T’Challa and Kendrick Lamar, two Kings assigned with similar tasks.  In the movie, T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) is tasked with having to bring Wakanda out of the shadows and onto the global stage, and on the album,  Kendrick is tasked with having to musically bring Black Panther to life. Kendrick uses 50-minutes and 14 sprawling tracks to present his own interpretation of Black Panther and Wakanda. The “King Kunta” was the most trustworthy curator for this album due to musical brilliance, superb creativity and his brazen blackness.

Black Panther opens the album in an explosive manner – the heavy percussion makes you feel as if you are being transported back to the motherland. On the track Black Panther, Kendrick becomes T’Challa himself – “King of my city, king of my country, king of my homeland, King of the filthy, king of the fallen, we living again”. Ending the track with “I am T’Challa”, Kendrick echoes the strength and grandeur of T’Challa we see in the movie.  Later on in the album, he so fluidly switches roles from the movie’s hero, to its villain, Erik Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan) on the raging track, Paramedic. He then again comes to the role of Killmonger on the track, Kings Dead, in which he says “All hail King Killmonger”.

Black Panther is certainly Lamar’s own hip-hop interpretation of the movie and the fictional country. Facets of this album bear striking melodic and sonic resemblances to DAMN and Untitled Unmastered. Paramedic featuring SOB x RBE gives you the typical West-Coast sound and all that it was missing was a verse from YG. “X” sounds like a hip-hop rendition of what Wakandas would use to hype themselves for battle. As Kendrick saw scenes of the movie whilst making the album, it is no coincidence that this track has the same symbol as the powerful greeting the Wakandan characters use.

Black Panther exemplifies many aspects of the film – the great sense of premonition we as an audience feel is heard on the latter parts of “X” and the EDM-influenced track Opps showcases the film’s explosive energy .

The soundtrack is swarming with references of the Black Panther Party and the struggles of the black community. On Paramedic, Kendrick says “I am Killmonger, this is my home, Northern California”. Oakland is situated in Northern California and is where the Black Panther Party formed. It is the location of the first scene of the movie and also where the militant and radical villain Killmonger is from. “Blades on the top Kathleen Cleaver” is rapped on Opps, evidently paying homage to a revolutionary in the Black Panther party.  The struggles of the black community are heard on the powerful and emotive track, Seasons, “Trapped in the system, trafficking drugs, modern-day slavery, African thugs/We go to war with this African blood/We go to war with this African blood’. The song is even more poignant as Sjava sings his verse entirely in Zulu.

Black Panther the film is the blackest marvel cast in history and the soundtrack’s cast mirrors this;  Travis Scott, Jorja Smith, Anderson .Paak, Vince Staples, Future, Khalid and SZA to name a few. A movie based on an African fictional land would be inept without a soundtrack featuring some African artists thus the album features Sjava, alt-rapper Yugen Blakrok and Babes Wodumu who showcases,”gpom”, a South African sub-genre of house on Redemption.

The only short coming of this album is the lack of African influence.  I would have expected this soundtrack to have greater African influence, both in terms of its artists and the sound itself. It confusingly ommitts some of Africa’s biggest artists such as Wizkid and Davido. At times, there feels to be a disconnect between the soundtrack and the film, but perhaps the soundtrack and movie were not supposed to be synonymous.  One is only reminded that it is the movie’s musical partner because of the references made to the film’s characters and the small African influences heard on the transitions from Bloody Water to King is Dead and X into The Ways. The movie actually plays hit South African afrobeat Gobisiqolo during a scene, yet there isn’t a track on the album that Gobisiqolo can be likened to.

The soundtrack is not an exact depiction of Black Panther but perhaps that is not what it was meant to be. It is the interpretation of the movie from the perspective of artists from 3 continents of the world. Bar one short coming, the album is exquisite and gifted us with more black art and black excellence. So watch the movie and listen to the album as many times as possible because these pieces of art were made for us and by us. As Kendrick said on Big Shot “When I touch, and I Wakanda flex, And you know what time it is (yeah)”. 

And may this be our mood as we celebrate and enjoy the season of Black Panther!

#WakandaForever