It showcased that Kendrick is a very idiosyncratic rapper, but even that idiosyncrasy came with a clearly defined relation to the beat.
The raps on that song exemplified everything that make Kendrick a superb craftsman the multisyllabic rhymes, both end and internal placing syllables that we don’t accent in normal speech on the beat to give them emphasis use of elision, in which he alters the chorus to set up a series of third verse rhymes his ability to pack so many different, often complex rhythms into the song, even a single verse. Accordingly, there is no Backseat Freestyle on thisalbum-or at least, not much of it. Listeners were never implicated or addressed or made to feel threatened as Kendrick showed off Compton. good kid was billed as “a short film by Kendrick Lamar,” and the way its lyrics painted a picture for listeners to look at made it an appropriate billing.
To say that To Pimp A Butterfly is not like good kid, m.A.A.d city is an understatement. By the same token, appearances by Parliament/ Funkadelic mastermind George Clinton (on aforementioned Wesley’s Theory) and sampling of James Brown (on King Kunta), Ahmad (same), Ron Isley (on i) and Fela Kuti (on Mortal Man), other nods, and the versatile work of the numerous producers and writers self-consciously place Kendrick within a lineage of “black music.” Still, To Pimp A Butterfly was produced largely from the ground up-samples are relatively few-making Kendrick’s album closer to D’Angelo’s Black Messiah than to Public Enemy, whom the album sometimes recalls in its more confrontational lyrics.Īnd it’s precisely those confrontational lyrics that make To Pimp A Butterfly an unforgettable album. To Pimp A Butterfly, which explicitly addresses itself to Tupac in its final minutes, is very much a response to Me Against The World. He had “THUG LIFE” tattooed across his belly but claimed that he wasn’t a gangster it meant “The Hate You Give Little Infants Fucks Everybody.” He lamented the pointless deaths of many friends on Me Against The World ’s“So Many Tears.” He helped pioneer “gangsta rap” and got away with shooting cops but wrote poetry, studied theater, and had a fondndess for Shakespeare. Tupac, like Kendrick, was a man of contradictions. That album, released while Tupac was in jail, showcased the rapper’s other side.
On the note of the former, around the same time To Pimp A Butterfly “leaked,” Kendrick tweeted that the previous day was a “Special Day,” a reference to the 20th anniversary of Tupac’s Me Against The World. That double consciousness, that two-sided Gemini, takes the form of u and i, as two dichotomous tracks are called, and challenged, reconciled, historicized, and complicated through the album’s self-conscious positioning and Kendrick’s lyrics, both of which seem to be fighting themselves on every level. Du Bois’ term refers to how black identity has split into multiple facets as a result of the disparity between African heritage and enslaved upbringing in White America. Du Bois’ termed “double consciousness” in The Souls of Black Folk. To Pimp A Butterfly is an album about contradictions-the contradictions of fame and artistry, of escape and home, of Kendrick Lamar himself, and the schizophrenic condition that W.E.B. “ Your horoscope is a Gemini, two sides/So you better cop everything two times.” In an album boiling over with thesis statements, this one, from the final verse of opening track Wesley’s Theory, is particularly constructive. Kendrick Lamar To Pimp A Butterfly (Interscope)