Concept Albums Are Cool Again, Thanks to Hip-Hop

Unapologetic, extravagant, 70s-styled concept albums have somehow become the go-to method for an artist to say they're not fucking around anymore in the 2010s. Instead of representing collapsing hubris like they used to, records that relay a narrative (often with a visual element) are almost guaranteed to be seen as a quantum leap, the moment when the artist is seen as omnipotent. They're cool, in other words. It's a far cry from the vilification that concept albums have historically received since the dawn of punk. However, to reduce things to the punk/prog dichotomy, in this case, doesn't seem appropriate. No one's still really trying to hear 20-minute suites. Plus, this trend isn't displaying itself in rock, which if anything has been rejecting ornamentation and genre-blending gimmicks in favour of simple, raw emotion. Between not only I Decided but also Lemonade, Childish Gambino's Because the Internet, Tyler, the Creator's LP trilogy, and more, the rap and R&B sphere has adopted the concept album as the ultimate artistic goal over the course of this decade and made this obsolete genre a championship belt to be claimed in the mainstream.

Though it can be tough to believe, concept albums were once a sure bet (from around 1969 to 1975) for rock bands to make a whole lot of money and appeal to an audience of erudite male stoners. They eventually became regarded as overblown by that very same audience as well as music critics after punk made minimalist nihilism the dominant trend from about 1977 onwards. While there have been rare occasions like American Idiot where a concept album has broken through to the mainstream, these kinds of releases have by and large been regarded as a jumping-the-shark moment in any band's discography for more than 30 years. That is, of course, until rap seemingly took over the charge.

This isn't to say that rap and R&B are totally unacquainted with turning music into overt narratives in this way. Rap albums that weren't strictly concept albums gave off that impression in the 90s and 00s because of inter-related skits or grandiose intros that promised a story about a person's life, that we would be experiencing their struggles, that this… is their (Harlem) world. Hype Williams' Belly sought to translate those larger-than-life mafioso tropes into legit cinema in 1998 while only three years later, the Beyoncé-starring Carmen: A Hip-Hopera made a logical leap from the inherent melodrama of early 00s R&B to the 19th-century operas of composer Georges Bizet. Carmen's case is more interesting, as it's technically a remake of the 1943 musical Carmen Jones that also adapted Bizet's music while utilizing an all-black cast. More recently, the Roots probably transferred their experience working on their own concept album Undun to the literal stage when they helped out a certain EGOT contender to make a work which carried its own set of problems but was an enormous hit nonetheless.

Trying to figure out where real, capital-C and A concept albums started in this decade of rap and R&B reveals several points of origin. Kendrick Lamar's major-label albums like good kid, m.A.A.d city are the most likely reference point for the wave of the 2010s, having raised the bar for the rap LP overall. The prog-rock and orchestral overtones of Kanye West's early-decade work are another possible influence, as well as the similarly pioneering narrative works of Beyoncé, Kid Cudi, and Lupe Fiasco. In any case, perhaps the idea of recording a bunch of songs and putting every single one of them on a release no longer validates the effort required to put together a studio retail album. That's what mixtapes are for, after all, and even then they're now usually much shorter than the double-disc Weezy-esque enterprises of yore. When it comes time for The Album, it has to be a movie.

The fact that it's primarily black musicians constructing pop/rock operas is near-revolutionary given the extremely white history of the format. After the Who's Tommy was as a landmark work upon its release in 1969, it helped pave the way for the 70s, where rock that drew from classical and theatre music was briefly hailed as the next step for the genre. It was as though rock needed these old-world signifiers to be considered equal to "real music," which in this case meant "European art music." The race of "who could be the most symphonic" ran into a wall (in many senses), and now most of those bands and albums are considered to be relics of a more self-important age. While Pink Floyd's The Wall remains a definitive work and a benchmark for edgy nerd rockers from Billy Corgan to Gerard Way, the uncomfortable, pseudo-fascist imagery it exhibits is an example of the concept album's stiflingly Eurocentric legacy. This should be incompatible with genres performed and made by people of colour. And yet, here is To Pimp a Butterfly, praised as an instant classic by listeners of all stripes while also being an incredibly involved, 80-minute epic whose entry-point single still refers to in-universe characters, features saxophone noodling throughout, and ends with a poem that's only completed half-an-hour later in the full album. "Alright" is no different from "Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 2."

This rise in long, narrative albums is doubly remarkable given the assumed impatience of the modern music listener. These are often hour-plus LPs that require close readings of lyrics and to be listened to as whole units in one sitting. Thus, in response to the repeatedly proclaimed "death of the album," it turns out listeners may actually want that experience and then some. The digital download era emphasized the single but the exploratory nature of streaming may have done the opposite. Why isolate a song when one can let the whole work play out? The Weeknd's Starboy is not a concept LP but through its long running time, segues between songs, and accompanying longform music video, it suggests the idea of one. The expectation to make a concept album is everywhere, and while it's apparent that many rappers and singers feel compelled and want to make concept albums, not all of them can.

Tory Lanez' debut album I Told You made a self-conscious bid to be a masterpiece through a blatant rags-to-riches story arc instead of ace, focused songs. It ended up being overlong, cribbing too much from Kendrick's notes, and not presenting any interesting themes. I Decided's narrative elements, while not as unwelcome, are superfluous to actually enjoying the album. Notably, Drake's Views assumed upon itself the weight of a story that followed Toronto's seasons but didn't commit and ended up being a bloated twenty songs, along with the unrelated Please Forgive Me film. Its inability to be a narrative album may have played a part in why its artistic resonance failed in comparison to Drake's earlier LPs, which never had to worry about being concept albums like Views did because they didn't try. It was still a huge album by any measure but Drake needed to conquer something besides the charts. He needed a Lemonade. He needed to make a concept album that was unafraid to tell a story in the grand tradition of a musical or even opera, but only because everyone else in music has suddenly started to make those works a thing to be desired.

We could soon see a glut of undercooked (or overcooked), would-be magnum opuses from artists who just don't have the vision to execute them. Nonetheless, this is a left-field but intriguing trend for rap and R&B to follow and while it's definitely not the only movement that matters (ask XXXTentacion's legions of internet fans if they care for Broadway-level production values), it's counterintuitive enough to be striking. At a time when the concise, direct statements of punk are considered the default method of making a change anywhere, it is ambitious musical storytelling that points to a different way forward.

Phil will always be here for anyone deciding to put a convoluted story to kickass music. He's on Twitter.