All the symbolic weight attached to “Black Panther” — as a major Hollywood blockbuster with an African superhero, an African-American director, a majority-black cast and a vision of a highly advanced, self-sufficient, colonialism-free African kingdom — extends to “Black Panther the Album,” a collection of songs “from and inspired by” the film. That’s a loose enough rubric to give the album’s executive producers, Kendrick Lamar and the CEO of his label, Anthony Tiffith, known as Top Dawg, the leeway to build a coherent album that juggles multiple missions.
After four studio albums and many other releases, Mr. Lamar is this moment’s pre-eminent rapper: furiously inventive, thoughtful, virtuosic, self-conscious, musically adventurous and driven. “Black Panther the Album” is very nearly as densely packed — with ideas, allusions and ambitions — as one of Mr. Lamar’s official solo albums. He’s superbly abetted by his frequent collaborator Sounwave (Mark Spears), the producer or co-producer on almost every track, who shifts the atmosphere constantly — often within a single song — deploying ratchety trap percussion, menacing electronics, blurry pitch-shifted samples, and even a rock guitar.
“Black Panther” does include the mandatory action-film pop anthems. In “All the Stars,” Mr. Lamar raps about conflict between hopeful choruses from SZA. But the song’s release as a single has been marred by complaints that its video clip imitates, without credit, the imagery of a Liberian-British artist, Lina Iris Viktor.
Ending the album is the more grimly determined “Pray for Me,” with the Weeknd mournfully vowing to “spill this blood for you” and Mr. Lamar rapping about how “I fight the world, I fight you, I fight myself” over a track that vaguely suggests African drumming and traditional ululations. Ballads, another soundtrack-album requirement, are equally burdened. The English songwriter Jorja Smith sings “I Am” over an adamantly sluggish drumbeat and a lonely guitar line, affirming a sense of duty: “When you know what you got, sacrifice ain’t that hard,” she declares.
The album’s broader strategy is to hint at the movie’s story while concentrating on tales of struggle and swagger much closer to home. From the songs, it would be easy to believe the movie was set in California, although there are bits of African input tucked in.
Mr. Lamar dips into the roles of both T’Challa, the African king of the fictitious Wakanda who is also the Black Panther, and Erik Killmonger, his tenacious adversary. Yet in the track “Black Panther,” which ends with the words, “I am T’Challa,” Mr. Lamar is also quite insistently “King Kendrick”: “King of the answer, king of the problem, king of the forsaken,” he raps over a nagging, dissonant loop. Later in the track, with an almost conspiratorial voice, he asks, “What do you stand for? Are you an activist?”
Mr. Lamar announces “All hail King Killmonger” in “King’s Dead,” after a litany of repudiation and denial — “Not your baby, not your equal/Not the title y’all want me under” — that may sum up Killmonger’s negativity. But it also parallels Mr. Lamar’s refusal on his albums to accept oversimplified roles like spokesman or generational conscience.
The album’s many guests don’t try as hard to connect with the movie. Most of them appear as California figures, flaunting fancy cars and thinking about street-level battles. “Paramedic!” is a showcase for the Sacramento group SOB X RBE, boasting about being “heavy in the streets” over plinking percussion. Ab-Soul and Anderson .Paak share “Bloody Waters,” matter-of-factly describing growing up around, and perpetuating, endless lethal gang rivalries: “It’s warfare. Is war fair? No.,” Ab-Soul raps.
The album welcomes some South African rappers and singers, and there are brief glimpses of South African rhythms; its most cheerfully upbeat song, “Redemption,” features the South African singer Babes Wodumo riding the South African club beat called gqom. Mr. Lamar and Vince Staples share “Opps” with Yugen Blakrok, a South African rapper as quick and convoluted in her boasts as they are: “Crushing any system that belittles us/Antidote to every poison they administer/Switch it like time signatures,” she raps. The track, produced by Sounwave with the composer of the film’s orchestral score, Ludwig Göransson, uses a low, scowling synthesizer line, West African talking drums and a thumping beat suggesting South African house music.
Another South African, Sjava, sings fervently in Zulu in “Seasons,” a slow soul vamp that makes way for raps from two Californians, Mozzy and Reason, about being trapped in a cycle of institutional racism, poverty and violence.
Those aren’t problems that a song or a superhero can solve. But if “Black Panther” had wanted simple comic-book escapism, it wouldn’t have hired Mr. Lamar.
Various Artists
“Black Panther the Album: Music From and Inspired By”
(Top Dawg Ent./Aftermath/Interscope)
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