve

“Initially I make my music for people that’s in prison, ’cause they have nothing but time to listen to it.” - Kendrick Lamar

Imagine the look on my Friend's face when I told him that I just heard channel orange by Frank Ocean mid this year. And he was like " " what the hell have you been listening to?" "Music" I answered which  made me ask the question

"Do we really give music the listening pleasure they deserve?"

Rewind a year ago when I was watching Kendrick Lamar interview with Ebro on Hot 97, where he  forgave his haters who claim his album is not a classic. Going on to say immediately calling albums classic kind of water down the meaning of the word.  “Let it live a little bit,” he said

meaning that he wants people to take time with his work and not be so quick to label records as classics Claiming that he makes his music for people in prison, because they have nothing but time to listen to it. describing his album as “Sophisticated gangster shit"

Kendrick says he is the voice for black men who can’t express it when they feel sadness. In certain communities, it is taboo for a man to do so. Id agree with him because you look at the amount of time it takes to make the album and all the message intended to the listener and it all boils down to you downloading the album and listening to only "I" and King Kunta and there you have it my playlist. The artwork of the artist is distorted and the end all his hardwork is dropped for the next big thing in a systole

Music is an ever highing drug and artists out there know how to concoct crack-like addicting songs in their notes, bars, rhymes and melodies..  So tell me do we really give albums the listening pleasure they deserve Now  Dr. Dre releases Compton which I must say is a masterpiece , Anderson paak featured majorly on that albums and totally killed it

Still not giving our ear drum's rest went on to release Malibu almost immediately. I was caught up like in a spell with Malibu. As songs like Without you, Celebrate, The dreamer and Put me thru will play as soundtracks in your dreams for months

Jon Bellion comes out  with the "The Human Condtion" and it was like "this is the album" and sorry Eminem for the first time in my life I Forgot about Dre, Anderson came back like "Yes Lawd" and he wanted to kill us Lyk dis and bury us with Suede.

 Let's not get started with Mr. Mac Miller Good AM was mind blowing and he still went on to release The Divine Feminine. Not to talk about The Game bombarding us with The Documentary 2, 2.5, 2.25, and now 1992 hell we might have another Gucci mane in our hand" which is exactly what I told my friends when He said that he don't believe that Less is More. Off the top of my head, this is just Rap/Hiphop not to talk of other genre of music I am still new to, and haven't even heard off.

Dragging for album listen and playing time we have Rihanna Anti, Benjamin Clementine, Leonard Cohen, Gary Clark Jr's Story of Sonny boy slim, Ceelo Green's Heart Blanche, Beyonce's Lemonade, Kate Tempest's Everybody Down which are all amazing albums, still We got JoJo coming back. D'Angelo dropping one of the finest albums i have ever heard, Kamasi Washington killing it with Epic and still crispy from Paolo Nutini's Caustic Love, Liane Lahavas, Kweku Collins, Noname, Chance, Raury so many, How do they do it

But what do you do when there are so many good artists coming out at the same time.

So i decided that the way things are going if I am truly gonna to listen and give an album its deserving listen. I need to commit a crime so that even though I'll be on all orange I would truly understand this albums. On my way to my first aggravated robbery I met my friend Denis who is an itinerant scholar of music, and he also agree.

Here are his thought

"To listen is an effort, and just to hear is no merit. A duck hears also" - Igor Stravinsky

In October 2011, Jay Z and Kanye released their collaborative album - Watch the throne to a lot of hype, I was particularly pumped. Twelve seconds into the first song, the first voice that comes on is a soothing voice. Obviously not Jay or Ye. I check the feature credit and it's a 'Frank Ocean' and The-Dream. I know The-Dream's voice so who's this other guy. Prior to that amazing (Grammy winning) feature I didn't know Frank. That was my introduction and I thought 'oh, he has a good voice'. So I searched the internet and found out he had a mixtape out already - Nostalgia.Ultra. I downloaded the mixtape with pretty high expectations. Pressed play on the mixtape, it was 'just there' I thought. It didn't blow me away so I just kept it in a folder, 'I'd return to it soon' I said.

Fast-forward to December 2012, the nominations for the 55th Grammy awards were announced and there was Frank Ocean's debut album - Channel Orange nominated for album of the year.

Woah, I had slept on this guy. So I decided to give his music another chance, downloaded Channel Orange and pressed play. It was good but I wasn't totally sold, but I listened again. During my second spin, I googled Frank Ocean and read up on him and his story. Also googled Channel Orange and read some of the reviews, they were rave. I did all this trying to pay attention to the album playing in my earphones and my interest began to grow. I pressed play the third time and I was loving and understanding the album. Eventually I fell in love with Channel Orange.

I'm big fan of Frank's music now because I allowed myself to experience his music (Blond is AWESOME btw).

Every artist who has respect for the art form of music will not release an album without wanting the listeners to experience the music. Experience doesn't mean it has to be deep (trap artists want you to experience fun while you know how large they're living). "I get sick when I think about someone going on iTunes and downloading 2 songs off our album. It's not meant to be listened to that way" - Deen Wean

With the huge amount of albums saturating the interweb, I have accepted that listening to everything is practically impossible. So I have made it a point to ensure that any album I deem worth experiencing, I will enjoy. During the rollout of his last effort - 2014 forest hills drive, J. Cole said he wanted the music to speak. Asides that FHD is Cole's best album (IMO), he went double-platinum with NO features. He wanted fans to experience the music and they did.

Conclusively We accept that we can't listen to all the beautiful,lyrical, intellectual, melodious albums out there

And for all those who take their time to make our worlds with their music ..

                      We say THANK You

Credits - Victor Samuel and Dennis Peter