Four Years Later, The Cultural and Social Impact of “To Pimp A Butterfly”
Once an album is out and the release date is in the rearview mirror, we the consumers don’t pay much attention to anything outside of the year it was released, and even that can be a stretch. It means nothing to us, take September 29th, 1998, for example. On that day, we received new albums from the likes of Black Star, Jay-Z, A Tribe Called Quest, and most notably Outkast’s Aquemini. We received four great albums, two classics in Black Star and Aquemini, maybe a third depending on your opinion of Jay-Z’s Vol. 2, yet 20 plus years later even the biggest of hip-hop fans won’t bat an eye if the date September 29th, 1998 is ever brought up. Hip-hop albums, or more specifically, the medium that is music, doesn’t carry enough weight to the extent of being able to recite a release date of an album such as we recount the dates of historical events.
Something about today feels a little different though; March 15th marks four years since the release of Compton native, Kendrick Lamar’s third studio album, To Pimp A Butterfly. For some people, this date isn’t going to mean anything, but four years later, there is a growing sense from many hip-hop fans that To Pimp a Butterfly is arguably one of the greatest rap albums of all time. Many will scoff at the idea as traditional favorites such as Illmatic and Ready To Die tend to top nearly every publication’s best rap album of all-time list, and more recent work is typically written off for reasons like not being out long enough to earn the prestigious “classic” title. I see this as an easy cop-out to dismiss the outstanding work of our present-day artists. For To Pimp a Butterfly’s case, I believe it has already more than submitted itself as an all-time great album and an undisputed classic. Once you can get past the biases of judging an album that’s only four years old against much older counterparts and start to analyze the material and themes Kendrick Lamar brings to the table, I believe the argument is more than valid, To Pimp A Butterfly is an undisputed classic.
Every masterpiece starts with some form of inspiration; for Kendrick, it was a trip to South Africa in 2014. It was experiences like these that seemingly gave the Compton rapper the spark he needed to make not just a spectacular body of work, but a political and social statement. To best understand the impact of To Pimp A Butterfly, one needs to go back in time and analyze the political and social climate of America in 2015. Much of the concerns and issues in 2015 are still the same today in 2019, but at this moment in time, police brutality was by far the most prevalent issue amongst the American people. Eric Garner and Michael Brown, two unarmed black men who were killed at the hands of police, resembled a turning point for America. As a majority, we woke up and finally faced our significant problem with not just police brutality, but oppression and injustice in the broadest sense. It was horrific instances like these that launched activist group; Black Lives Matter into the forefront of mainstream news outlets and onto our tv’s for the first time bringing together those of all walks of life to promote change for a greater cause.
People who advocate for change and hip-hop culture have always gone hand in hand, in it’s earliest stages, the culture was used as a way to spread knowledge in inner cities to those who had been marginalized by society. As things change, the core of hip-hop has stayed the same, a genre that has been used in a way to engage a younger demographic in social issues through the medium of music. Top to bottom throughout its 16 songs, To Pimp A Butterfly, touches on themes such as race, oppression, and faith, but even more impressive, Kendrick Lamar created an album with dense social and political commentary in a way to appeal to the youth in masses. Back in the ’70s and ’80s, hip-hop was limited to inner-city New York. Fast forward to 2015, “Alright” had become a commercial success, and even more important, it became the unofficial anthem for the youth of Black Lives Matter. The simple chorus, “we gon’ be alright!” became a staple chant for youth lead Black Lives Matter protests throughout the country. By this point, “Alright” wasn’t just another Billboard success or critics darling, but a song that resembles the hope and resilience of millions of young African Americans. Of course, every cut on To Pimp A Butterfly is stellar such as the gutwrenching “u” that focuses on the pressure of failure when you’re seen as an idol to the youth or the striking 12-minute finale, Mortal Man where Kendrick Lamar discusses the state of our current social climate with the late Tupac Shakur.
To Pimp A Butterfly isn’t just a flawless rap album, it’s a capsule of American political turmoil at the peak of police brutality controversy and the Black Lives Matter movement. At the time in 2015, songs like “Alright” were the anthems of positivity and reassurance that better days were ahead while songs like “The Blacker The Berry” are dark but communicate the troubles African Americans still face today. The definition of classic is “judged over a period of time to be of the highest quality and outstanding of its kind.” So while it’s only been four years, To Pimp A Butterfly is already a classic. It’s a body of work that has proven to educate and empower a young demographic of people in a medium that is becoming ever more disposable. To Pimp A Butterfly is the gold standard of rap, it’s an innovative body of art that brings new context to what conscious hip-hop should be in the middle of some of the most polarizing times in American history. It may not be a household date just yet. Still, years down the road March 15th, 2015, will be remembered as the important date that Kendrick Lamar encapsulated the entire political and social climate of America into 80 minutes describing what it’s like to be Black in America. Like no other rap album before, To Pimp A Butterfly was created to educate and inspire. At the end of the day, isn’t that exactly why hip-hop culture was created more than 40 years ago?
