The contradictions between past and present couldn't be more prevalent, just take 'Wesley's Theory,' with Kendrick's first verse from the perspective of his arrogant, materialistic self while the latter comes from Uncle Sam and his mischievous ways of pimping. To Pimp A Butterfly, in essence, is good kid m.A.A.d city's antithesis, the latter a true coming-of-age story escaping the troubled streets, the former an enlightened return. But, above all else, what truly matters is the music and the messages behind it. Even before the release fans were in copious quarrels over the title, a corny phrase with a beautiful bug, and the cover, a pejorative display of stereotypical blacks rising up. The fact that an artist can record a litany of discussions in just over an hour to send every social media platform into a frenzy. When tackling a review of this magnitude it's incredibly difficult to find a declarative starting place, one can dissect it from half a dozen positions, all providing a new context others hadn't experienced. All of it, in typical Lamar style, wrapped up in two poems weaved throughout explaining the metamorphosis from caterpillar to butterfly, draped in the utmost roots of black excellence jazz, funk, and soul. It's about political strife, racial conflict, black righteousness, vanity, fame, fortune, depression, acceptance, self-pity, self-worth, self-reliance, and, above all else, loving one another to overcome injustice. Just see his second verse on 'Momma' where the Compton emcee recites his enlightenment in vivid detail, following each line with 'I know everything.' And really, To Pimp A Butterfly is about everything.

Previously Lamar has focused on concrete stories or issues, but here, it's about it all, everything he's encountered since escaping his cocoon. But, in reality, it's much more than that. Whereas his mainstream classic debut focused on his evolution from K.Dot to the man he is now, To Pimp A Butterfly aims at detailing just who that man is now that he's in the starlight. Where exactly does Kendrick Lamar go from good kid, m.A.A.d city? What's taken him a lifetime to construct, hypothesize, and experience has now been whittled down to two years, with the inevitable sophomore slump hanging in the balance.

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