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![]() As the walls tell him to “listen to Sing About Me”, a track from good kid in which one of Kendrick’s dead friend’s brothers told him to “promise to tell story” when he made it out of Compton, Kendrick reflects on his past and wonders if, as the poem says, he’s “misused his influence”. On “These Walls”, “the four corners of the cocoon” described by George Clinton on “Wesley's Theory” close in around Kendrick, trapping him in his thoughts and making him question himself. Already pimped, fighting and consuming its environment, “Institutionalized” sees Kendrick enter his cocoon, rapping about being “trapped inside the ghetto”. “King Kunta” ends with two lines from the poem - “I remember you was conflicted / misusing your influence” - which bring in the next chapter of Kendrick’s story. “Already surrounded by this mad city the caterpillar goes to work on the cocoon which institutionalized him / He can no longer see past his own thoughts / He’s trapped” Tracks: “Institutionalized”, “These Walls”, “U”, “Alright”, “For Sale” He raps that he’s “picked cotton that made rich” but his “choice is devastated” and has been “decapitated” - an idea that suggests the system in America only serves to “pimp out” blacks for their profit, rather than offer them a choice. This outlook continues on the next track, “For Free”, with Kendrick using slavery as a way to suggest his choice is an illusion. Lines like “what do you want? A house? A car?” come from the perspective Uncle Sam - a character who represents capitalist America - describing how the caterpillar succumbs to American society’s “pimping of the butterfly”. The second verse plays up to that idea and reframes it from a different position. ![]() He’s a prisoner to the streets a caterpillar who consumes the product of his environment. Kendrick says when he “gets signed” he’s going to “act a fool”, buy a “brand new caddy on fours”, and “take a few M-16s to the hood”. We start with “Wesley’s Theory”, a track that takes place before the release of good kid and Section.80. We start at the beginning with Kendrick Lamar as a caterpillar who sees that the world “praises the butterfly”, and we see him subconsciously working out how to “pimp to own benefits”. The caterpillar analogy runs in tandem with the poem that unfolds across the record, with the release of each line signalling a new chapter in the life of the caterpillar and To Pimp a Butterfly’s narrative. Lets strap in and start right at the beginning… On To Pimp a Butterfly we follow Kendrick through the poem, going through the confliction of his influence into depression and near self destruction, before returning to the setting of his previous records: to be born again, a new man. The analogy offered up in the record’s closing track “Mortal Man” is a caterpillar being imprisoned by its environment cocooning itself in an internal struggle being released as a butterfly with a new outlook. To Pimp a Butterfly is what happened after Kendrick became the self-confessed " King of New York" and returned home. ![]() Good kid, m.A.A.d city’s story used the mise-en-scène of Compton to illustrate Kendrick’s reflections on his environment and his subsequent resurrection from the streets, going from a teenager that, as his mother puts it on the record’s penultimate track, “rose from that dark place of violence” to “come back a man”. ![]() Resentment that turned into a deep depression The sort of thing that would be the blurb on a book, or in this case, the most streamed record of all time. The first few lines are a synopsis of To Pimp a Butterfly’s storyline. Like that album, To Pimp a Butterfly sees Kendrick go through another transition, but this time round it’s a poem, or as he puts it at the end of “Mortal Man”, “something you could probably relate to”, and it's this that guides the narrative. The album’s final tracks, “Real” and Compton”, completed the transition of the young K.Dot from Section.80, into Kendrick Lamar the Compton resident, free from the trappings of his environment. The storyline of good kid, m.A.A.d city was split up by skits: Kendrick’s parents demanding to know the location of both their van and dominoes Kendrick getting laced on a blunt and robbing a house Kendrick’s next-door neighbour sending him on a path of enlightenment. And for that reason it makes sense to look at it through such a lens. If good kid, m.A.A.d city was like a motion picture, then To Pimp a Butterfly is a novel, with rich interwoven references leaning toward a deep character study that runs throughout the narrative. ![]()
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