To Pimp a Butterfly

A cross-section of Tulsa musicians discusses Kendrick Lamar’s new record

Kendrick Lamar broke out in 2012 with the major label debut Good Kid, m.A.A.d City, an autobiographical concept album about growing up in Compton that became a commercial and artistic hit.

The March release of Lamar’s latest, To Pimp a Butterfly, was one of this year’s most anticipated pop culture events. The noise surrounding Butterfly is deafening, and with good reason. The 80-minute follow-up to Good Kid is a dense, ambitious collage of ideas and sounds anchored by a confrontational sociopolitical through-line. It demands active, thoughtful listening.

To help me sort through the album, I called on four opinionated Tulsans from across our music scene: R&B artist Branjae Jackson, producer/engineer Costa Stasinopoulos, rapper Derek Clark (AKA Verse) and Holy Mountain record store owner Jay Hancock (aka DJ Sweet Baby Jaysus). Below is a condensed version of our discussion, conducted through group email. 

The Tulsa Voice: I was a big fan of Good Kid, m.A.A.d. City. It was brooding and introspective and emotionally raw with a huge beating heart. After hearing that first single “i” from To Pimp a Butterfly, I worried maybe he’d lost some emotional steam and was just chasing a hit record. My worry dissipated after I digested the whole album. As much as I loved Good Kid, this feels stronger in every way—more accessible but also angrier, more outward-looking, more pointed in its criticisms, more complex and consistent in production. Do you disagree? What’s your opinion of this album as a follow-up to Good Kid? 

Jay Hancock: It’s definitely an improvement over the latter. This album is a lot more concise and socially aware than 99 percent of hip-hop coming out today. 

Verse: I actually thought GKMC was more accessible, from a hip-hop head’s standpoint. With “Bitch Don’t Kill My Vibe,” “Backseat Freestyle,” “Poetic Justice,” “Money Trees,” “Swimming Pools” and “M.a.a.d. City” you have six joints you can play in the club or at a dance party and nobody blinks. It didn’t really take risks production-wise. This album definitely didn’t feel like a safe record to make.

Jay: It’s not a safe record by any means. Any record that blatantly calls out the irony of racism vs. black-on-black crime is not looking for its club hit. Even Dead Prez knew that.

Verse: Replacing all those 808’s with Thundercat is where you lose the club.

TTV: Do you think there’s any obvious candidate for a big club hit on this record besides maybe “King Kunta?” 

Verse: I hope so. The scope has to be larger more than ever now. The balance is way off in hip-hop as far as activism versus superficiality, especially with the young successful acts.

Jay: So true. Sometimes an artist has to step up and confront those social realisms that the club pretends don’t exist. Artists have done it for years—Gil Scott-Heron, Marvin Gaye, Public Enemy, NWA, Rage Against the Machine, Talib Kweli—some built careers off of it, some dabbled in the pool to maybe affect a change in perception. Whatever it was, it brought a first-hand account of what was actually taking place in the world. It maybe helped push some people to look at the world around them differently. Kendrick may have done just that with this album. Time will tell.

Branjae Jackson: What I hear from the whole of this record is truth. All sides of it. From the confidence, almost cockiness of the track “i” to its counterpoint “u.” The struggle to love himself and insecurities of success. It’s open. At first listen, I can see how some fans would assume he went more ‘pop’ with this record, but those are people who are not listening. 

As far as the club, shit don’t really change. People catch on to what they relate to, if we are honest with ourselves. People still want the vibration of that 808. I appreciate a hip-hop artist willing to speak about deeper issues with no apology, along with bangin’ beats other than what the club is used to. His audience is much wider this time around, and he’s taking advantage.

Jay: What’s to stop him from remixing tracks from the album for club use? The single release of “i” is substantially different from the album version. It’s a fairly common practice and one his label may try to capitalize. Hopefully if that scenario plays out the message doesn’t get lost in the shuffle.

Branjae: To Pimp a Butterfly is a work of art. It’s fashion-forward and ahead of the game concerning music, content and subjects like black culture, the streets and politics. Why not remain true to the original work and let the club catch up later? I think it’s a powerful message to not remix the record and let it stand for what it is—cutting edge, uncomfortable, sensitive and in-your-face purposeful. This album is strong enough to stand on its own without having to remix for specific audiences. 

Verse: The west coast funk was my favorite thing about this album. The message is the most important part, but after I heard George Clinton on the first track, I didn’t really give a shit what he did. On Section.80 (Lamar’s first album) and GKMC the production sounded like everything but a traditional west coast sound. He still nailed those, but I thought it was dope that this felt like west coast rap and he sounded right at home on it.

Jay: George Clinton is practically the foundation for the west coast hip-hop sound. I can’t begin to think of how many tracks would have never happened without the Parliament/Funkadelic catalog to pull from. The man is a legend and seems to only appear with those he feels like can carry on that burgeoning creativity. But you can’t help but notice there are some Dungeon Family nods thrown in there as well. Basically what I hear from this album is an amalgamation of some of the best sounds hip-hop has offered. There’s the jazzy flourishes of Native Tongues, the swagger of DJ Premier, the gospel of D.F., and the aqua boogie funk of the west, all rolled up together to create this brilliant pastiche.  

Verse: Shitchea. And his rhyme style/songwriting since Section.80 has heavy Dungeon Family influence, seemingly from Andre 3000 in particular.

Branjae: Right on, Verse. West coast vibe all over this record. I missed when hip-hop made us bounce. I find myself having a very hard time honing in on these tracks without bobbin’ my fro. It’s real. Brings me back to the old-school hip-hop.

Costa Stasinopoulos: I love albums that sound like they’re from multiple decades, and while this is obviously a modern effort, for me it achieves the same kind of thing with an American ubiquity—it’s all over the place. It’s like a tour of hip-hop in a lot of ways. Really happy Flying Lotus and Thundercat got included in the conversation. Also, for having 21-some-odd producers on the album, it sounds really tight and unified. I think that’s a testament to how internally driven a lot of the album is. With how often the album moves its center, I find myself forgetting how much is boiling under the surface for some of his characters—theatrical as a lot of it is—with the same beating heart, the same tiny-radio of consciousness looking as deeply inward as it does outward. Sharing in the spoils and the blame, often in the same breath. I love the wisdom in that.

TTV: Wisdom is all over this record. Brutal self-analysis mixed with confrontational cultural/political observation can be a dangerous recipe. You’re setting a higher standard for yourself, and critical listeners are looking for signs of bullshit. In this way, I think Yeezus is an interesting counterpoint to Butterfly. Kanye seems sincerely angry and engaged on a song like “New Slaves,” but then he undermines that power with the relentlessly narcissistic “I am a God.” He seems lost in his own success. Kendrick, on the other hand, sings “I love myself,” and you know exactly what he means. He’s singing for himself, his race, humanity. I love Yeezus, and I’m not crazy about pitting it against Butterfly, but Kendrick just seems to have gotten it right in all the ways Kanye didn’t. 

Costa: That says it all right there—Kanye didn’t get it right. Kendrick is easily stronger in every way, though the real difference is how seemingly honest he is with himself. Even when the ‘truth’ is in jest, in anger or insincere, he celebrates the process and the self-discovery (and shares it with us with the album’s slow-reveal narrative thread). Kanye is deluded in fantasy and ego, hell-bent on always trying to be discovered—as if he was still the underdog or some poor, lonely genius from the future. Bullshit.

There isn’t much I can criticize on To Pimp A Butterfly, but I’m curious how it ages in comparison to GKMC. There’s a simplicity and a purity about GKMC that’s been traded in for just about everything else. Does Butterfly go down as his classic, or does it suffer from what is, at best, a fully realized palette and, at worst, a bit scatterbrained? Just for argument’s sake, if the direction of this album is every direction, has he spread himself thin? 

TTV: The scatterbrained nature of the album is part of its appeal. He throws the entire kitchen sink into it. If GKMC is “Mean Streets,” then Butterfly feels like “Goodfellas.” It’s a big, sprawling mess that also feels like a definitive artistic statement. I’m less concerned with how this album will age than how he’ll recalibrate on the next one.

Branjae: Joshua, great comparison between the two. Also, I loved how Kendrick used personas in the recordings. Literally changing his tone and voice to sound like what his grandma would sound like giving him wisdom and advice about life. It showed how open and real he is about who influenced him. I find that creative from the start. He was brave with this record. He left himself open on the chopping block and never apologized for it, and I think that’s one reason people are digging it so hard. We want to hear unapologetic, edgy and opinionated lyrics. Well, at least I do.