To Pimp a Butterfly

Here we find ourselves at the end of rap week here on reTROview, with one record left to review. And if you haven't heard this one yet, shame on you.

Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly is a modern classic. It seamlessly blends an enormous number of black musical styles into one sweeping masterpiece. Musical influences range from funk (George Clinton himself sings on Wesley's Theory) to R&B (Isley Brothers sample/cover on i) to electronic (Wesley's Theory) to jazz (For Free? Interlude) to hip hop (whole album). Rather than feeling like a disjointed mashup of popular styles, however, Kendrick's omnipresence and the tremendous skills of the producers involved help to make this record feel like a cohesive whole.

Kendrick's rapping is superb, and the beats over which he raps are almost as good. Standout tracks from the record include King Kunta, Alright, i, These Walls, and the Blacker the Berry. The message of the record is cutting, direct, and honest, dealing with a wide range of troubling political and social issues in and around the black community, from police brutality to managing fame and fortune to gang violence.

The record isn't perfect, as tracks like Institutionalized and Mortal Man fall a bit short of the promise of the rest of the record. But in all, this is an excellent record, and an instant rap classic for current times that will stand the test of time along its peers in greatness. I'll give it a 9.5/10.

-TRO