To Pimp a Butterfly is as visual an experience as it is musical. "Those are my real home boys on my album cover" Kendrick told MTV in April, in a way that makes it damn sure he's not lying. Every single one of those home boys on the album cover is significant, every single one the manifest of another incredible moment of TPAB. Observe the art as you listen from start to finish - the kids on the bottom right are 'Momma' already wise enough to teach Kendrick when he comes back home. Just above them, he covers his ears, because they're about to mention 'Complexion'. We can all see who killed the judge - he pushed his way to the very front to kneel over the body of justice, forever solidifying his place as the hatred of 'The Blacker The Berry’. As the final notes of 'You Ain't Gotta Lie' fade into the opening of 'i', the picture bounces into life, animated, loud, but not loud enough - as TPAB barrels to a close on 'Mortal Man' there is no room for anybody else, and the artwork separates Kendrick Lamar from not only his home boys, but from everyone. He's on a podium, and every breathing human in the world is watching.
Kendrick could have done anything with this album. Nobody knew where he could go after good kid, m.A.A.d city. The incredible concept album that until the day I die, will soundtrack the scorching months of the summer. Nobody knew what to expect, other than having their fingers crossed for more unbelievably relevant and powerful lyrics. It's a sure fact that not a single fan was expecting him to team up with the Brainfeeder record label, and have the likes of Kamasi Washington, Thundercat, and Flying Lotus orchestrate the sonic scape of TPAB. But these three (and many others) perhaps here prove better than ever before that fame is not an ingredient in the recipe for spectacular music. Kendrick raps over instruments that rappers rarely if ever rap over anymore - horns, saxophones, trumpets, funky bass guitars, jazzy beats - this is a one-and-only in the way of jazz rap. A Tribe Called Quest would be proud. Fans across the world, on their first listen to this album the day it leaked on iTunes a week early, either screamed it was a classic on all forms of social media in under an hour of its release, or spit it out and went right back to Drake's If You're Reading This, It's Too Late. The music is less hip-hop than GKMC was. But it's better for it. The smooth soul of the music better fits the poem that is TPAB, just like the hard-nosed production better fit the rugged short film that was GKMC, and the novel that was Section.80. Section.80 had chapters, GKMC had the skits and the dusty background noise of the film reel, and TPAB has the poem. "I remember you was conflicted - misusing your influence" - Those are the first two lines of the poem we hear, as the guitar riffs of 'King Kunta' disappear into the past. "Sometimes I did the same - abusing my power, full of resentment." The poem is the scaffold on which Kendrick's songs fall around - every time the poem stops and a song begins, it's as if we're diving right into the words Kendrick spoke. "Resentment that turned into a deep depression - found myself screaming in a hotel room" and the camera pans down to the earth, to Kendrick stumbling around in his hotel room with his liquor bottle, screaming his pain away on 'u'. "I didn't wanna self-destruct - the evils of Lucy was all around me" precedes the track 'For Sale?' where Satan, Lucifer, Lucy, is whispering in Kendrick's ear, drilling into his mind, trying to sell him the easy way out. But he doesn't take it - "So I went running for answers - until I came home", and then he's back home on 'Momma'. He thought he knew everything - morality, fatality, street shit, wisdom, loyalty, how people work, the price of life - but when he came back, he realized he didn't know shit. "But that didn't stop survivors guilt - going back and forth trying to convince myself the stripes I earned. Or maybe how A-1 my foundation was - but while my loved ones was fighting a continuous war back in the city, I was entering a new one." That new war was with himself. Has Lucy really gotten to me? He asks himself, when he can't even give a bum one dollar. She must have - I traded my spot in heaven for a dollar. Kendrick repents, and dedicates his all to share his story with the black and brown kids of Compton, just like his momma told him to when he left the hood. He even takes on the role of him own momma on the track "You Ain't Gotta Lie (Momma Said)" so she can do the real talk for him - she's talking to the caterpillars who haven't left the hood yet, telling them they don't have to "lie" to "kick it". "Asking where the hoes at to impress me, asking where the moneybags to impress me" no, she isn't impressed when people ask her that - and she knows they don't really mean it when they ask her these questions, so she just tells them to stop lying. The only two lines on this song where Kendrick uses his own voice and doesn't take on the role of his mother are "The loudest one in the room, nigga, that's a complex / let me put it into proper context" and he does, on the very next song. 'i' is when he's closest with his home boys, when he's right there with them on the stage. But he doesn't forget to put it into context. The blacks are "lying" - shooting each other, killing each other. Gang wars never stop in Compton. Dave, a friend that Kendrick grew up with, was killed in black-on-black violence, back on good kid, m.A.A.d city. So he makes sure his death isn't in vain, and makes sure to put "You Ain't Gotta Lie" into a proper context - "I promised Dave I'd never use the phrase "fuck nigga"." "How many niggas we done lost bro? This, this year alone? Exactly, so we ain't got time to waste time my nigga". As we all know, cops in America have been a little too trigger-happy when it comes to dealing with black people on the street. At least every month, there's another story about how an African-American man was shot dead as he held his hands above his head, attempting no resistance, so how can the black community still have time to be fighting each other? Kendrick even has to break up an argument in the very crowd he's rapping to. 'Mortal Man' is where the poem ends. "A war that was based on apartheid, and discrimination. Made me wanna go back to the city and tell the homies what I learned. The word was respect. Just because you wore a different gang colour than mine's, doesn’t mean I can’t respect you as a black man. Forgetting all the pain and hurt we caused each other in these streets. If I respect you, we unify and stop the enemy from killing us. But I don’t know, I’m no mortal man… maybe I’m just another nigga." He reveals his hopes to cease the black-on-black violence, and offers peace to the world. But he does so humbly; even standing on the podium with the world watching, he's humble - a humble man is all we ever need, after all - he's learnt that now. Once the poem has finished, it's revealed who he was reading the poem to, and that person is Tupac Shakur. Dead 19 years, but still able to speak in 2015 due to an unreleased 1994 interview Kendrick got ahold of during the creation of TPAB, he backs up Kendrick's argument with his own observations - "Cause once you turn 30, it's like they take the heart and soul out of a man, out of a black man, in this country. And you don't wanna fight no more." And so the black men can't fight back in the war for equality, and the cycle repeats. What Pac said in the 90's could have been said today, and have the same relevancy. So Kendrick steps in his shoes. In 1996, Kendrick among the crowd at the Compton swap meet, watching Tupac filming for the 'California Love' video, and so when a crowd gathered at the Compton swap meet in 2015 to watch Kendrick film for 'King Kunta' it tripped him out. He's the Tupac of our generation. "We ain't even really rappin', we just letting our dead homies tell stories for us." Damn. |
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