Review Summary: A surrealistic monument dedicated to our current state of affairs.
Frank Zappa once said, “Jazz isn’t dead, it just smells funny”. Well I think he may be wrong. Jazz is dead, long dead and buried. But luckily for us, jazz has been re-animated as a zombie parasite. It now wanders among the living genres, feeding upon them, and slowly rebuilding toward a new golden era. No one has adopted “zombie jazz” as much as Kendrick Lamar.
Kendrick’s newest album, To Pimp a Butterfly, incorporates both the zombie jazz and the experimental electronic sounds of his modern contemporaries: Thundercat, Flying Lotus, and Kamasi Washington. These sounds are pieced together to create a surrealistic monument dedicated to our current state of affairs.
Make no mistake, this complete and utter embrace of jazz is a conscious decision. The 1920s were known as the golden age of jazz; an era also known for its decadence, social inequality, and stratification of wealth. See a parallel? We may be on the verge of another great depression and Kendrick knows it. This is where the lyrics come into play.
Lyrically, To Pimp a Butterfly is a mixture of personal reflection and societal ponderings. Kendrick harkens back to the personal themes presented in his previous two albums (Good Kid, M.A.A.D City and Section 8.0). Once again he writes about his upbringing in Compton and the street culture associated with it. This time, however, he expands upon these themes in a meaningful way. To borrow from the album, he is now a butterfly looking down upon the caterpillars bellow. Kendrick harnesses this new perspective to create some of the best lyrics of our generation.
The album is as much a story of a man divided as much as it is a story of man divided.
Kendrick struggles with his sense of fame and fortune; fearing that he has turned his back on his community. He no longer wants to plays “hood politics”, coming to the realization that playing politics is counter-intuitive and harmful. But, through the rejection of politics he himself is rejected. Isolated.
Disillusionment is a close friend of unbridled passion.
He uses his personal struggle to seamlessly segue into the larger themes paralleled throughout our society, calling all of us out for playing politics. Kendrick want to change the world for the better, but finds nothing but the ubiquity of our apathy, our self-destructive attitudes, and our hateful ideals woven into our societal fabric.
Kendrick uses these dark lyrics to build tension throughout the entirety of the album, finally resolving the tension on the penultimate track “i”. Despite the fear and doubt plaguing his life, he strongly proclaims that he finally loves himself. Negativity notwithstanding, he has found himself and it is time for him to move forward.
This album is the height of the jazz era as much as is it the crash of 1929. This album is the height of the 2010’s but unlike the crash of 1929, what comes next is up to us. Do we remain a society divided, constantly playing politics and living our lives as all consuming caterpillars? Or do we reach our collective potential and metamorphosize into the butterflies we have the potential to be?
