How many better opening tracks are there than Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Wesley’s Theory’?
Lamar is probably the biggest 21st century artist to record unwatered-down funk. For his magnum opus, To Pimp a Butterfly (2015), Kendrick recruited several jazz and funk (and funk-inspired) musicians, among them George Clinton, Thundercat, Flying Lotus, Terrace Martin, Robert Glasper, Kamasi Washington, Bilal, Dr Dre, and Snoop Dogg.
Kendrick raps about “something that we weren’t taught in school”; how no one teaches young black males how to manage money before they’re thrown in jail. (“Uneducated but I got a million dollar check.”) The title is a reference to Wesley Snipes, who was imprisoned for tax evasion. Clinton sings, “Lookin’ down is quite a drop / Lookin’ good when you’re on top”.
In his collaboration with Prince, ‘Paradigm’, from the sprawling George Clinton & The P-Funk All Stars album How Late Do U Have 2BB4UR Absent?, Clinton sings, “Look both ways before you cross my mind.”
Bootsy Collins used the same idea in ‘After The Storm’, his collaboration with Tyler, The Creator and Kali Uchis: “So you gotta be careful, baby / And look both ways / Before you cross my mind”.
Clinton revisited the lines on ‘Wesley’s Theory’, which took inspiration from several tunes.
The lyric “Every n* is a star” is interpolated from a Boris Gardiner song that itself interpolates a Sly & The Family Stone song, ‘Everybody Is a Star’. Sly was one of George Clinton’s idols (and later close friend and partner in getting high). Gardiner got a writing credit, along with Kendrick, Clinton, Thundercat, Flying Lotus, and Flippa (the latter two produced the track, with additional production from Sounwave and Thundercat). Interestingly, Sly didn’t get a writing credit. Gardiner’s song is, confusingly, not widely recognised as an interpolation.
Another guest on ‘Wesley’s’, Dr Dre, built a career on interpolating Parliament songs. His first album mined the 1975 classic Mothership Connection for Bernie Worrell’s space synths and hooks like “Slow down sweet chariot, stop, and let me ride” (‘Let Me Ride’), which itself was lifted from a African American spiritual.
Thundercat’s bass is monstrous, a hip-hopped Bootsy bass dipped in molten lava. In his solo material, Thundercat often plays with more watery sounds. Here, his bass sounds like the gargled speech of a mythical beast emerging from a volcano.
Thundercat’s playing has a flexibility that contrasts with the computerised bass drum. But he joins the drums on the One, adding to the footstomping snarl of the track, no matter how matter his phrases wander unpredictably. Listen from 0:58 and the One shortly after. Meeean. His playing is a large part of why the song feels like it’s always moving – listen as he shifts up in pitch at 1:56, giving Kendrick’s swaggering lines unexpected melodicism.
There’s quite a cast of musicians on the track (and album). Ash Riser and Whitney Alford sing along with Thundercat. Josef Leimberg plays trumpet (in the opening’s Gardiner interpolation, and possibly in the 1:35-onwards section – “When I get signed, homie, I’ma act a fool”). Terrace Martin plays alto saxophone (and unspecified “horns”). The horns from 1:00 on sound digitalised, possibly a synth really (which maybe explains the “horns” credit).
The horns are already sounding Bernie-esque before the inspiration is unmistakable before 1:59 with that spacey synth, presumably played by Flying Lotus or Sounwave.
The unpredictably throughout the track – Thundercat’s burbling bass and refusal to stick to one line, Clinton and Kendrick trading vocals, backing vocals jumping from right to left speakers, the Dre voicemail – is a startling start to an album.
After Dre’s cameo, there’s a new chord progression and ominous synth-strings as Kendrick raps as Uncle Sam, who tells him, “And everything you buy, taxes will deny / I’ll Wesley Snipe your ass before 35”. The beat disappears for that last line before returning on the One.
Washington said of Butterfly: “That record changed music, and we’re still seeing the effects of it. It went beyond jazz; it meant that intellectually stimulating music doesn’t have to be underground.”