“Walls telling you to listen to ‘Sing About Me,'” he says, referring to one of the previous album’s standout tracks. “Yelling at me continuously/ I can see your defense mechanism is my decision/ Knock these walls down, that’s my religion.” At the song’s end he’s talking to an incarcerated foe and explicitly referring to the narrative of his previous album, good kid, m.A.A.d city, which recounted a night out “with the homies” that ended with one of them dead. “If these walls could talk, they’d tell me to go deep,” he raps. On “These Walls” he’s pondering sex and existence in equal measure it’s a yoni metaphor about the power of peace, with sugar walls being escape and real walls being obstacles. “u” is an abstract bookend of the theme: “Loving you is complicated,” he says on repeat, seemingly talking to himself.
The two sonically polar pre-release offerings - the bouncy, Isley Brothers-sampling “i” (which appears on TPAB in a live, extended version, as opposed to the earlier Grammy-winning version) and dark and angry “The Blacker the Berry” - show different sides of a young man’s internal search for meaning. It opens with a sample of Jamaican soul singer Boris Garnder’s obscure blaxploitation number “Every N-er is a Star” before giving way to Clinton’s technicolor musings on “Wesley’s Theory,” wherein the funk architect asks, “Are you really who they idolize?” The cover features Lamar holding a baby, surrounded by bunch of unapologetically expressive and shirtless Black men brandishing wads of cash and bottles of champagne in front of the White House beneath them is a judge, possibly dead, drunk or just passed out. Kendrick Lamar’s ‘To Pimp a Butterfly’: 10 Key Collaboratorsīut the music isn’t the most challenging thing about the album: the lyrics are pre-occupied with race and personal identity in ways that are decidedly uncomfortable to mixed company. Instead the album relies heavily on outliers like Flying Lotus, bass virtuoso Thundercat, Taz Arnold, frequent co-conspirator Terrace Martin, and Lamar’s Top Dawg in-house go-tos Sounwave and Tae Beast. The closest thing would be the Pharrell Williams- co-produced “Alright,” which showcases what passes for optimism during this dense and involved 80-minute listen: “My knees getting’ weak and my gun might blow / But we gon’ be alright.” Aside from Drake collaborator Boi-1da, Williams is the lone brand-name producer on To Pimp a Butterfly. There’s hardly a concession to radio sensibilities to be found anywhere. The result is all over the place and in one place, at the same time.
Because of that, he’s also less readily digestible, mixing hood braggadocio, Black dysfunction, personal demons, spiritual yearning, mediations on fame with James Brown’s stomp, Sly Stone’s riot, a layered and stripped version of George Clinton’s mothership funk, loose free-form jazz and muscular, languid soul.
Lamar is no longer primarily concerned with his own narrative, as he was on good kid, m.A.A.d city. It’s definitely more timely, speaking to the continued discussion of race and racism in America - the matter of Black lives mattering - that has dominated the national discourse over the past half year.