![]() This is doubly true of his most recent album, Mr Morale and the Big Steppers, which is an elaborate and often uncomfortable trauma opera about, among other things, Lamar’s childhood, his unwanted status as a kind of pop messiah, and cancel culture. Lamar is far more human than any stars of a similar wattage, and his music – rap records that are ornate bordering on ornery, so poetic and literary that he won a Pulitzer for 2017’s Damn – doesn’t necessarily lend itself to the greatest hits format that pop stars are so often cowed into. He isn’t Drake, who breezes through each stadium gig as if it’s just another party on a seemingly endless Ibiza holiday, and he isn’t Kanye West, who is so brilliantly facetious that he based one of his tours on Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain. But it was a wild time to be alive, if only to see the biggest dreams of CCM briefly realized, and Pitchfork’s review is a reminder that Jesus Freak made real waves.When it comes to live shows, Kendrick Lamar has always faced an uphill battle. ![]() The alt-rock bubble popped around the dawn of a new millennium and dcTalk itself kicked off the year 2000 with a self-proclaimed “intermission” that continues to this day. CCM began its pivot to praise and worship music, a far safer investment for the Nashville scene with a weekly, built-in audience. And, for a little while, it had.īut things changed. ![]() ![]() Pepper’s: a generational work that suggested new possibilities for the genre.” This was bolstered by the success of bands like Jars of Clay, MxPx, Switchfoot and Sixpence None the Richer, all of who found themselves with real hits that suggested CCM’s time had finally come. “Now they called Jesus Freak the group’s Sgt. “CCM journalists had already taken to calling DC Talk the Christian Beatles,” Shoup writes. “For a generation of evangelical listeners, hearing Christian music’s biggest stars acknowledge their struggle to live a holy life was, paradoxically, profound encouragement,” he writes.īut the review also delves into the brief, strange era Jesus Freak found itself in, a time that seemed to bode so much promise for Christian crossover success. Shoup keenly observes that TobyMac, Kevin Max and Michael Tait spend a lot of time grappling with their own faults and doubts on Jesus Freak, a fairly revelatory attitude at the time for the squeaky clean CCM machine. Shoup also notes what a wild pivot the album was for the band, which had trafficked in hip-hop for its first few albums before making a very sudden shift to the broad swath of genres that make up Jesus Freak. The review notes the enormous waves Jesus Freak made in terms of sales, forcing mainstream music execs to sit up and take notice. So, how did the album fare? Critic Brad Shoup gave it a respectable 6.7 (for context, the Smashing Pumpkins’ classic Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, which came out the same year, got a 9.3). dcTalk’s 1995 opus Jesus Freak finally got the Pitchfork treatment, along with a deep dive into CCM’s mid-90s salad days. Last Sunday, the site righted a historic wrong and turned its critical eye to an album that needs no introduction around these parts. It’s a chance for Pitchfork to do a deep dive on music that wasn’t on their narrow radar at the time but has proven to be significant in the ensuing years. Every Sunday, the elite indie music kingmakers at Pitchfork publish a new review of an album from the past that was overlooked by the outlet upon its release. ![]()
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