Kendrick Lamar’s Good Kid M.A.A.D. City (GKMC) changed the course of my life. Straight up. I wouldn’t be writing these words had I not delved into the lyrics and stories on that album. I fell in love with hip-hop again through GKMC. It gave me hope for a genre that I was about to give up on, and I went down the roads it took me on.


When I listen to it, the path I’m on flashes before me through the honest and vivid stories of Lamar and his life, through the vulnerability that he shows as a poetic street storyteller in the shadow of Tupac Shakur. Kendrick Lamar might’ve saved hip-hop in 2012. And 48 hours ago, there I was along with millions of other listeners on the internet who were also gifted a surprise album, hanging on with To Pimp A Butterfly’s every word and beat. As the album closed, I sat there frozen, face buried deep in my hands in one of those rare moments when music is this affecting.

To Pimp A Butterfly builds on the free-jazz exploration that Flying Lotus laid forth in 2014’s You’re Dead! In Fact, Flying Lotus produced the album’s opening track, “Wesley’s Theory,” featuring bassist Thundercat and George Clinton’s vocals. At multiple points on the album, I could’ve sworn that FlyLo had produced every track, but Lamar employs a slew of talented musicians led by saxophonists Terrace Martin and Kamasi Washington, pianist Robert Glasper and Thundercat. As ambitious as You’re Dead! was, To Pimp a Butterfly takes it to another level, considering how much influence Lamar has within the mainstream. Kendrick has no problem experimenting with jazz beats at every turn.

For all of the velvety smoothness of the album (none smoother than Ronald Isley’s outro on “How Much A Dollar Cost”), Lamar still takes shots at the hip-hop establishment. On “King Kunta” he says, “I can dig rapping, but a rapper with a ghostwriter? What the fuck happened?” It doesn’t get any realer than that, and this is the voice I want for the future of hip-hop.

I want a rapper who calls out his own weaknesses. I want a rapper who’s not afraid to cry into the microphone (on “U”), to deconstruct his shortcomings and perceived failings. I want a rapper who calls himself out with a line like, “So why did I cry when Trayvon Martin was killed in the street, when gangbangin’ make me kill a nigga blacker than me? Hypocrite!” He looks in the mirror and accepts all that he is, was, and wants to be. He weaves in his social consciousness and prevailing themes of societal unrest, and it renders his expressionism as the raw emotion of hip-hop in its purest form. Because he’s not hiding behind a car, or money, or pop music. This is what hip-hop can still accomplish.

I’ll admit, I lost my shit listening to “Mortal Man” for the first time (the album’s closing track). The 12-minute opus sees Kendrick channeling the gospel of thought leaders like Nelson Mandela and rejecting the misappropriated hatred in hip-hop that he’s fallen victim to in the past.

“For many fans “I’m the closest thing to a preacher that they have,” Lamar tells the New York Times. This is at the core of the responsibility he feels as a major artist. It’s the same responsibility he felt to tell his stories of the streets on GKMC and it comes through in the questions he poses in To Pimp A Butterfly’s closing conversation with Tupac Shakur. There’s no rubric for how to navigate the world in this hip-hop shit; some just care more than others, and some use it to make the world around them better than others. Kendrick is all of that.