Kendrick Lamar’s ‘To Pimp a Butterfly’: A Track-by-Track Guide
There are surprise releases and there are accidental releases. The appearance of Kendrick Lamar‘s highly anticipated new album, To Pimp a Butterfly, on iTunes and Spotify Sunday night — more than a week before its scheduled March 23rd release date — apparently falls in the latter category. “Somebody’s gots 2 pay 4 this mistake,” Anthony Tiffith, the head of Lamar’s record label, Top Dawg Entertainment, tweeted in response. (The tweet has since been deleted.)
Fans, however, are enjoying the early release — a 16-song set that Lamar describes as “honest, fearful and unapologetic” in the cover story of the new issue of Rolling Stone.
1. “Wesley’s Theory”
In his interview with Rolling Stone, Lamar reveals how influential Seventies funk was on To Pimp a Butterfly‘s sound. The album’s first song plays that out, opening with a sample from Boris Gardiner’s cheery manifesto of black pride “Every Nigger Is a Star” off the soundtrack of the 1974 Calvin Lockhart-directed blaxploitation film of the same name. With the song and film, Lockhart and Gardiner aimed to turn the meaning of “nigger” around, destroying its negative connotations. The track also includes an appearance by Rock & Roll Hall of Famer George Clinton, whose group Parliament Lamar mentioned by name as an inspiration in his RS interview. Clinton had been suggested as a collaborator by Flying Lotus, who produced “Wesley’s Theory” and additionally brought in bassist Thundercat, best known for his work alongside Lotus. But the track’s biggest cameo comes in the form of a voice message from Dr. Dre, in which he offers wisdom to Lamar on the fact that it’s easy to get success but more difficult to maintain it, a topic addressed in Lamar’s verses.
2. “For Free? (Interlude)”
Crossover jazz pianist Robert Glasper — whose Black Radio, an album featuring verses from Yasiin Bey, Erykah Badu and To Pimp a Butterfly collaborator Bilal, earned a 2013 R&B Grammy nomination — lays down hyperactive keys on this “interlude,” while Terrace Martin, himself the son of a jazz drummer, handles production, just as he did for Kurupt’s Streetlights, Kendrick’s “m.A.A.d. city” and one track on Glasper’s own Black Radio 2. For his part, Lamar spits dense, nearly-spoken bars that come across like fast-rap version of the Last Poets. “This dick ain’t free,” he insists, surrounding the refrain with lines like “I need 40 acres and a mule/Not a 40-ounce and a pitbull.”
3. “King Kunta”
A funky stomper with a Shaft-evoking call-and-response, “King Kunta” takes a darker turn once producer Mark “Sounwave” Spears cues an unsettling sample of “Get Nekkid” by Mausberg, the Compton-bred DJ Quik protege who was fatally shot at age 21. Lamar sounds desperate, even while referencing pop hits by Michael Jackson (“Life ain’t shit but a fat vagina/Screaming ‘Annie, are you OK,’”) and Parliament (“We want the funk!” — though it’s filtered through the 1994 track by West coast rapper Ahmad, who gets a writing credit). “It’s just [Lamar] expressing how he’s feeling at the moment,” Sounwave says. “And right now, he’s mad.” Remember, Lamar named this song after the titular character of Roots.