Named one of the best podcasts of 2018 by the New York Times, Dissect reaches listeners by diving into popular albums of the past few years and dissecting them. In a time where playlists rule the music world, Dissect aims to look at albums as whole pieces, rather than vehicles for a few hit songs. Each season of the podcast, one album is selected to analyze. Each episode tackles one song of the album and goes line by line to take a deeper look at the meaning of each song and album. Dissect’s first season looked at Kendrick Lamar’s “To Pimp A Butterfly.” The podcast started out with a dedicated audience, but after season two’s analysis of Kanye West’s “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy,” their audience grew 450%.
Dissect’s world-wide recognition led them to expand their focus beyond Frank Ocean’s “Blonde” and look at Ocean’s life and prior work. Looking at these factors and how they impacted Ocean’s musical process made for an even more in depth conversation about Pitchfork’s best album of the decade. Dissect tied Ocean’s reclusive tendencies, rare Tumblr posts, and prior albums into a larger discussion about “Blonde,” leading to mainstream recognition and inclusion on many lists of notable podcasts. Dissect’s popularity even lead to a partnership with Spotify to release episodes early.
Dissect is currently in its fifth season, where Kendrick Lamar is back in the spotlight for his most recent effort, “DAMN.” The season’s fifth episode was released October 17th on Spotify, and goes in depth about how news coverage of racial issues impacted Lamar’s music, specifically on the song “DNA.” Dissect split the song into two episodes, and the most recent episode talks about how “DNA” starts out as a song about Lamar, but is later revealed to be a song that any human can relate to. Dissect aims to talk critically about a genre that often doesn’t get looked into academically. Dissect is geared towards all music lovers, regardless of genre prefereance. Rap lovers will be sucked into discusions about their favorite artists and albums. People who haven’t had as much experience with hip-hop may find that there is more in the music than expected. Dissect is released on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and any other podcast distributor.
