10 Risk-Taking Albums That Share Kendrick Lamar, To Pimp A Butterfly's Restless Sound

Music from Ice Cube, Stevie Wonder, Prince and more.

Sly and the Family Stone, There's a Riot Goin' On (1971) - The inclusive, peace and love energy of the hippie universe jumps out of the speakers on Stand! (1969), Sly & The Family Stone's fourth studio effort. It is infectiously soulful, church and reinvigorating in its sing-along celebrations topped by the massive unifying testimony of "Everyday People." As lead architect, the gifted Sly Stone could seemingly do no wrong. That all changed with a darkly tinted album made overwhelmingly for its times.There's a Riot Goin' On pushed James Brown's jagged funk forward, creating an indispensable template for the anything-goes controlled chaos of George Clinton's Parliament Funkadelic. There's a druggy, junkie paranoia that permeates throughout Riot. Even the "happy" songs like "Family Affair" are haunting, spurring some writers like the Los An...
Stevie Wonder, Stevie Wonder's Journey Through 'The Secret Life of Plants' (1979) - From '72 to '76, Stevie Wonder was the most important (and deified) recording artist on the planet. His run of Grammy-sweeping, art-elevating LP's held a streak of five consecutive works that hit the artistic motherlode with the sweeping Songs in the Key of Life (1976). So you could imagine the confused faces of fans who picked up Journey Through "The Secret Life of Plants."No you won't find the transcendent boogie of "Sir Duke," the seething consciousness of "Pastime Paradise" or the delicate beauty of "If It's Magic." This is a fully conceptual, partly instrumental experiment that, for lack of a better word, was quite out there. Stevie had enough good-will capital to pull off such a dramatic turn. But he still threw his followers a bone with the gorgeo...
Prince & The Revolution, Around the World in a Day (1985) - How's this for balls? Coming off the triple threat of a top-selling album (1984's career-elevating Purple Rain soundtrack moved a gaudy 15 million units worldwide), an Academy Award-winning No. 1 film and the biggest tour of the year, you decide to brazenly shake off the immense fanbase that propelled you into Michael Jackson's stratosphere and release a loopy, '60s-inspired psychedelic and at times political romp. Only Prince would commit what many charged as career suicide.Yet the Minneapolis maverick was playing the long game on Around the World in a Day, reveling in the artistic freedom of such cuts as "Paisley Park," "Pop Life," "Tambourine" and "America," noteworthy for its anti-Communist, patriotic slant. Even his mainstream hit "Raspberry Beret" was high p...
Janet Jackson, Rhythm Nation 1814 (1989) - The truth is Janet Jackson doesn't get enough credit for this landmark concept album. There are not enough essays or think pieces detailing just how much of a roll of the dice Rhythm Nation 1814 was. Think about it. The delicate performer had just danced out of her shell on the multi-platinum breakthrough Control (1986). Now she's preaching a message of racial unity, anti-poverty and hooking up with Public Enemy's roaring prophet of rage Chuck D?!!! There is always danger for an act whose foundation was built on sugary sweet grooves and well choreographed workouts getting all What's Going On.Janet, however, more than pulls it off, transforming usually eye-rolling subject matter like the save-the-children ballad "Livin' in a World (They Didn't Make)" and the one-world title track into earnest, serious-minded commentary. Call...De La Soul, De La Soul Is Dead (1991) - De La Soul wanted no parts of their image as so called hip hop hippies. So the Long Island, New York trio took a sledgehammer to their lighthearted, sunshine-and-daisies 1989 platinum debut 3 Feet High and Rising and got serious. Constructed in the mode of storybook read-along, De La Soul Is Dead finds the guys literally fighting would be antagonists who take their kindness for being soft as boo boo punks ("Peas Porridge"); mocking gangsta rap ("Afro Connections at a Hi 5: In the Eyes of the Hoodlum"); and weaving the tragic tale of a girl who shoots her molesting father ("Millie Pulled a Pistol on Santa").Yeah, things get deep, but the group's acerbic humor is still intact. Throughout De La Soul Is Dead, Posdnous, Trugoy and Maseo are hilariously put down for not being hard enough (peep Black Sheep's Dres ...

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Stevie Wonder, Stevie Wonder's Journey Through 'The Secret Life of Plants' (1979) - From '72 to '76, Stevie Wonder was the most important (and deified) recording artist on the planet. His run of Grammy-sweeping, art-elevating LP's held a streak of five consecutive works that hit the artistic motherlode with the sweeping Songs in the Key of Life (1976). So you could imagine the confused faces of fans who picked up Journey Through "The Secret Life of Plants."No you won't find the transcendent boogie of "Sir Duke," the seething consciousness of "Pastime Paradise" or the delicate beauty of "If It's Magic." This is a fully conceptual, partly instrumental experiment that, for lack of a better word, was quite out there. Stevie had enough good-will capital to pull off such a dramatic turn. But he still threw his followers a bone with the gorgeo...

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