Kendrick Lamar, 'To Pimp a Butterfly'

Kendrick Lamar, 'To Pimp a Butterfly'

Kendrick Lamar’s sophomore album, To Pimp a Butterfly is a beautiful album. It’s wonderfully sequenced and feels more like a Spike Lee film while also playing as the soundtrack to Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me with a splash of jazz. If good kid, m.A.A.d city was K. Dot’s depiction of the world as a child growing up in Compton, TPAB is him as a man who’s angry about how the world devalues the life of black men and black women. But it’s not just overt anger, it’s also brutal self-criticism. The album is artistically a complete left turn from what’s expected and the lyrics are pretty dense to absorb, however, like a good book, it’s well worth the time once you finish. To Pimp a Butterfly will go down as one of the most important albums in hip-hop history.