Kendrick Lamar’s new album uses trends to further social commentary

Culture has always been susceptible to the shock factor, but there’s a recent trendy appeal about the element of surprise. Hugely influential artists who release their albums unexpectedly are a demonstration of unbelievable strategy, control and most of all, power: the sheer ability to bend culture’s attention to their will at a moment’s notice.

“I think that there are moments in hip-hop culture and pop culture when we become ready for somebody to complicate our lives,” said hip-hop podcaster Frannie Kelley back in November in an NPR Morning Edition broadcast titled “What Is It About Kendrick Lamar?”

Four months later, after the unceremonious release of his third studio album on the night of March 16, the conversation is fresh on everyone’s mind, and Kelley’s words read more like a self-fulfilling cultural prophecy than commentary on a popular rapper.

This is precisely the kind of power Kendrick Lamar has harnessed, artistically and politically, with “To Pimp A Butterfly.” While other popular artists are content to stake their claim with Billboard weekly charts and album sales, Lamar expertly wields this kind of unique energy in every avenue of his career. He gave fans a taste of his new sound on The Colbert Report back in December without actually releasing a single. He quietly released his record nine days ahead of its scheduled release date, and he even included an interrupted live-take album version of his lead single, “i.” No matter how organic his actions may seem, Kendrick Lamar is a man with a plan.

To the casual fan of hip-hop as much as to the experienced veteran, “To Pimp A Butterfly” is no easy listen. With a modern America as its backdrop, the album takes its listener through a musical timeline of Black America while simultaneously exploring pertinent conversations of racial unrest and social stagnancy. It defies genre, slipping effortlessly from funk to jazz to spoken word, ebbing and flowing with intensely conscious momentum in all the right places. Even at its more traditional hip-hop moments, highlight tracks “King Kunta” and “Alright” maintain the album’s unapologetic theme of binaries that thread perfectly balanced tension from genre to genre, confrontation to confrontation.

While Lamar is deliberate with his commentary on subjects like police brutality and black-on-black violence, it isn’t his end goal. So, what is his end goal? It isn’t entirely clear, and for Lamar, the open-ended approach works. After all, as is evident in the other outstanding work in his repertoire, Kendrick Lamar is not here to give answers or absolution. He’s here to tell us a story — his own. As Lamar says on “Mortal Man,” a 12-minute long behind-the-scenes-style exchange with the ghost of 2Pac, “ … and that’s all I wrote … it ain’t really a poem, I just felt like it’s something you probably could relate to.”

Whether we relate to his story or not, Kendrick Lamar achieves something as an artist that few others are able to do. He makes us feel, he makes us think, and he makes us want to change.