There isn’t a week that goes by on social media without someone calling Kendrick Lamar’s second major label studio album one of the most profound rap albums of the 21st century, while a hater simultaneously dismisses it as overrated.
A radical departure from the more street-friendly sound of its predecessor, To Pimp A Butterfly—which was released on March 15, 2015—saw the Compton lyricist boldly experiment with avant-garde jazz. He also weaved together interlocking narratives that wrestled with generational curses and demons; dark complexions; and the lost ghost of Tupac Shakur, with a fundamental aim of plotting out a more progressive path forward for Black America.
Buy Kendrick's To Pimp A Butterfly 10 Year Anniversary Edition Vinyl
Transitioning from deliriously funky beats perfect for bumping during a sweltering car ride (“King Kunta”) to dense, swirling saxophone-heavy arrangements that have a direct through-line with the mutating chaos present on Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew (“For Free? (Interlude)”), Kendrick’s 2015 album has become the measuring stick for contemporary major label rap risk-taking. It’s also been tirelessly dissected, with the internet treating its various sonic layers with the reverence of a complex Stanley Kubrick film—similarly offering endless Reddit-brained theories on the true intended meaning. To paraphrase Kendrick himself, people's love for it is complicated.
One recurring element in To Pimp A Butterfly is the way Kendrick inverts racist symbolism, somehow finding light amid the hatred. He tellingly refers to himself as a “proud monkey” and being “blacker than the heart of a fucking Aryan.” Kendrick told the Guardian in 2015 that the best way to look at the record was, “therapy. On this album I was looking at myself in the mirror and trying to figure out who I really am.”
Whether you ultimately believe it’s a concept album about how the music industry pimps out beauty, or rather an exploration of the ways one can locate God within the mundanity of the everyday (“How Much a Dollar Cost" reimagines the Lord as a homeless drug addict sleeping in Skid Row), few can deny the project’s enduring impact. After all, “Alright” became the anthem that fueled the crowds of the Black Lives Matter protest movement.
Here are a list of things you probably didn’t know about Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp A Butterfly.
Prince was supposed to be a feature
Prince was a big fan of Kendrick Lamar, even inviting him to jam at Paisley Park for a live performance in 2014.
While there, Kendrick was able to preview TPAB ahead of its release. The iconic “When Doves Cry” artist was obsessed with one song in particular: the Rapsody-featuring, “Complexion (A Zulu Love).”
“Prince said he wanted to talk about the beauty of black people [and give us a verse],” collaborator Rapsody said of Prince’s reaction after hearing the song. “I told him to say no more. What tripped me out is Kendrick originally said that he didn’t want to do a verse on there himself. He wanted me to do two verses and for Prince to do the hook.”
Kendrick officially asked Prince to do the hook for “Complexion,” but when it came time to record, the pair spoke too much about Black history and lost track of the clock. “We just ran out of time. It’s as simple as that,” Kendrick later said, talking about what could have been.
“Alright” almost didn’t make the album
"Alright" is remembered as the defining song from the album. But the track almost didn’t make the cut. Speaking about the making of the Pharrell Williams-produced song on Spotify’s The Big Hit Show podcast, Kendrick's frequent collaborator Sounwave revealed the trajectory of the track.
“I just remember my jaw dropping. It was literally just the 808s and the keys, and Pharrell had the melody of ‘We gon' be alright.’ And I was like, ‘Bro, what is this?’ Oh my goodness, I’m freaking out. I immediately ran. I was like, ‘Dot, you have to come hear this.’”
Kendrick loved the song and recorded to it right away. But they couldn’t figure out how to make it fit sonically with the rest of the album.
Not wanting to lose the track, Sounwave and Terrace Martin, another producer on the album, started tweaking it.
“I literally had to go back in, last second, at the crunch time. I think we had one more day, and I added drums to it,” Sounwave said. He also mentioned what Martin added, saying, “He gave us a lot more sax parts. So we just had to pick and choose. But it was literally a freak-out moment. This record had to make it. I just remember about three hours, just me and Terrace locked in that room. We came out, and I said, ‘I think we got something.’”
Good thing they worked on the song. The ear-worm refrain of “We gon’ be alright!” emboldened young Black people to take a stand after the unlawful killing of George Floyd and to stand tall in the face of police harassment during the subsequent protests. Aside from being a timely marching anthem, the song was also designed by Kendrick to harken back to the energy of “negro spiritual” songs that slaves chanted defiantly while abused and forced to work by their captors.
Kendrick confirmed the track was intended to continue the energy of his oppressed ancestors and show Black people’s historical endurance amid hardships. “Four hundred years ago, as slaves, we prayed and sang joyful songs to keep our heads level-headed with what was going on,” Lamar told NPR. “Four hundred years later, we still need that music to heal. And, I think that ‘Alright’ is definitely one of those records that makes you feel good no matter what the times are.”
The album has a secret message in braille
For fans with physical copies, there’s a hidden braille message on the inner cover. “[There]’s actually a sketch of braille that’s added to the title hidden inside the [CD] booklet that I don’t think nobody has caught yet,” Kendrick told Mass Appeal back in 2015. “You can actually feel the bump lines. But if you can see it, which is the irony of it, you can break down the actual full title of the album.”
Braille is found in two spaces of the booklet, with “Sincerely” written on one page and the words “a blank letter by Kendrick Lamar” written on another. Here Kendrick showed his fascination for adding easter eggs to his projects that only the truly determined will be able to discover.
The original title referenced 2Pac much more clearly
The thug revolutionary presence of Tupac looms heavily over TPAB, with the album closer “Mortal Man” rejigging a rare interview where the West Coast legend chats about America being unprepared for a new-age, Nat Turner-esque insurrection.
This outspoken interview Pac gave to a Swedish journalist is flipped so it instead sounds like he’s chatting to K. Dot. The album’s original title spelt out this connection much more clearly. Kendrick originally wanted the project to be called Tu Pimp a Caterpillar, an acronym for Tu.P.A.C. The decision was ultimately made to replace “Caterpillar” to “Butterfly." Kendrick talked to Rolling Stone in 2015 about this change: “Just putting the word 'pimp' next to 'butterfly'... It's a trip. That's something that will be a phrase forever. It'll be taught in college courses—I truly believe that.”
David Bowie’s final album was inspired by it
The late boundary-pushing, British rock legend responsible for classics like “The Man Who Sold The World” and “Space Oddity” was apparently a determined student of TPAB.
According to producer Tony Visconti, David Bowie listened to Kendrick’s project obsessively while working on his final studio album, Blackstar, which was released just a few days before he passed away due to cancer.
This swan song LP similarly fused jazz with rap textures.
“We were listening to a lot of Kendrick Lamar,” the producer revealed in an interview. “We loved the fact Kendrick was so open-minded and he didn’t do a straight-up hip-hop record with TPAB. He threw everything on there, and that’s exactly what we wanted to do. The goal, in many, many ways, was to avoid rock & roll.”
Kendrick didn’t tour this album…and there’s a very specific reason why
Unlike other Kendrick Lamar projects, there was no official tour for TPAB. And, according to Terrace Martin, there was a specific reason for this.
“We didn’t do that album for popular culture,” Martin told Complex back in 2015. “We did that album for people who have no way out. We did that album for people who can’t even afford to go to the shows. We did an album for people who need hope. You don’t prostitute that.”
The inference is that To Pimp A Butterfly was never intended as a mainstream album, but rather a one-off political statement. And, given the darkness of so many of the songs—see “u”—maybe it would be far too painful to play live.
The album’s spiritualism was inspired by a trip to Africa
While it’s tempting to frame TPAB as an LA album, the location that inspired it the most seems to be South Africa. Kendrick mentioned that his first trip to Africa—a 2014 visit to South Africa during which he travelled to Durban, Johannesburg and Cape Town—was a huge influence on the project. Kendrick says the diversity of South Africa is a central tenet in TPAB’s sound and themes.
“I felt like I belonged in Africa. I saw all the things that I wasn't taught,” Kendrick told Grammy.com. “There's a separation between the light and the dark skin because it's just in our nature to do so, but we're all Black. This concept came from South Africa, and [yet, when I visited] I saw all these different colors speaking a beautiful language. The idea was to make a record that reflected all complexions of Black women.”
Meanwhile, engineer Derek "MixedByAli" added: “[Lamar is] a sponge. He incorporated everything that was going on [in Africa] and in his life to complete a million-piece puzzle.”
The fact Kendrick sampled Nigerian afrobeat forefather Fela Kuti on “Mortal Man” surely wasn’t a coincidence.
It helped cement the impact of an LA jazz collective
TPAB is filled with live instrumentation, with Kamasi Washington (saxophone), Terrace Martin and Thundercat (guitar), Miles Mosley (bass), Robert Glasper (piano), Ronald Bruner Jr. (drums), and Ambrose Akinmusire (trumpet) among the talented jazz musicians who ensure the compositions all sound so richly textured.
According to drummer Tony Austin, the fact Kendrick was so open to working with members of LA’s West Coast Get Down collective helped the members to launch solo careers. “It was validation for us,” he told Dazed. “I guess when Kendrick got his time to shine, it was like, ‘Oh, wow, we can all shine too.’ We’ve been riding the momentum from that Kendrick record ever since.”
The leader of the WCGD crew, jazz titan Kamasi Washington, said in another interview: “TPAB changed music. It meant that intellectually stimulating [jazz] music didn’t have to be underground anymore.” Much like what A Tribe Called Quest or Guru achieved in the 1990s, Kendrick Lamar ensured the 2010s could see jazz musicians and MCs strengthen their historic ties.
Kendrick visited Ronald Isley personally to clear a sample
In order to clear sample of the euphoric Isley Brothers' classic "Who's That Lady," Kendrick had to make the pilgrimage down to St Louis and get Ronald Isley himself to give his approval. That was how the rapper was able to flow on the optimistic guitar line featured on the album's first single "i."
Not only did the Soul and R&B legend approve but he ended up recording howling adlibs and making a cameo in the music video dressed like a Blaxploitation anti-hero.
The pair forged a friendship, too. Given he got to kick ideas with one of his musical heroes, it's no wonder Kendrick "loved himself" so much afterwards.
The artwork was supposed to be optimistic
Shot by prestigious photographer Denis Rouvre, the cover art of TPAB depicts a rowdy party on the lawn of The White House, as LA locals grin while standing over the corpse of a corrupt white judge. Many of the people present were real life friends from Kendrick's childhood. It's tempting to look at the artwork as Kendrick vindicating the idea of a violent uprising, especially in the wake of high profile injustices like the Trayvon Martin killing.
Kendrick, however, has said the photo is supposed to signify how far hip-hop has allowed him to travel. "I am just taking a group of the homies who haven't seen the world and showing them something different other than the neighborhood, and they are excited about it," Kendrick said. "That's why they have wild faces on there."
Kendrick was regularly endorsed by President Obama's administration, with this artwork reflecting how street rap in Compton grew from being banned—e.g., NWA's "Fuck Tha Police"—to literally sparking the brains of our most powerful political leaders.