This is the record that won Kendrick Lamar the Pulitzer Prize and effectively legitimized him as more than ‘just a rapper’ for those outside of the genre.
The record merges hip hop, funk, jazz, and soul to create a piece of work that defies genre. If GKMC is an intimate deep dive into an autobiographical narrative, then To Pimp A Butterfly is the collective version, an address to a nation (and to the world, naturally) about Blackness, Black history, Black potential. And this isn’t even the record that won him the Pulitzer. To Pimp A Butterfly is so remarkable, it has spawned a million think pieces, it has inspired college courses, it is a once in a generation seminal moment. If it’s not already glaringly obvious that this ranking is completely uncritical and entirely personal then let this be the moment that it all becomes clear. And for very good reason: it is a masterpiece. (Joint second, really.) This record is, I think, the one that most people would have in the number one spot of their listing. But Lamar always was more than his music and this record shows the studio genesis of that. As for the music, the track list is feature heavy, which is no bad thing, and the songs are patchy in that they span a spectrum from excellent to good.
On this record Lamar narrates and critiques the life that his generation has been forced into.
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80’ is already signalling to the observant listener that this is going to narrate a segment of social history: namely impoverished black families in America in the 80s: disenfranchised by Ronald Regan era politics (not to mention generations of institutionalised racism which forced the black community into situational social stagnation) and damaged by the crack epidemic (which was forced into black neighbourhoods deliberately by the administration. I could talk here about a sonic and lyrical journey which is evident through the preceding mixtapes and which come to a head with GKMC but actually, what I find really fascinating about this record is the fact that it functions as a historical artifact for a time period, and a social group, who are overlooked and underrepresented.Ĭalling the record ‘Section. 80 spawns many of the intellectual ideas that Good Kid then polishes and serves up to a mainstream crowd. The record, which was completely wrung out by Interscope, is the album of a million remixes, is multilayered, it’s a meaningful and deep as you want it to be, and every time you listen, if you are looking for something new, you’ll find it. References to Usher and Ciara anchor it in my own adolescent nostalgia, which is then totally exploded by stories of neighbourhood shootings and gang violence. Using a nonlinear narrative thread, it tells the story of a day in the life of teenage Kendrick Lamar whilst functioning as a touchpoint that works for a range of audiences as well as a multimedia window into a life that is, for me at least, at once comforting and familiar as well as alien. Let’s start by talking about how this, a debut album from a new (to most of the world) rapper is a concept album, called a short film by Lamar himself, illustrated by family album photos, actually functions as an autobiographical bildungsroman.
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This record, Lamar’s major-label debut after a series of fire mixtape releases, is a mind-boggling, breathtaking tour de force (see, I told you this was gonna be a personalised list).