to Pimp a Butterfly

Released March 15, 2015 via Top Dawg Entertainment, Aftermath and Interscope, To Pimp a Butterfly is Kendrick Lamar refusing the victory lap good kid, m.A.A.d city had earned him. He hands the beats to a Los Angeles jazz-funk brain trust (Flying Lotus, Thundercat, Terrace Martin, Sounwave, Kamasi Washington's saxophone) and lets George Clinton's P-funk spirit walk through "Wesley's Theory" before the bass has settled. The record lurches from G-funk swagger on "King Kunta" to free-jazz panic on "For Free?" and the sobbing collapse of "u," where Lamar argues with the mirror and loses.

Holding it together is a poem he recites a few lines at a time across the album, completed only on "Mortal Man," where he puts questions to Tupac Shakur using audio from a 1994 interview with Mats Nileskar of the Swedish radio show P3 Soul. "Alright" escaped the album and became a chant at protests across America. Lamar drew 11 Grammy nominations, the most ever for a rapper in a single night, and the record took Best Rap Album, set a Spotify first-day record of 9.6 million streams, and gets denser with every year it ages.

Double LP on 180g black vinyl, sealed.