Necessary Raps: Why Kendrick Lamar’s ‘To Pimp A Butterfly’ Is An Important Album For Modern Hip-Hop
To be clear, I’m not necessarily a Kendrick Lamar fan and this is not necessarily an album review for his latest release, To Pimp A Butterfly. As a matter of fact, this may well be the most back-handed praise for the album you’ll read this week in that it isn’t praise for the album itself at all. Kendrick, to me, is a solid MC who can rap his ass off, but whose delivery usually grates against my nerves in any dose larger than as a featured artist on someone else’ record. That being said, anyone who writes about music in any serious regard should be able to separate personal preference from perception of quality. People often compare Kendrick to Eminem and for me, it rings true in that I can’t tolerate either MC’s rapping for very long, but I can acknowledge their technical skill at rapping. Now that being said, the glaring difference to me between the two is that Kendrick has better content and a phenomenal sense of musicality, as evidenced by the thoughtful execution and selection of music that went into creating Butterfly.
To Pimp A Butterfly is an album that I appreciate being made, even when I don’t personally foresee much replay value for me as a complete body of work. It’s heavy-handed in places and in others, seems like one long interlude. Kendrick seems to have thrown everything but the kitchen sink onto the album in terms of ideas, genres, and styles…but I find all of these perceived flaws to be necessary ones. In an era where sampling seems to be a forgotten art among producers, Butterfly is a veritable smorgasbord of Black music influence. In a market brimming with quick microwaveable bites, Butterfly sits like a brick in the stomach, giving you something to process long after each song has completed, whether you’re processing the lyrics, the concept overall, or the musical backdrop.
West coast rap needed this album. Coming off of a year when people thought YG and DJ Mustard made an album that defined west coast rap, Kendrick brought it full circle and reminded us of the funk and soul influences that initially brought a west coast perspective to the forefront of rap in the early ‘90s. Though the chantings and high-pitched proclamations can become tiresome in places, the prevalence of funk is apparent from the presence of George Clinton himself on the opening track and throughout.
In an era where many of the favorites of mainstream hip-hop are talking loud and saying nothing, it takes an album like To Pimp A Butterfly to remind people that substance used to be something people appreciated in rap music. This is an incredibly ambitious album, with a different message for every song and no fluff whatsoever. While that might prove to be unpalatable for some listeners, I think it takes something this jarring to wake people up and remind them that to a degree, this is what hip-hop is supposed to sound like. We’re supposed to be praising producers over beat-makers and appreciating samples and percussion as opposed to hearing raps laid over what are essentially R&B or pop records. Hip-hop used to scare mainstream America and now it’s singing it sweet lullabies. To Pimp A Butterfly is one of the first records in a long time from an MC at that level of visibility that sounds like something mainstream America isn’t supposed to like (and before anyone tries to refute that, Yeezus was not…look, it just simply was not). While it’s a bit dense at times, the density is needed when Kendrick is the only voice of substance some are willing to hear. In time, there may be more. And don’t you dare say that people who don’t like this music aren’t smart enough or sophisticated enough to appreciate it. It’s an insult to the artist to assume he went into this expecting for everyone to like it, considering the nature of the album. It seems we’ve forgotten when hip-hop music was made for hip-hop heads and everybody else could either get down or lay down. These days, you’re not doing shit if you’re not appealing to the pop market too. Time for that to come to an end.
To Pimp A Butterfly is to hip-hop what D’Angelo & The Vanguard’s Black Messiah was to soul music not long ago. It’s a signal to true music fans that the age of fluff might well be over sooner than one might think. Grit, texture, and imperfection are coming back to the forefront of Black music. Having something to say is becoming cool again. Who knows? Maybe we’ll get to a point in the hip-hop community where we can snatch the word “hip-hop” off of that VH1 series because it no longer represents the culture even on a mainstream level. Though there’s a long road ahead, I think whether you love or hate the album or fall somewhere in between with me, it’s important to recognize it as an achievement in hip-hop. Hopefully, Lord willing, authenticity is here to stay.
Shaka Shaw is a freelance music journalist who has published work for Ebony.com and KevinNottingham.com. He also runs the music website Front-Free.com.
