It’d take a book to address and reiterate the decade of analysis in the wake of Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly (leaked on 15 March 2015 to coincide with the 20th anniversary of his hero Tupac’s Me Against the World), and Sequoia Manor already wrote it, so why bother here?
What we remember is the ebullient sweep every detail fulfills, the threads on the web sprawling across an American history: a record attempting to sum up a time, a culture, a moment, a city in a country with a history of slavery, violence and exploitation, but also decades of black culture cultivating, being recast and broadcast inwards and outwards–hence Kendrick’s poem to himself revealing its address to Pac himself. Its touchstones were the dizzying totality of talents, the new generation of internet-age, genre-agnostic musicians (Coltrane spoof Kamasi Washington’s sax, jazz-hopper Robert Glasper’s piano and thrash metal expatriate Thundercat’s bass) and producers (Sounwave, Hit-Boy and the dizzyingly jazz-glitched Flying Lotus) and the building of a veritable orchestra of Black American talent old and new around them: RnB legends in Pharrell and SZA, back to the West Coast’s G-funk era with Snoop Dogg and Dre and its origin point in Parliament’s George Clinton, not to mention a jazz big band: it’s secretly better at the accomplishment than the Soulquarians and even D’Angelo’s preceding Black Messiah.
The resulting melting pot reasserts the increasingly popular narrative that hip-hop functions as contemporary folk music, uniquely equipped via rhymes and samplers to fashion self-sustaining (and so non-postmodern) works from its own musical and socio-cultural history, but more importantly stirred up so much fiery fury and colour it was easy to forgive the aesthetic messiness, fussiness and exhaustion in the face of so much culture being recombined into immediately, obviously brilliant works that also functioned as legitimate popular art: making white dudes sing about Kunta Kinte or pan-racial crowds chant the chorus to “Alright” at police brutality protests, on the other end of intimacy making “These Walls” the most gorgeous sex jam of the decade.
Musically and lyrically, it does exactly what Robert Christgau said: “addresses African-Americans straight up and leaves the rest of the hip-hop audience to listen in if it wants”, and we all wanted to: here was a young talent with his finger on as many pulses as he could reach, knowing he’s the best enough to put himself a-front the White House on the cover but more than enough to speak articulately on the racism permeating his country, acknowledging it’s the root cause of every social ill he rails against (Xgau again). People saying Kendrick’s not political fail to recognise the tangible cultural impact his record had, or the inherently political assembly of luminary Black talent to communicate about, for and against the country that shaped them, not to mention ignoring the sonic and sociocultural sprawls–Donnie Trumpet, Isaiah Rashad, Rapsody, Anderson .Paak–it inspired in the immediately following years.
In light of the resultant legit change and shifting hip-hop landscapes, it makes sense Kendrick bigged things up, doubling down on his manifesto of celebrity to uplift community by pivoting to curatorial, business and social philanthropy endeavours: his pgLang company contracts SZA and Doechii these days, his Black Panther soundtrack launched careers as much as Butterfly secured those of FlyLo, Thundercat and Kamasi and platformed those of its luminaries (aforementioned SZA and Rapsody) and influencees. He even got Crips and Bloods onstage together, a noble social victory even if only to further kick down on Drake. So it makes sense that his records since have been messily personal (untitled unmastered., Mr. Morale) or slim and stuffed with bangers (DAMN., GNX)–faced with making another Butterfly, who knows if he’d bother.
But someone must cast their eye out across America once again. By 2015, it deserved Butterfly’s unflinching dissection–any period should be lucky to be overflowing with enough talent to have its black hearts summed up for history’s understanding; many times and places never get the privilege–but a decade in the rear mirror it seems comparatively innocent, still bathing in new-millennium optimism. If Kendrick can’t step up to direct it, someone must, and that would be a greater fulfillment of To Pimp A Butterfly’s legacy than any America’s since deserved.
“Kendrick Lamar Openair Frauenfeld 2015” by SkiMoon is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
