Black Pan­ther and Kendrick Lamar: Explod­ing the Mar­vel Sym­phon­ic Universe

Ryan Coogler’s upcom­ing Black Pan­ther sig­ni­fies much more than the con­tin­u­a­tion of Marvel’s dom­i­nance with­in the super­hero genre. It presents the stu­dio with the oppor­tu­ni­ty to utilise the film’s Kendrick Lamar-pro­duced sound­track as a vital work of black lib­er­a­tion, akin to the Afro­cen­trism of ​’70s Blax­ploita­tion, incen­tivis­ing them towards greater artis­tic flex­i­bil­i­ty. Merg­ing the film’s Afro­fu­tur­ist aes­thet­ic with Lamar’s unique voice rep­re­sents a bold new cre­ative direc­tion for the stu­dio, not to men­tion a wel­come depar­ture from the Mar­vel Sym­phon­ic Universe.

Akin to Mar­vin Gaye and The Isley Broth­ers, who open­ly declared their asso­ci­a­tion with Blax­ploita­tion cin­e­ma, Lamar’s com­mit­ment to emo­tive, polit­i­cal sto­ry­telling is arguably the dri­ving force of his musi­cal out­put. Just as Gaye’s sound­track for 1972’s Trou­ble Man helped to define the sound of that era, so the track list of Lamar’s ​‘Black Pan­ther: The Album’ high­lights the rich diver­si­ty of con­tem­po­rary hip-hop.

The soul­ful main theme, ​‘Trou­ble Man’, wields the idio­syn­crasies of the leg­endary Motown artist while echo­ing the emo­tion­al jour­ney of Robert Hooks’ lead char­ac­ter Mr T. Advanc­ing Gaye’s out­line of sound­track­ing for a new gen­er­a­tion of film and music lovers, Lamar evi­dent­ly fore­grounds his own musi­cal iden­ti­ty while adding nuance to Black Panther’s char­ac­ters via the lead sin­gle ​‘All The Stars’.

A col­lab­o­ra­tion with SZA, ​‘All The Stars’ exhibits not only Lamar’s lyri­cal prowess but also the inno­v­a­tive pro­duc­tion of record label Top Dawg Entertainment’s Antho­ny Tiffith and Gram­my-win­ning pro­duc­er Al Shux. Ground­ed by SZA’s hook, the verse ​“Con­fronta­tion ain’t noth­in’ new to me / You can bring a bul­let, bring a sword” speaks direct­ly to Chad­wick Boseman’s King T’Challa, who faces polit­i­cal unrest upon return­ing home to Wakan­da after the events of Cap­tain Amer­i­ca: Civ­il War. The track evokes the past­ness of Blax­ploita­tion while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly recall­ing the fol­low­ing verse from Gaye’s ​‘Trou­ble Man’: ​“I come up hard / I had to fight/​Took care of my busi­ness / With all my might”.

Else­where on the sound­track, the more trap-based ​‘King’s Dead’ is a col­lab­o­ra­tion between Jay Rock, Future and Lamar, whose dis­tinc­tive sounds are com­bined with James Blake’s assertive beats. In the final verse, Lamar states, ​“Not the title y’all want me under / All hail King Kill­mon­ger,” effec­tive­ly putting him­self in the shoes of Michael B Jordan’s vil­lain Erik Killmonger.

By stark con­trast, the orches­tral arrange­ments com­mon­ly found in Mar­vel films are large­ly based upon ​‘temp­ing’, a term that refers to emu­lat­ing or repeat­ing exist­ing scores in the ini­tial cut. (A notable excep­tion to this with­in the MCU is James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy films, which fea­ture juke­box sound­tracks.) Sys­temic through­out block­buster film­mak­ing, this prob­lem is not due to a lack of cre­ative com­posers, but the process of non-lin­ear edit­ing that allows direc­tors to have a greater cre­ative con­trol and influ­ence upon music. 

In Iron Man – the film that kick-start­ed the MCU – Ramin Djawadi’s com­po­si­tions fall into the back­ground of scenes, result­ing in a notable absence of feel­ing. Just as Jon Favreau’s film ush­ered in the era of post-cred­its scenes, it also cre­at­ed an audio­vi­su­al blue­print from which each sub­se­quent Mar­vel block­buster would be drawn. Unlike var­i­ous oth­er pop­u­lar movie fran­chis­es (see Har­ry Pot­ter, Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings), Mar­vel has thus far failed to suc­cess­ful­ly merge sight and sound in order to cre­ate a tru­ly unique moment – one that lingers in the mind long after the cred­its role. 

By bring­ing Lamar on board and employ­ing Lud­wig Görans­son (a long­time col­lab­o­ra­tor with Coogler who has also worked with Don­ald Glover aka Child­ish Gam­bi­no) as the film’s prin­ci­pal com­pos­er, Mar­vel are final­ly broad­en­ing their sym­phon­ic hori­zons. And by align­ing the acclaimed rapper’s crit­i­cal themes with those explored in the film, the stu­dio may just be ensur­ing that Black Pan­ther res­onates with audi­ences on a deep­er, more per­son­al level.