Written by: Andrew Kirkpatrick

There’s no way around it — I might as well begin discussing To Pimp A Butterfly by talking about its oxygen-stealing outro, “Mortal Man.”

“You spoke on the ground. What you mean about that?” asks Kendrick Lamar as an extended dialogue begins to play out on the second half of the twelve-minute monster track. “What the ground represent?”

A voice chimes in, one any hip-hop head would recognize in an instant: “The ground is gonna open up and swallow the evil.”

“Right,” replies Kendrick, thoughtfully listening to the man he’s been compared with to no end. “I see the ground as the symbol for the poor people,” Tupac continues, “the poor people is gonna open up this whole world and swallow up the rich people.”

Tupac Shakur, whose masterpiece Me Against the World not coincidentally was released twenty years to the date before Kendrick Lamar’s immense sophomore major label LP, was a preternaturally astute observer of both himself and the world around him. This quality manifested itself unforgettably in his music, from the poignant and empathic “Brenda’s Got a Baby,” to the frustrated, violent “Against All Odds.” But even more striking was how this far-reaching clairvoyance showed up in simple conversation. Watch damn near any of his interviews and you’ll see he had a penchant for going on tangents; but these weren’t non-sensical and self-serving rants of the Yeezy variety, these were off-the-cuff commentaries about the hopes and struggles society fosters in marginalized peoples from a man who could readily see that he was far too plainspoken and controversial to have much time left in the world.

Kendrick Lamar has been compared to Tupac from the moment he garnered major buzz; he’s been called Pac reincarnated, he’s been pointed to as the subject of Tupac’s famous claim that he “will spark the brain that will change the world,” and a drawing of a Death Row-era Pac speaking with a young K.Dot has been floating around the internet since the moment the distinct parallel between these two artists clicked in the collective mind of popular consciousness.

But it would be a misrepresentation of Kendrick’s talents to simply label him a successor to or extension of Tupac. If anything, To Pimp A Butterfly comes damn close to shattering those comparisons entirely. As much as I value and enjoy Tupac’s output, none of his records possess the sheer sonic audacity that Kendrick’s latest has. In fact, few mainstream rappers have ever come up with an album as difficult and uncompromising as this — Aquemini, Yeezus, and (if you’re so inclined) Relapse are the only records from popular MCs I can think of that roughly reside within To Pimp A Butterfly‘s realm of musical daring.

Thought of in the simplest possible terms, the follow-up to good kid, m.A.A.d city possesses the same narrative a lot of rappers’ sophomore LPs do. Now that they’ve made millions off songs about their origins and struggles growing up, they have to deal with reconciling their newfound fame and power with their old lives and attitudes. From Eminem’s The Marshall Mathers LP to Drake’s Take Care, we see that the end result of this struggle is often a general sense of uncomfortability with this new life. Slim Shady, for example, wasn’t fond of the moral judgments critics made about him, while Drizzy didn’t know how to handle the constant influx of women trying to sleep with him or something.

Subjects like money, egotism, homesickness, and the stifling influence of public image and contractual obligations are all present on To Pimp A Butterfly, and while these themes are rather well-worn in the world of hip-hop, Kendrick scrutinizes them with relentless nuance and conceptual ingenuity. On “How Much A Dollar Cost,” a greedy Kendrick is haunted by an encounter with a wise beggar whom he refuses to help out; at the end of the song the homeless man reveals: “I’ll tell you just how much a dollar cost / The price of having a spot in Heaven, embrace your loss / I am God.” Meanwhile, on “Momma,” Kendrick brilliantly relays a humbling story of returning home, yet keeps it entirely ambiguous as to whether he finds himself back in Compton or on the trip to Africa oft-mentioned throughout the record. Either way the message remains the same: in Kendrick’s eyes, true knowledge is illusory — everything changes, even the places you’re rooted in and think you know well. In the face of such fundamental yet profound transformations, how can your assumptions about any aspect of life hold up over time?

For reference, on Nothing Was The Same, hip-hop’s other reigning new-school champ, Drake, rapped about going home just to attend a high school reunion out of spite for all the mean kids that bullied him as a youth.

By comparison, and by pretty much any standard, what Kendrick Lamar is achieving here even just conceptually is on another level. To Pimp A Butterfly doesn’t have a traditional narrative arc in the way good kid, m.A.A.d city does, but the self-contained stories it tells are just as compelling and affecting. Put another way, good kid, m.A.A.d city can be thought of as the type of film that typically sweeps award shows — stunning and immaculately put together if still somewhat traditional. To Pimp A Butterfly is more like a Terrence Malnick or Paul Thomas Anderson film; it’s denser, more free-associative, and tougher to crack, but whether you view it once or are intent on studying it again and again, it would be difficult indeed to walk away from without being moved in some way.

Also next-level is To Pimp A Butterfly’s selection of instrumentals. Except for the woozy-yet-menacing monster of a banger underlying “Hood Politics” and the hard-knocking production Boi-1da lays down for “The Blacker The Berry,” nothing on this album could be considered a beat, per se. The jazz, p-funk, and old-school R&B influences that dominate the album’s sound are taken seriously to the point where loops and samples are few and far between. Live instrumentation instead take their place, and these accompaniments are both beautifully played and expertly arranged to create the head-bobbing pocket we all expect from a great rap instrumental. The “For Sale?” interlude layers one keyboard and synthesizer on top of another to create a lush, dense haze driven by a propulsive fretless bassline courtesy of four-string wizard Thundercat (who plays on almost every one of the album’s sixteen tracks). The infectious “King Kunta,” meanwhile, takes a four-on-the-floor P-funk groove and continually adds new instrumentation to the mix until the beat is so grand that the admonishments Kendrick directs toward his doubters (“bitch, where was you when I was walkin’?”) would seem impossible to ignore.

Even more impressive is the fact that Kendrick always maintains control of these instrumentals, even as they build and progress in new directions. If anything, this progression keeps him on his toes, as he switches up flows, cadences, and rhyme schemes on a near constant basis. The bonkers flow and nasally voice he employs on “For Free” are a wild match for the chaotic jazz quartet playing behind him, while the Erykah Badu-esque crooning he performs on “You Ain’t Gotta Lie (Momma Said)” perfectly suits the song’s laid-back smoothness. At other times, he willfully clashes with the compositions backing him up, as on “Momma,” where Lamar never yields to the chill, Flying Lotus style beat’s lethargy, instead slipping in lightning fast triplets as often as possible.

As much as I love the bellowing 808s and aggressive analog synths that dominate modern hip-hop’s sound, To Pimp A Butterfly‘s complete eschewing of that sound is a commendable move, and one that could have easily gone awry if the musicians and songwriters assembled churned out bland, soulless compositions. But as it stands, the instrumentals populating the album are as catchy and vivacious as the best of jazz- and funk-inspired hip-hop. Above all else, it makes me happy to think that the ten million people who rushed to stream this record on Spotify the day it released were greeted with arrangements that harken back to an era of music they might not have any knowledge of or appreciation for. That’s using your power for good.

The record’s willingness to challenge listeners also extends to its frank sociopolitical commentary. The systemic marginalization of black people and culture has hit a boiling point in America within the last couple years, yet despite his newfound superstar status, Kendrick doesn’t shy away from tackling these topics whatsoever. On “Complexion (A Zulu Love),” K.Dot and North Carolina MC Rapsody tackle an uplifting and beautifully performed instrumental that plays out like a jazzy, mellowed out version of The Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back” to take a stand against colorism in black communities. While Kendrick tells the story of a dark-skinned field worker falling in love with a lighter-complected slave (“Sneak me through the back window, I’m a good field n**** / I made a flower out of cotton for you just to chill with you”), Rapsody finishes her verse by ditching high-concept poeticism for a more blunt form of profundity: “Call your brothers magnificent, call all the sisters queens / We all on the same team, no blues and pirus, no colors ain’t a thing.”

“Complexion” serves as the predecessor and hopeful counterpoint to the album’s ferocious single “The Blacker The Berry.” Here, Kendrick examines hatred towards blacks through a sweeping, all-encompassing lens. First he rages against the white dominant society that marginalizes him, imploring them to take him seriously (“I want you to recognize that I’m a proud monkey / You vandalize my perception but can’t take style from me”) before deciding he doesn’t owe anything to those that would oppress him: “You hate me don’t you? / I know you hate me just as much as you hate yourself / Jealous of the wisdom and cards I dealt.” Jamaican vocalist Assassin offers a tinge of positivity amidst the anger with the head-spinning double-entendre “all them say we doomed from the start ’cause we black, but remember this / Every race started from the block [black], just remember that.”

To Pimp A Butterfly’s penultimate track is its debut single. But the “i” heard here isn’t the “i” you heard in NBA ads or on the radio. Though I thought it was a fine track, “i” was incredibly polarizing when it came out, due in no small part to the slightly clinical approach of its funk-influenced production, as well as the incredibly weird way Kendrick performed the track on SNL a few months back. Despite the song’s positive and timely message, its efficacy as a lead-in single was a far cry from what “Swimming Pools (Drank)” did for good kid, m.A.A.d city.

But leave it to Kendrick to recontextualize the track in a way that addresses the criticisms levied against it while expressing his own frustrations with people taking its earnest message of self-love in the face of adversity for granted. The track is now a live performance that’s made to sound like it’s being played in a venue populated by a restless audience who chatter the whole time. The passion in Kendrick’s delivery continually fades until he yells to the crowd “not on my time, not while I’m up here.” In the end, he ditches the song entirely to have a stark conversation with his audience. “How many n****s we done lost, bro? This year alone?” he asks them (and us), “it shouldn’t be shit for us to come out here and appreciate the little bit of life we got left, dawg.”

With this, K.Dot seems to argue that, in light of the tragedies that have brought long-standing social problems to the forefront of popular consciousness in the past year, why should a song as positive and empowering as “i” be so heavily derided? This sentiment is surely a bit self-serving, but it’s also valid when you consider how few mainstream rappers have offered any reaction to the recent injustices committed against young black men. Some – like Young Thug – have even argued that rappers have no place commenting on such issues. The likes of Ice Cube, Killer Mike, Public Enemy, and Lauryn Hill – all of whom serve as evident influences on the stylings of To Pimp A Butterfly – would be ashamed of such assertions.

And this brings us back to the record’s exquisite final track, “Mortal Man.” Before his hair-raising conversation with Tupac, Kendrick delivers a song that does double-duty in honoring the legacy of Nelson Mandela while pointing out how quickly and mercilessly black figureheads – from MLK and Malcolm X to Jesse Jackson and Michael Jackson – are thrown under the bus without any respect for their accomplishments. Mandela, he seems to argue, is the only black cultural leader whose legacy remains intact, and he asks that his fans “love [him] like Nelson.” It’s desperation and anger rather than egotism that underlies his repeated questioning of “when shit hits the fan, is you still a fan?” on the song’s chorus, and the swelling brass- and string-driven composition backing him up highlights the urgency.

Soon the intense ebb and flow of the former half of “Mortal Man” subsides and we get to hear Kendrick chop it up with Pac. On paper, it’s tempting to call this moment cheap and manipulative, just in the same way it was cheap and manipulative to bring Tupac back to c-walk and yell “what up Coachella?” at the famous music festival a few years back. But it just doesn’t feel that way in the slightest. This is firstly because of Kendrick’s evident diligence in cutting up and repurposing audio from a rare 1994 radio interview with Pac to feel like a natural conversation that respects Makaveli’s wisdom and prescience. Secondly, for any avid fan of West Coast rap music, this moment represents the meeting of the minds we all wish could actually happen. A couple years ago, I wrote an article about how all of West Coast hip-hop’s figureheads possess a shared legacy, but none of the great LA MCs share as close an artistic connection as these two. Sonically, Kendrick and Tupac’s music may diverge, but the worldviews they possess are strikingly similar.

At the end of their conversation, Kendrick mentions the power music has over him, saying, “sometimes I [get] behind a mic and I don’t know what type of energy I’ma push out, or where it comes from. Trip me out sometimes.”

To this, Tupac replies, “because the spirits. We ain’t even really rapping. We just letting our dead homies tell stories for us.”

What a perfect way to sum up To Pimp A Butterfly. For the entire duration of this 80-minute beast of a record, Kendrick is channeling the dead. From Marvin Gaye to Nelson Mandela, Miles Davis, Trayvon Martin, Malcolm X, Tupac Shakur, and beyond, the genius, struggles, triumphs, and injustices that defined these men is put to wax with cleverness and care.

But for his part, Kendrick Lamar is no mere medium. His introspective, catchy, and trend-defying songwriting sensibility is on full display here and is, if anything, sharper than ever. Once again he’s made a major label record that doesn’t attempt to force itself into the mainstream but instead expects popular culture to gravitate towards it. And judging by the album’s record-breaking Spotify debut and first-week sales projections, it seems like it’ll succeed on that front. I can only hope Kendrick can maintain the greatness he’s exhibited through his last few projects in the years to come.

But for now, he’s one butterfly that can’t be pimped.