Kendrick Lamar
To Pimp A Butterfly
[Top Dawg Enterprises]
The second acts of rappers’ careers have a bad reputation for pandering to the mainstream, but Kendrick Lamar is comfortable enough in his position not to bother: To Pimp A Butterfly opens with a sample of Boris Gardener’s Every Nigger Is A Star. Not long later, he’s rapping in a barely decipherable metre over uptempo jazz. This is what happens when you have a vision.
From the swaggering G-funk of King Kunta to the flipped yacht-rock of Mortal Man, the music is all over the place, held together only by a Kendrick who himself can’t settle. Every song has a new voice to match its feeling, and some take sharp left turns or just end without resolving. It’s not a method that lends itself to picking out favourite songs, but it does demand focus. There is no opportunity to simply nod your head and hum the chorus.
Kendrick is angry, but he doesn’t exactly know the answers, and the conversations he has with himself about love, success, friendship, culture and even music are shot through with the racial politics that have risen to the surface in America since Ferguson. It’s a mirror to a confusing world, so it’s a confusing album, but Kendrick’s dexterity and preternatural verbal ability make it an enthralling experience.
Words: Karl McDonald
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