To Pimp a Butterfly is released

Why it matters

To Pimp a Butterfly came out March 15, 2015, on Top Dawg Entertainment/Aftermath/Interscope. It is Kendrick Lamar's third album, two and a half years after good kid, m.A.A.d city. Kendrick brought in a much wider production roster this time (Flying Lotus, Thundercat, Terrace Martin, Pharrell, Sounwave, Boi-1da) and built the album around live jazz, funk, and spoken-word elements that pushed the record well outside conventional rap-album structure. The album sold 324,000 copies in its first week and won the Best Rap Album Grammy in 2016 (it was also nominated for Album of the Year, which it lost to Taylor Swift's 1989). "King Kunta," "Alright," "The Blacker the Berry," "Mortal Man" with the Tupac interview. To Pimp a Butterfly is widely considered one of the most ambitious commercial rap albums of the 2010s. The album's racial-and-political directness, the Compton-to-Africa thematic structure, the album-closing imagined Tupac dialogue, are not the kind of swings most major-label rap records of 2015 were taking. Kendrick took them and the album worked anyway. You should hear it. The album rewards multiple listens. The album also asks for them.