Released March 15, 2015
9.5 / 10
Favorites
Wesley's Theory, For Free? - Interlude, King Kunta, These Walls, Alright, For Sale? - Interlude, How Much A Dollar Cost, Complexion (A Zulu Love), The Blacker The Berry, Mortal Man
Least favorites
Institutionalized, You Ain't Gotta Lie (Momma Said)
More than social commentary, "To Pimp A Butterfly" is a call to action so meticulously crafted it deserves all your attention and then some more. The music is at the heart of the message, blending rap, jazz, funk, soul and spoken word, gathering Black heritage in handfuls to cement some of the most significant voices of recent history and make great strides for the culture. It's an album as dark as the times - when internalized turmoil can't be contained anymore and reaches out to brothers and sisters for a greater chance at freedom from the rusting chains of injustice. "To Pimp A Butterfly"'s heroes are not only celebrated through the spoken words: Thundercat's bass, Terrace Martin's sax and Robert Glasper's piano play out their own form of eulogy throughout the length and breadth of the record. The most acclaimed album of 2015 reaches down in depths that the music mainstream is usually reticent to dip a toe in, pulling out a dense, complex and theatrical expression of a societal malaise that has been unraveling faster since the album's release. The experience is taxing and overwhelming today still, as it should be, considering the lack of significant change in five years. Comfort has never been the bedrock of a revolution - when human dignity cries out against systems built to keep it locked in cages, educating yourself and others on the genesis of these systems can trigger a hunger for justice that artists like Kendrick have felt from the moment they entered the world as we know it. "To Pimp A Butterfly"'s aspiration to speak to many stems for the realization that the experience of the caterpillar, limited by its condition to strenuous mobility, is shared by millions of its peers - and only the butterfly can travel and see the multitude of caterpillars holding on to dear life for a chance to spread their wings. And even then, a butterfly's lifespan seldom leaves time for much after the awakening. Kendrick comes from a place where he's had to overcome many of the traps institutionalized America has laid for him to fall into. Death dominates the African-American experience in underprivileged neighborhoods so much so that a lot of Compton-born Kendrick's sophomore album reads as an audacious middle finger to the unnerving possibility of dying any day for no better reason than the concentration of a pigment in your skin cells. Kendrick discusses the hold his upbringing environment still has on him in Institutionalized. Much like on several other tracks on the record, he spends considerable energy addressing the hypocritical reverence of the masses for 'successful' black people (where 'success' is correlated with fame and wealth) - that quickly fizzles out in the absence of signs of wealth. For Free?addresses in part how the community he comes from is being brainwashed into equating success with making a coin and leaving that said community - to the extent where the worth of a man is measured in the type of car he drives more than his moral standing. To a jazzy sound co-written by Terrace Martin, Kendrick reclaims his worth as an artist and as a man. The improv style instrumentals, combined with adventurous excursions with vocal cadence, make for an ecstatic sonic mix - a 2 minute interlude that feels more polished than entire albums I have reviewed - ahem. In u, we find Kendrick battling depression and struggling with self-love ("Loving you is complicated" loops over and over again in a self-directed monologue as if to exorcize the very thoughts). The track is excruciatingly raw, with some very self-deprecating lyrics that sound like they stem for a severe case of imposter syndrome - I flinched when I heard "I fuckin' tell you, you funckin' failure - you ain't no leader / I never liked you, forever despise you - I don't need you!". He knows what he's doing, using his voice theatrically from the urgency of the beginning of the song to the ending drunken sobs. Moreover, he impresses with the vocal range on the "Loving you is complicated" gearing up from the deep trenches of his guts to the top of his voice. The track marks a turning point, suggesting that the struggle of loving yourself and your community holds the key to change. "To Pimp A Butterfly" further crystallizes the idea that artistry and society are deeply interlinked, something that wider audiences tend to forget in an age of pop music that up until quite recently hasn't reclaimed spaces where voices align with intention. Kendrick's big personal struggle at play here has to do with how he sees his place in the culture and the advancement of human rights: he acknowledges his faults, his weaknesses, while also admitting ambitions to have his name written in the pantheon of potent black voices of our time alongside giants like Nelson Mandela. Right after the despair of u, Alright throws a lifeline by summoning religious imagery and looking to God for assurance of future emotional prosperity and peace of mind. The track breathes Pharrell's production style through and through, with his signature background vocals and a beat pattern that reminds me of his subsequent work with Ariana on her "sweetener". Even the intro is trademark Pharrell: the song's first beat is repeated four times as if stuck on a loop before launching full throttle (a move he's used on Kelis' "Milkshake", his own "Happy" and "Frontin'", as well as Snoop's "Drop It Like It's Hot" and Robin Thicke's now infamous "Blurred Lines"). It's upbeat and hopeful while referencing where that need for a positive outlook comes from. Coming right after u, Alright confirms that two choices are presented for the oppressed: hope or death. In the context of the album, Alright doesn't ring as hopeful as it would on its own when you realize the alternative to its attitude is the bleakest of them all. Five years later, the words painstakingly resonate still: "Ni**a, and we hate po-po / Wanna kill us dead in the street fo sho'". The penultimate song, i, arrives at an opportune time. Similarly to the contrast between u and Alright, it follows The Blacker The Berry with a message that freedom from self-loathing is the key to the impeding revolution. Kendrick chose to go with a live-sounding mix with crowd noise in the back, giving it more of a celebratory vibe than it would without. The album closer, Mortal Man sees Kendrick writing himself in the long lineage of black cultural leaders (with explicit mentions to Mandela, MLK and Malcom X) for emancipation, as imperfect as he is ("As I lead this army, make room for mistakes and depression"). His flow is more solemn than on most of the album, leaving no doubt of the seriousness of the intent behind his record. "To Pimp A Butterfly" feels strangely prophetic: it's as timely now, five years after its release, as it was in 2015 - if not more. I believe it probably speaks to more people than it did when it came out - especially those who haven't come close to Kendrick's experiences in Compton -, following the eruption of consciousness we're in the midst of. About his audience, Kendrick had said at the time "I'm not talking to people from the suburbs. I'm talking as somebody who's been snatched out of cars and had rifles pointed at me.". As a monument of the elevation of black culture, its first targets are the communities it wants to bring up. The record starts with an extended metaphor of how successful black artists are "pimped" by the entertainment industry to spirited horns and sax by terrace Martin and vocals by Dr. Dre, Anna Wise, Ash Riser, Josef Leimberg and Whitney Alford. Wesley's Theory opens the album with a sample from Boris Gardiner on reclaiming the n word in the 70s. The music then bubbles and croaks in anticipation of the rest of the album. Kendrick dodges the seduction of Uncle Sam, and its empty promises of riches, provided he cut ties with his past and identity - in essence trading community for idolatry. The fall from grace feels oh-so-imminent with King Kunta. Based on Kunta Kinte, a slave character in Alex Haley's novel that had his right foot cut off because of his attempt to escape the plantation, the track underlines how institutions (from government to industry staples, you name them) are uncomfortable with a black man's success. At the first chance they get, they'll cut off his legs, this man that refuses to be pimped. Musically, it bubbles, snaps on a whole other level to what preceded; the composition reflects an inexorable march forward, getting denser and denser as it progresses. It eerily reminds me of 2Pac's "California Love", a man referenced across the whole album whose influence on Kendrick is undeniable. Now I want to get to The Blacker The Berry. This one is the most overwhelming and perhaps most important to hear today. It addresses the fetishization of blackness - the people and the culture - in a world where being a minority is on trend as long as you don't have to live it. The push and pull can be traumatizing to the black experience, a notion concentrated in the lines: "Everything black, want all things black / I don't need black, want everything black". The pre-chorus is as dark as can be, repeating "the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice" on a loop. The empowering phrase is turned into a malignant mantra for the likes of Ahmaud Arbery's killers, who hunted the black man like game before gunning him down. The track gets more intense as it goes into the perpetual ingraining of colorism in the black community, as a reflection of systemic prejudice outside of that community. Systems often built during - or in the wake of - times of colonialism and exploitation have run their course counting on the distraction of the oppressed to turn against one another. The more discordant the voices from the oppressed the less likely a united uprising shall arise. Kendrick was criticized by his take in The Blacker The Berry for risking to dilute the important messages of the Black Lives Matter movement in pointing out that black people in underfunded and marginalized zipcodes have been a threat to themselves - an argument easily turned against the black community by the ill-intentioned to support the baffling theory that systemic racism doesn't exist. However, the entire album does the work of extracting the causes of violence inflicted by and to black people in those spaces to shed light on the fact that indeed, institutionalized racism IS the main driving force at work. The potential reproach therefore doesn't really stand in my eyes. Congruent to the message, the music is aggressive - certainly not gratuitously so -, cinematic and urgent. Assassin brings a little dancehall to the mix and Kendrick's irregular cadence stands out as unlike the rhythmic flow he adopts on most of the other tracks. Finally ending on a jarring interview of Tupac looking ahead at the fate of the next generation of black men in America befits the record. "To Pimp A Butterfly" is not an album to gloss over once and forget about: it will chew you up and spit you out. The record is voluntarily demanding of the listener, seemingly saying "has there ever been a time for passiveness? If you believe there has, it most certainly has come and gone like the crack of a whip. Now what will you do?". Now, what will you do?
Favorite lyrics
"When the four corners of this cocoon collide You’ll slip through the cracks hopin' that you’ll survive Gather your wit, take a deep look inside Are you really who they idolize? To pimp a butterfly"
Wesley's Theory "This plot is bigger than me, it's generational hatred It's genocism, it's grimy, little justification I'm African-American, I'm African I'm black as the heart of a fuckin' Aryan I'm black as the name of Tyrone and Darius, excuse my French But fuck you — no, fuck y'all, that's as blunt as it gets I know you hate me, don't you? You hate my people, I can tell 'cause it's threats when I see you"
The Blacker The Berry
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