Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly is a modern day masterpiece. The album is archived in the library of congress, taught in college courses around the world, and it is forever engraved in black history. Lamar, commonly known as a rap and hip-hop artist, uses Jazz to root To Pimp a Butterfly and take modern black music back to where it began. The sounds of the instrumentation, specifically the saxophone bleeds into the first two tracks of the album, while paralleling the album’s commentary on black lives in America
For instance, Lamar opens the album with Wesley’s Theory, describing the institutionalized racism that black people face and white people profit off of. The outro features a striking scream building: Tax man comin’, tax man comin’. The song ends with a faint saxophone attempting to start, but it can’t get any sound to continue. Almost broken sounding, like a door creeping open. The door then kicks open to the beginning of For Free? The saxophone orgasms into a beautifully rich opening. The sound transitions into frantic drumming patterns over a woman’s spoken word. The woman is depicted as only loving Kendrick for his money and fame, a materialistic form of love. Kendrick then responds with “This dick ain’t free”. He stands up for himself, he will not be objectified not only by the love, but by the music industry and by America as well.
Lamar’s Jazz influence is imperative to find the sounds and environment of the album. It’s chaotic, improvisational, ever-flowing, broken, held back, beaten down. Just as the people we read and how the black audience that Kendrick is speaking to has been treated for generations. The saxophone and Jazz empowers the words of standing up against the oppressor. Similarly to how Jacobs stands up to Dr. Flint or How Indigo never lets judgement dictate her imagination and the south in her. This speaks to the reality that the White man has always profited off of the black man, rooted in slavery, continued in music.
Discussion Question
Kendrick speaks frequently on the album regarding the white man profiting off of the object of the black man. Explain the difficulty of this process when it comes to music. Music can be a great tool to express one’s message, but at the end of the day, it is a business and those in power still profit from that business. The books we have read in this course, the same can be said for. How can the message continue to be sent without those in power benefiting financially from the product?
Hi Nick, I think it’s really cool that you’re bringing To Pimp A Butterfly into the conversation. It’s definitely one of the most powerful and loaded albums I’ve ever listened to, and I learned a lot from it. One of many things that makes it so applicable to our class is how much it engages with the senses, and one song that I think would be interesting to look at in the context of some of the themes/texts we’ve discussed this year is “The Blacker The Berry.” The title and repetition of the phrase “the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice” initially make it seem like it’s going to convey black joy and pride, but then Kendrick offers contradictions that convolute this message. Kendrick does express black pride and power at points, such as when he celebrates his roots (“I’m African-American, I’m African, I’m black as the moon / Heritage of a small village”), references the Black Panther Party, and reclaims/flips stereotypes and slurs typically used to demean black culture. These things all contribute to this concept of black joy; however, the song is full of anger rather than celebration as Kendrick lashes out at white America and its racism towards black people, and also points out interracial violence in black communities. Kendrick explains his overwhelming awareness of how society perceives him and his community, and how the black community internalizes these ideas. This makes me think of Sassafrass, Cypress, and Indigo, because it seems like the girls share this same painful awareness out in the real world away from the comfort of Hilda Effania and home. Similar ideas also came up in our discussion of enslaved characters’ self-perception, and how slavery completely warped how they viewed their blackness.
And of course, as you mentioned, Kendrick makes direct references to slavery and the white man profiting off of the black man, an analogy carried through to the modern music industry that he is a part of. To answer your question, I think one way to avoid this has been demonstrated by independent artists like Chance the Rapper, who’s made a conscious effort to avoid giving into this system of “slavery” by releasing music without a record label. But it is definitely inherently difficult to make it in the music industry, unfortunately, without the support of the rich white men at the top, and Kendrick clearly recognizes this.
I really enjoyed your analysis on TPAB. I haven’t really listened to Kendrick’s discography as much as I likely should but I am familiar with some of the thematic content that you describe. The challenge that you describe in your question is honestly an extremely difficult topic. However, I believe that it is also a fundamentally flawed approach at looking at the issue of black representation within a traditionally white -lead industry. While there are ways of releasing your music without the help of white people, who is to say that the people Kendrick is working with are racist? should we punish these people for the views of their outspoken peers (they likely are passionate about music as well)? Ultimately, I believe that for the music industry specifically, we are starting to see black representation that is based on merit. What people should strive for is a meritocracy (where representation is had based on an non-racist hiring/promotion process). We are already seeing this with the rise of QC, we have seen this with Young Money, and I believe that as an industry, we will continue to see this as people strive to break barriers. This is not to say that there is more to do, but I don’t believe that sacrificing the potential outreach of Kendrick’s message is worth punishing Kendrick’s label for the actions of outspoken racists (that likely are not associated with Kendrick/the industry at all).
I agree with what your saying. The white man has profited off of the black man since slavery. Music is an industry that is still evidence of that Kendrick has always been a visionary and not been afraid to speak on certain issues. his music always pays homage to those that came before him. Black artists through the years can be heard in his samples.
Nick, awesome work here. I still remember listening to TPAB for the first time. I love Kendrick Lamar’s music. I think that the internet has changed the way that individuals ‘make it’ in music quite a bit. Look at people like Freddie Gibbs who make it through independent means. I think that eventually record labels and old white executives will be a thing of the past, but I remain confident that there will never cease to exist new methods of exploiting artists lol