Review Summary: Chapter 3: fuck your breath
Racism is alive and well, and Kendrick Lamar knows it. It may not be the only problem that he addresses on
To Pimp a Butterfly, but from the menacing album art to the genuinely chilling interview that concludes the album, it's clear that the struggle of the African-American is the primary drive behind Lamar's refocused rage. Though Duckworth's interest has only recently turned to racial issues, his growl drips with the venom of the victim of a terrifying legacy of prejudice that oppresses his people and culture to this very day.
The metaphor of the caterpillar and the butterfly in 'Mortal Man' best explains the pressured environment for the black youth of modern America. Throughout the record, Kendrick's lyrics subtly tease this thought-provoking conclusion using vocal snippets to introduce new chapters to this tale of self-discovery. Allusions to Compton being a 'mad city' now seem more real than ever in light of rising racial tensions, while his presentation of individual experiences is more masterful than ever thanks to his most rich, colourful narrative to date. His presentation of his grandma on 'Institutionalised' and his mother on 'You Ain't Gotta Lie' add a relatable angle to his music that had until these moments been entirely absent from his music.
It's a shame then that despite possessing the ability to single-handedly emulate any voice of his choosing Duckworth packed his third record so full of guest vocalists in such a way that the catharsis of these tracks often disappears amidst the chaos. In the past, brief guest appearances complemented Kendrick's tapestry of urban culture, but here his attempt to pay homage to his musical inspirations results in a rather cluttered feel to the opening sestet here. With far too many voices on display for their own good, these songs become very difficult to analyse from a storytelling point of view. Indeed, this may be the first Kendrick Lamar album to place his songwriting quality over his ability to tell a story. As such, despite being even more lyrically ambitious than its predecessor,
To Pimp a Butterfly frequently becomes lost in its sprawling musical labyrinth.
This is by far the least accessible of Duckworth's albums, presenting a daunting antithesis to the pop leanings of
good kid, m.A.A.d city with its funk, jazz and soul elements and often abandoning traditional song structures in order to cram each track full to burst. While this works in the favour of this metropolis of urban sound most of the time, there are moments here, such as 'U', where Kendrick's grating sobs mesh very badly with a barely coherent jazz-fusion instrumental. Like many other songs here, it attempts to juggle far too many genres at once and comes off as lacking structure and ultimately becomes nigh-on unlistenable.
Despite these shortcomings, Lamar still had enough in him to create his best album to date. Finally achieving a near-perfect lyrical balance of mourning and celebration, Kendrick also finally managed to refrain from making the narcissistic music of his previous records.
To Pimp a Butterfly undoubtedly had the potential to be the masterpiece Duckworth always had the potential to make, but such an ambition appears to have run his latest record into the ground, when it should have made it the magnum opus of black America's reactionary movement.
