On “good kid, m.A.A.d city,” interstitial phone calls re-enacted by Mr. Lamar acknowledges the risk of “misusing your influence” and in song aims criticism at himself as well as the powers that be. Lamar’s new album, George Clinton intones over a Flying Lotus beat: “Gather your wind, take a deep look inside, are you really who they idolize? To pimp a butterfly.” In repeated spoken word sections, each telling more of the story than the last, Mr.
Lamar, who rarely appears on TMZ or MediaTakeout, failed to name a single vice, other than constantly recording music, watching the TV show “Martin” and eating his beloved Fruity Pebbles.īut at the start of Mr. (“I don’t want to put somebody else in the spotlight and make them a celebrity when they don’t want to be a celebrity,” he said.) In addition to being religious, he rarely drinks or smokes, eschews fancy clothes and jewelry and has reportedly been in a quiet, decade-long relationship with his high school sweetheart. Lamar could be viewed as a more digestible rap messenger. While some may question Kanye West’s conflicted materialism and ego or Drake’s emotional insularity - or, even the outlaw wisdom of Tupac, who cameos posthumously on “To Pimp a Butterfly” as a guardian angel - Mr. “It’s bigger than a responsibility, it’s a calling.”
“From my perspective, I can only give you the good with the bad,” he said. “If it comes across as just a game all the time, the kids are going to think it’s just a game. “They sell a lot of singles and make these record labels a lot of money.”īut those “really living” in the streets don’t want to hear boasts about murder and drug dealing, he continued. “You know the songs that are out - we all love these songs,” he said. He offers a corrective, or at least an alternative, to the opulent fabulism of some mainstream rap. Lamar is working to purify hip-hop, a genre he hopes to ground in his true experiences of growing up poor, the son of a former gangbanger. The hit single “Swimming Pools (Drank)” warned about the dangers of alcohol, while “Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe” begins, “I am a sinner, who’s probably gonna sin again.” city” was similarly dense, critics called it a triumph comparable to classic rap debuts like Jay Z’s “Reasonable Doubt” and Nas’s “Illmatic,” and the album was certified platinum. With this challenging 75-minute story of “survivor’s guilt,” he has also doubled down on the concept album format, forgoing obvious radio singles and daring fans to invest in close readings at the risk of commercial success. “You take a kid out of Compton, and he has to meet these different types of people that are not black,” Mr. Lamar more outwardly political, as he confronts race, police violence and his attempts to navigate new cultures - and to bring what he’s learned back to his neighborhood. Lamar’s intricate stories but also in vigorous jazz- and funk-inflected production that builds on the smoother West Coast sounds of his debut.Ī wider vantage has made Mr. Rather than relief, his escape from Compton has brought only more opportunities for sin and self-doubt, an internal chaos reflected not only in Mr. Awards, and the separation he feels from his past. Lamar, a gifted but wayward high schooler in a neighborhood filled with death and temptation, “To Pimp a Butterfly” brings listeners up to his present day, from world tours to the B.E.T. city” zoomed in on a day in the old life of Mr. “I felt like it was something I had to do.” Nearly a decade later, having found that fame and riches did not offer additional salvation, or happiness, he “wanted to take it to the next level - being underwater,” he said. “She had seen that we weren’t right in the head.
Lamar, who grew up in Compton, Calif., had previously been saved as a teenager in the parking lot of a Food 4 Less, he said, when the grandmother of a friend approached him after a tragedy, asking if he had accepted God.
His long-awaited follow-up, “To Pimp a Butterfly” (TDE/Aftermath/Interscope) is about carrying the weight of that clarity: What happens when you speak out, spiritually and politically, and people actually start to listen? And what of the world you left behind?
That album was the story of his redemption, not just from street gangs through rapping but from a life of sin by embracing Jesus Christ. city,” in 2012, the rapper Kendrick Lamar did not indulge in earthly luxuries. LOS ANGELES - Following the success of his major label debut, “good kid, m.A.A.d.