Kendrick Lamar’s album “To Pimp A Butterfly” has been recognized by experts in this field as an instant classic. Throughout the album, Kendrick masterfully explores a variety of topics related to death, race, discrimination, African-American History and personal mental issues. The theme of the album is exposed in the title “To Pimp A Butterfly”. As Kendrick himself has disclosed butterfly signifies “the brightness of life. And the word “pimp” has so much aggression”. The contrast between “Pimping” and a “butterfly”, shows how the music industry takes good artists(butterflies — Kendrick) and pimps them just for monetary reasons, in this context enslaving them — ‘Just putting the word ‘pimp’ next to ‘butterfly’… It’s a trip“. The topic of slavery comes up in the album periodically, sometimes in dark contexts sometimes in subtle ones. The album is praised based on a range of criteria such as lyricism, beats and references. Nonetheless, it is found that his song “u” is one of the darkest but at the same time most fascinating parts of the whole album.
In “u”, the sixth track of the album, Kendrick dives deep into his mind and conscience by judging himself from a second-person perspective. The tone of the song is utterly mournful and miserable. The evidence for this is the voice with which Kendrick sings this song. It’s obvious that he is intoxicated and sobbing while performing the lyrics, his obliviousness indicates how miserable he feels. On the other hand, the lyrics of the song exhibit his mournfulness. Kendrick makes remembrance of his greatest grieves and regrets in a life full of sorrows and lamentations. knowing that he is not as righteous as he would want to imagine -
Where was your presence?
Where was your support that you pretend?
You ain’t no brother, you ain’t no disciple, you ain’t no friend
A friend never leave Compton for profitOr leave his best friend, little brother
You promised you’d watch him before they shot him
The mood of the song is depressed and crushed. This is supported by the slow beat and the instances of lines such as:
But you ain’t shit, I’m convinced your tolerance nothin’ special.
I never liked you, forever despise you — I don’t need you!
When it comes to the analysis of the language from the literary perspective we observe that in the first lines Kendrick mentions “marble floors” and how his “confidence breaks” on them. This clearly exemplifies symbolism. Marble is expensive and Kendrick can afford it, denoting Kendrick ́s power of acquisition. However, all his success and affluence cannot save him from his thoughts.
In the chorus, the rapper repeats the line “Loving you is complicated”. This is an allusion to late rapper Tupac’s poem “Love is Just Complicated”. Kendrick chose Tupac, mainly because inside the rap community many people compare Kendrick Lamar to the modern-day Tupac. Before his passing in 1996, Tupac was a prominent rapper who also rooted for equality and discussed the problems the African-American society faces on a daily basis. In his 1994 MTV Interview, Tupac even said that “I’m not saying I’m gonna rule the world or I’m gonna change the world, but I guarantee you that I will spark the brain that will change the world”. This excerpts more pressure on Kendrick to live up to the expectations of the whole world as he is seen as Tupac’s heir.
Continuing with the analysis of the deep lyrics we find that Lamar also employs a range of rhetorical questions to prove himself that he is not as moral as his fans might think him to be. A clear illustration of what can be seen in verse one:
A baby inside, just a teenager, where your patience?
Where was your antennas?
Where was the influence you speak of?
In the second verse, Kendrick references the death of his close friend Chad, who was shot in a car. Chad was in a hospital for a month, while Kendrick was too busy with his career overseas, so he could not visit him, hence, the line: “you thought he would recover well”. Sadly, Chad passed away, without Kendrick visiting him on his deathbed. The second verse ends with:
Then he died, God himself will say, “You fuckin’ failed”
This is a moment of an epiphany since the whole song Kendrick was judging himself, but now a power higher than a man, a God, judges Kendrick for his deeds proving to Kendrick and his audience that what did he was wicked.
Throughout the song, we can also notice the absence of grammatical rules when writing, which signifies various things. First, we have to mention this is an illustration of Ebonics. The Linguistic Society of America defines Ebonics simply as ‘black speech’. This emphasizes on Kendrick’s Origins since as mentioned previously, one of the main themes of the album is Black History. Secondly, rap music is considered as modern poetry and art. Kendrick refuses to confine his art based on the rules of grammar, he values what sounds better more than what is right.
It is proper to state at this point that rap was always considered as an anti-establishment genre; the art of Not-abiding grammatical rules, the art of the rebellious people, that is what hip-hop represents.
“To Pimp a Butterfly” today is what “The Dark Side of the Moon” was in the 1970s. I’m assured that this album will always be considered a classic due to Kendrick’s immense talent and skill. His “u”, will always be one of the audience most favourite songs from TPAB due to the amount of himself put by Kendrick into this song. “U” has a very powerful message about conscience, power and fame. In the music industry, it is utterly respected for an artist to be able to strip off of his facade and show his true self.
This was a partly analysis of the song and of the whole album. If you like make sure to clap and leave a comment, for me to know and continue analyzing his other songs.
Thank you for reading!
