I am not into hip hop so I was battling with myself a lot while I was giving a chance to the album that topped year-end-charts in 2015. It took a long time until Kendrick Lamar entered my playlist and my heart. I understood it is about experimental jazz funky collage, but not one track abstracted from the rest. This is when I sat down and decided to figure out what is all the fuss about. It turned out this is not only a complicated conceptual album, but also an important cultural artifact for African American culture.
Narrative of How To Pimp A Butterfly is coherent and correlates each song to one another. It is very complex, with many layers: from the stories about fame and temptations of Lucy (that is how Kendrick calls Lucifer) to intrapersonal processes filled with self-doubt and ambivalence. These Walls is a song where walls become metaphor for vagina lips and oral sex is a shelter from the walls inside one’s head. Walls inside Kendrick’s head were his major problems during his fight with depression. Another prominent narrative is the one about experiencing black culture in which Lamar compares African Americans with caterpillars that don’t have a chance to develop to beautiful butterflies.
Not only that tracks altogether make a meaningful unit, but they are often put as antipodes. U is an antipode for the first single from the album, i. In similar way, song Momma, in which Kendrick returns from Africa to share his experiences and knowledge with brothers in home town Compton, serves as a contrast to Hood Politics, a track reminiscing Kendrick’s growing up in the hood. Here Lamar goes so far that he even compared democrats and republicans with black gangs Crips and Blood calling them Democrips and ReBloodlicans.
On good portion of the album, you can hear Lamar reciting parts of his songs. At the end, we have a 12 minute long Mortal Man, recital plus montage of an interview with Tupac Shakur. Kendrick tells Tupac his parabola about caterpillar and butterfly and he invites him to react. No answer back. Kendrick is left alone. Deep shit.
Once you get this complex narrative, you will enjoy the brilliant music of the biggest album of 2015.
