To Pimp A Butterfly: Analysis
To Pimp A Butterfly is an album created by Kendrick Lamar in 2015. The album is a politically charged, controversial, complex, masterpiece. The album is a collection of stories, insights, and countless metaphors describing growing up in Compton, Kendrick’s road to success, and the story of his inner dialogue as he leaves the streets of one of America’s most dangerous cities and becomes one of today’s most well-known celebrities. Kendrick uses poetry, symbolism, musicality, and various communication methods and rhetorical approaches to get his experiences and thoughts across to his listeners.
Kendrick shows different sides of himself throughout this entire album. This is why it gets so interesting, as there are times he describes himself and how he showcases himself to the world, which is his front-stage. Then, he’ll show us his aspects of himself that only he experiences, his back-stage, and he describes his thought processes at these points throughout his career (Goffman, 2006). The most obvious instance on the record of him switching between describing his front-stage and his back-stage is between the songs “King Kunta” and “Institutionalized.” On the track “King Kunta” Kendrick proclaims he is at the top of his game and the top of the music industry. The song is a reference to Kunta Kinte. Kinte was a slave in the 18th century who tried to escape, but got caught by his owners, and as a punishment they cut Kinte’s foot off. Kendrick compares himself to Kinte, saying the industry is trying to cut his legs off, meaning they are trying to slow down his success. However, in the song he is essentially saying there’s no way anyone could stop him at this point in his career, everyone thinks he is the best, and he wants everyone to know he is the best. This is his front stage; he knows this is what the public will see him as, so he presents the best, most confident, version of himself. The following song is “Institutionalized.” This song is an insight into Kendrick’s back stage self-presentation. He speaks on the fact he is at the top of the music industry according to the public, but he is still institutionalized by the industry, as well as him hometown of Compton. He explains how his back stage thoughts are getting in the way of how he wants to appear to the public with his front stage self-presentation. He wants people to see him as successful and living his dream, but in his back-stage thoughts he knows he is still being controlled by the industry and he is not as free as he would like to be.
Another prevalent topic throughout this album is Kendrick comparing his life in mainstream America to his life back home in Compton. Indirectly, throughout the album he is debating his two options using the equity and investment model (Sprecher, 1988). He contemplates all the work he’s put in into getting to this point of fame in his career, which is the investment side of the model. He believes he is putting in all this work to become a mainstream influence, but the payout has not yet been worth it because he is still getting “pimped” by “Uncle Sam” as he puts it. So, he begins looking at his second-best alternative, which is returning to the streets of Compton. If he does this he will be helping his community from inside the community, as opposed to continuing on his track to help his community from the role as a mainstream celebrity. He struggles with deciding between these options and highlights this struggle especially with the song “Hood Politics.” Throughout the album he repeatedly says the line “I remember you was conflicted, misusing your influence,” and at the end of “Hood Politics” he continues this line with a poem. This poem, among other things, is him comparing his entrance into the music industry to his life back at Compton.
Kendrick didn’t just create this politically charged album in order to get his personal story out to the public. He did it to speak for all African-Americans going through similar problems of integrating into the mainstream. He brings up the racial tensions in America in order to start a conversation with the hopes of bringing about change to the social injustice African-Americans, especially those coming from lower social classes, experience today. This is exactly the method expressed in the dialectical theory, which states that bringing up tensions is not necessarily a bad thing, and many times bringing up the tensions can be a drop of water in a pond, which will cause a ripple effect, leading to conversations among the two opposing groups and can lead to change (Baxter, 2004). He very aggressively attacks the power positions of America and he doesn’t beat around the bush with these claims. A clear example of this is the album cover. It is a picture of Kendrick and a group of African-Americans flaunting bundles of money, liquor, and their middle fingers, in front of the white house standing over a dead, white judge. This is symbolic of them taking over the power structures of America and rewriting the current political systems. There are other examples frequently scattered throughout the album challenging America such as the line “And we hate popo, want to kill us dead in the street for sure.” This is how many African-Americans view the police in America especially after the police killings of Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown, among others, that all were in the mainstream media around the time of the release of this album.
Another interesting way to dissect Kendrick’s album is through the lens of Lloyd Bitzer’s (1968) “Rhetorical Situation.” Beginning with the first concept: “rhetoric can’t exist without a situation.” The situation of To Pimp A Butterfly could be understood as many things, but to me the overarching concept is about the systemic, and at times implicit, loom of racism in America. Next, is that the piece needs and invites discourse. Kendrick is expressing his anger with America and calling for change. This is inviting people to hear him out and respond however they see fitting, in order to create a dialogue, which plays into Bitzer’s next concept: The rhetoric must invite change. As stated, Kendrick believes it’s necessary that America changes the power structures and mindset that are currently in place. The rhetoric must also invite a fitting response. The response that Kendrick sees as fitting is Americans realizing this problem and demanding change. Lastly, the rhetoric should have a life cycle. The life cycle for this piece of rhetoric is racism in America, and the album was released in the middle of this life cycle. We have come a long way since slavery in many ways, but as of today we can barely see the finish line in the distance, meaning we still have a long way to go until the life cycle of racism is over. Kendrick is aware of this and knows we can’t be content with where we currently are with this life cycle.
This album could be described as a beginning to a social movement in America, and that would be a very fair assessment. However, it can also be looked at as an important landmark in the middle of a long-standing social movement beginning with Civil Rights. Griffin’s approach is to study social movements as a phenomenon (1952), this phenomenon being black rights. There are three stages described by Griffin beginning with inception. The inception of this movement was the Civil Rights movement, when people started demanding equality for all people regardless of race. The second stage is a rhetorical crisis. The rhetorical crisis is America thinking we achieved equality for all. Although many had and still have this belief, Kendrick and many others in America were not going to become complacent, and police killings and other injustice only highlighted the fact that this battle for equal rights is far from over. This is why there needed to be a resurgence of people demanding change in America. Kendrick did not start this resurgence, but he placed a historical landmark of this resurgence on the laps of Americans with this album. Coming on the upswing of the resurgence, this album heightened the urgency of the demand for change. The last stage is consummation. The end of a social movement. There’s no telling how long this will take, but Kendrick and the black population of America will be the judges of when this is over. They will demand equality, and as Kendrick, and snippets of Tupac Shakur, explain at the end of this album, it may not be this civil forever if there isn’t change. People will get fed up and they will take whatever means necessary in order to get to the consummation of this movement. They believe all of America will benefit if we solve this problem as quickly as possible before tensions get too high to revert from and we start going in the opposite direction.
One can also classify the people Kendrick is trying to rally as a counterpublic (Warner, 2002). The black community of America is composed of those outside of “white corporate America,” and they oppose how the public is treating them. He believes right now the public is content with where racial tensions are in America right now, and as much as Kendrick is trying to grab the attention of the public and tell them equality in America is not equal right now, the album is more directed at the counterpublic of oppressed African-Americans. He’s not calling for white America to accept African-Americans into their society. He’s trying to call this counterpublic into action to take the power structures in America and rebuild them themselves. He calls for them to realize that they deserve better than what they are experiencing in today’s America, and he wants them to take action and make America notice and receive the claims they are making, in order to bring about change.
To Pimp A Butterfly is an interesting album on the surface, but when using communication science and rhetorical analysis to look at it, there is even more depth than one might first realize. Whether Kendrick Lamar consciously utilized the theories I explained or if they were implicit, it is apparent that Kendrick wasn’t just making a jazz-rap album. He wanted more, and you can begin to understand this album on a much deeper level when you utilize communication science and rhetorical approaches. You come to realize it’s much more than a hip-hop album. It’s part of a social movement, it’s a statement on modern America, it’s a rallying cry, it’s rhetoric, it’s a conversation starter, it’s an inner debate, but above all else it’s a narrative of what’s going on in today’s world, and there needs to be significant change.
Word Count: 1796
Bibliography:
Baxter, Leslie A. “A tale of two voices: Relational dialectics theory.” Journal of Family Communication 4.3–4 (2004): 181–192.
Bitzer, Lloyd F. “The rhetorical situation.” Philosophy & rhetoric (1968): 1–14.
Goffman, Erving. “The presentation of self.” Life as theater: A dramaturgical sourcebook (2006).
Griffin, Leland M. “The rhetoric of historical movements.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 38.2 (1952): 184–188.
Sprecher, Susan. “Investment Model, Equity, and Social Support Determinants of Relationship Commitment.” Social Psychology Quarterly, vol. 51, no. 4, 1988, pp. 318–328. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2786759.
Warner, Michael. “Publics and counterpublics.” Public culture 14.1 (2002): 49–90.
Media Sources:
http://www.ultratop.be/nl/song/156907/Kendrick-Lamar-King-Kunta
http://www.okayplayer.com/news/kendrick-lamar-pimp-butterfly-album-cover.html
