{"id":2191,"date":"2015-04-16T09:00:32","date_gmt":"2015-04-16T13:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/?p=2191"},"modified":"2015-04-16T09:00:32","modified_gmt":"2015-04-16T13:00:32","slug":"in-the-rotation-kendrick-lamars-to-pimp-a-butterfly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/2015\/04\/16\/in-the-rotation-kendrick-lamars-to-pimp-a-butterfly\/","title":{"rendered":"In the Rotation: Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly"},"content":{"rendered":"

BY JOHN WYATT — SPORTS\u00a0SECTION EDITOR<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Throughout the history of music, there are moments where artists tap into some force or state of mind that produces something truly special; something that fundamentally alters and shifts the culture and latches onto people on multiple levels. Kendrick Lamar\u2019s third album (second major label release) To Pimp A Butterfly<\/em> is one such moment.<\/p>\n

Fans, critics, and artists gave nothing but praise to the Compton, CA, native since the early days of his career. His first album Section .80, <\/em>showcased the rapper\u2019s versatility, as well as his willingness to tackle dense social issues head on with a thoughtful and nuanced approach. It wasn\u2019t until his major label debut, good kid, m.A.A.d city<\/em>, though, that he launched himself into rap stardom. Good kid<\/em> was instantly declared a classic by fans and critics. For critics and hip-hop heads, Lamar was something of a savior for his ability to stay true to the \u201cessence\u201d of rap and speak on the social and political issues he felt the need to address hidden under radio hits and party anthems. Besides a few guest contributions and a legendary verse on Big Sean\u2019s control, Lamar went silent, slowly toiling away on his latest masterpiece.<\/p>\n

\"GOOGLE<\/a>
GOOGLE\u00a0IMAGES FAIR USE
Lamar’s newest album adds to his repertoire, combining strong social commentary, a critique of the music industry, and 60s and 70s musical influences.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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If you expect this album to be another \u201cBitch Don\u2019t Kill My Vibe\u201d or \u201cSwimming Pools,\u201d you\u2019re going to come out disappointed. Lamar takes the roots of modern hip-hop, but drowns them in jazz, Parliament-era funk, soul, and even classic G-funk West Coast rap with tons of live instrumentation mixed in for good measure. The opening track, \u201cWesley\u2019s Theory,\u201d smacks you in the face with the funk and some monster basslines by the bass wizard that is Thundercat and Flying Lotus-produced beats. Here, Lamar raps on the pimping of black entertainers by the music industry, switching perspectives between a na\u00efve young rapper and the music industry, and by extension government institutions (referred to as Uncle Sam throughout the album), circling the young rapper like a vulture waiting for its next meal.<\/p>\n

The funk and swagger reach an apex though on the long anticipated \u201cKing Kunta.\u201d The track sounds like its pulled straight out of the 70\u2019s funk era dominated by bands such as Parliament and Funkadelic (George Clinton even makes an appearance on the opening track). \u201cKing Kendrick\u201d calls out any and every one on this track. It\u2019s the one moment where Lamar most resembles the confident, braggadocios rapper that we saw in the aftermath of gkmc<\/em>.<\/p>\n

But this swagger and confidence eventually fade away. The album\u2019s lowest point, \u201cu\u201d shows Lamar howling and shrieking \u201cLoving you is complicated!\u201d though the \u201cyou\u201d could take on a double meaning of both Lamar himself or his fellow African-Americans, who interrupt the upbeat and positive \u201ci,\u201d the counterpart to this song.Whoever \u201cyou,\u201d he eventually turns the mirror on himself when the beat switches to a moody, downright depressing saxophone in the background. In a voice that is almost on the verge of tears, he yells at himself in the mirror as he raps about his shortcomings and failures even after his status as one of Rap\u2019s greatest. Failure to save his little sister from an unwanted pregnancy, failure to protect his little brother from violence in Compton, and failure to visit a friend dying in the hospital all haunt him. In a line that would floor anyone, he reveals that \u201cif I told your secrets\/The world\u2019ll know money can\u2019t stop a suicidal weakness.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Lamar never shied\u00a0away from tackling heavy social issues, and this is his most politically charged work yet. With a new story of a young black man gunned down by a police officer dominating the media every few months, it\u2019s no surprise that Lamar eventually snaps in anger. On \u201cThe Blacker the Berry,\u201d he spits off some of the most aggressive and politically and racially charged lines we\u2019ve heard from him. While the anger is real and genuine, he refuses to be completely fixated on it as he pulls out a twist ending. The entirety of the song is an angry, aggressive banger against white supremacy and institutional racism. However, Lamar calls himself (and by extension anyone else participating) a hypocrite for marching against white on black violence when he refuses to bat an eyelash against gang violence within his hometown of Compton (\u201cSo why did I weep when Travyon Martin lay in the street\/When gangbanging make me kill a n*gga blacker than me\/Hypocrite\u201d).<\/p>\n

The album ends with one of the most epic closers possible for a rap album. Lamar starts off \u201cMortal Man\u201d rapping on his role within hip-hop as the voice for mature, conscious rap, hoping to further the message of Nelson Mandela whom he name checks several times throughout the song. The song eventually fades out to a mock interview between Lamar and Tupac. What\u2019s frightening is how Tupac\u2019s answers, taken from an interview in the mid 90\u2019s, are still incredibly relevant even 20 years later. When asked what he thinks about the future of Lamar and his generation, Tupac answers with a pretty ominous warning: \u201cI think that n*ggas is tired of grabbin\u2019 shit out the stores and next time there\u2019s gonna be bloodshed for real. I don\u2019t think America know that \u2026 it ain\u2019t gonna be no playing. It\u2019s going to be murder.\u201d A statement with even more weight behind it given the shooting of two NYPD officers by African American Ismaaiyl Brinsley this past December in response to murders of unarmed Eric Garner and Mike Brown.<\/p>\n

To Pimp a Butterfly<\/em> lacks the structured narrative of gkmc<\/em>, but it is infinitely richer and more complex. Each song is a short vignette that provides insight into what it means to be black in a system (the music industry, and by extension, the American government) that continually attempts to strip them of wealth, identity, and culture. Lamar does not beat you over the head with philosophy and lectures. Like the unnamed narrator in Ralph Ellison\u2019s Invisible Man<\/em> which he alludes to with the yams line in \u201cKing Kunta,\u201d Lamar strives to become an everyman. By providing you with his own experiences, successes, and failures, he hopes that you can connect in some way\u2014big or small\u2014to his own experience and learn from it. He is well aware that his 79 minutes of thought-provoking and emotional music will not spark a revolution nor will it end institutional racism. But that\u2019s not really what this album is about. TPAB<\/em> is about getting up every day in the face of an overwhelming, oppressive force and celebrating humanity in the face of it. It is clear that Lamar wants to affect the minds of his audience for the better.<\/p>\n

This album is a testament to how phenomenal of an artist Kendrick Lamar is. He figured out how to work the defective mechanisms of the music industry to create something with both mass appeal and artistic merit on good kid, m.A.A.d city<\/em>, and he could have easily repeated that formula on this album and enjoyed tremendous success and praise; but he didn\u2019t. Instead, he rejected the system entirely. Nothing on this album is aimed at the radio or even at mainstream audiences. So much of the production harkens back to the music of the 60\u2019s and 70\u2019s, music that most of Lamar\u2019s fans are completely unfamiliar with. Lamar himself stated that this album \u201cwasn\u2019t made for people in the suburbs.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an era where most rappers maybe<\/em> drop a line or two about civil rights with the same passion and effectiveness as hashtag activism, Lamar dishes out responsibility and blame equally to black and white Americans, as well as himself, with the same energy and emotion that he has shown throughout his career. The fact that Lamar made an album at the pinnacle of his career that both rejects mainstream appeal (though the album still took the number one spot on the Billboards two weeks in a row) and refuses to shy away from being brutally honest and making listeners, especially white listeners, uncomfortable about the state of civil rights in America proves that Lamar is truly a once-in-a-generation artist along the likes of The Beatles, Michael Jackson, Kurt Cobain, and yes, Tupac. The result is an album that not only is an incredible piece of art, but one that fundamentally shifts the hip-hop genre. Only time will tell exactly what kind of change TPAB<\/em> will have on hip-hop, but make no mistake about it; this is a damn near perfect album.<\/p>\n

Oh, and it also just happens to sound fantastic as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY JOHN WYATT — SPORTS\u00a0SECTION EDITOR Throughout the history of music, there are moments where artists tap into some force or state of mind that produces something truly special; something that fundamentally alters and shifts the culture and latches onto people on multiple levels. Kendrick Lamar\u2019s third album (second major label release) To Pimp A […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":2198,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[22],"class_list":["post-2191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-leisure","tag-in-the-rotation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2191\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}