Album Review : Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp a Butterfly (2015)

I have a decent knowledge of hip-hop history from the seventies to 1999 maybe. Back then, I was a nerd playing basketball and listening to gangsta rap all day, so I also took a theoretical interest in both subjects. It's the New Orleans cliques of No Limit and Cash Money Records changed the game at the turn of the millenium both sonically and aesthetically, taking it in a direction I liked a lot less, so my knowledge of 21st century hip-hop is close to inexistent. I only had a vague notion of who Kendrick Lamar was before last week, but the release of his latest album TO PIMP A BUTTERFLY set the internet ablaze, so I gave it a spin. Now I know who Kendrick Lamar is. He's one of the alpha dogs of this generation.

It took me about thirty, maybe forty-five seconds to understand what I was listening to. The album still had several surprises for me, but I understood I was dealing with an artistic vision blossoming within the paradigm of hip-hop. Unlike someone like Kanye West for example, who enjoys smashing musical paradigms and building his own thing from the pieces, Kendrick Lamar creates a more classic, recognizable brand of hip-hop. The first song Wesley's Theory for example has influences from seventies' funk music, early nineties West Coast hip-hop and yet it has a powerful identity due to the vocal performance Kendrick is pulling. There are two characters in the song, representing the creation/business duality in the music industry. Strong stuff.

Kendrick Lamar always has a lot to say, but he expresses it such different ways from song to song, it's always a challenge to figure him out. The old school and groovy King Kunta for example (one of my favourite songs on the record) expresses his elation of having made it as a black man, his feelings of personal growth which he embodies into this character of slave who became king. as songs like Hood Politics and The Blacker the Berry in a much more old school, confrontational and ''gangsta" manner with the issue of race, which is a central lyrics theme to Kendrick. He acknowledges the different eras of hip-hop on every song of TO PIMP A BUTTERFLY, mostly the creativity of his contemporaries and the bare aggression of the old school. It's the best of both worlds, really.

Badass doesn't need bling. 

There is a very cool concept aspect in TO PIMP A BUTTERFLY, leaking through almost every songs like a mystery. Kendrick is reciting lines from a poem, which is gets longer and longer as the record goes by. It becomes more and more obvious he's actually talking to someone and although it's easy to find out who he's actually talking to if you Google it, I'm not going to rob you of the pleasure of finding out. It's actually in very much in line with Kendrick Lamar's reconciling approach of the different eras of hip-hop on TO PIMP A BUTTERFLY. This playful, concept aspect culminates on the last track Mortal Man, where Kendrick unveils his plans to keep being a disturbance and goes into depth about what it means to "pimp a butterfly", which he has put more thought into that what you might expect reading the title for the first time.

I haven't discussed the musical aspect of TO PIMP A BUTTERFLY in great detail, in that review. Kendrick Lamar's artistic vision is so rich and nuanced that it took all my attention just to keep up with it, and I've discovered new things with every spin I gave to the record. TO PIMP A BUTTERFLY is sonically eclectic, but cohesive. It's a history class in hip-hop, its influences and the evolution of black music * in America. Kendrick Lamar has this monumental artistic vision, but he's also proud to be part of a musical tradition which he is trying to further and develop. TO PIMP A BUTTERFLY is a terrific, proud, creative and important hip-hop record that'll be bound to influence several young rappers in the future. It's been a while since a major artist released such a cohesive and inspired album.

Standout Tracks: Wesley's Theory, King Kunta, u, The Blacker the Berry, i, Mortal Man

* For lack of a better term? I apologize if the term offends anyone.