To Pimp A Butterfly By Kendrick Lamar: An Analysis

The most challenging duty for a columnist, blogger, or anyone who writes about popular music is appealing to a demographic of musos and die-hard admirers. It’s one thing to venture off into the skeptical world of music aficionados alone, granted that you’ve taken a class or two on how to speak their technical language, but it's another thing to venture off without being able to communicate why an artist’s musical choices are, in fact, artistic. Take, for example, Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly—the raw and undisputed opinion ranging from all critics, or at least any critic I've read about, is that the record challenges the foundation it was built upon because of its musicality and incorporation of unlikely tropes. Coming from the world created by Afrika Bambaataa to Grand Master Flash, hip hop fans have never heard Robert Glasper’s keys over Flying Lotus’ idiosyncratic beats with Kendrick Lamar’s raspy voice on top, piled up into one harmonious concoction. Being a muso myself, it’s disturbing reading articles that only note Lamar’s …show more content…
Jeff wrote a piece for Cuepoint called “NYU Prof Says Kendrick Lamar Made The Most Musical Album Ever,” and the real beauty of his composition is that he treats each instrument like an actor or actress—always determining the under lining feeling emanating from the presence and timbre of each. He paints a pulchritudinous picture of euphoria coming from the Juno 60 synth at the 10th bar of “For Sale- Interlude,” where he implicitly describes Lamar's artistic intention as "floating." Aside from general emotion based commentary, Jeff gives brief historical context to each instrument and how by giving them cultural context makes the combination all the more