Lamar is working to purify hip-hop, a genre he hopes to ground in his true experiences of growing up poor, the son of a former gangbanger. The hit single “Swimming Pools (Drank)” warned about the dangers of alcohol, while “Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe” begins, “I am a sinner, who’s probably gonna sin again.” city” was similarly dense, critics called it a triumph comparable to classic rap debuts like Jay Z’s “Reasonable Doubt” and Nas’s “Illmatic,” and the album was certified platinum. With this challenging 75-minute story of “survivor’s guilt,” he has also doubled down on the concept album format, forgoing obvious radio singles and daring fans to invest in close readings at the risk of commercial success.
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“You take a kid out of Compton, and he has to meet these different types of people that are not black,” Mr. Lamar more outwardly political, as he confronts race, police violence and his attempts to navigate new cultures - and to bring what he’s learned back to his neighborhood. Lamar’s intricate stories but also in vigorous jazz- and funk-inflected production that builds on the smoother West Coast sounds of his debut.Ī wider vantage has made Mr. Rather than relief, his escape from Compton has brought only more opportunities for sin and self-doubt, an internal chaos reflected not only in Mr. Awards, and the separation he feels from his past. Lamar, a gifted but wayward high schooler in a neighborhood filled with death and temptation, “To Pimp a Butterfly” brings listeners up to his present day, from world tours to the B.E.T. city” zoomed in on a day in the old life of Mr. “I felt like it was something I had to do.” Nearly a decade later, having found that fame and riches did not offer additional salvation, or happiness, he “wanted to take it to the next level - being underwater,” he said. “She had seen that we weren’t right in the head. Lamar, who grew up in Compton, Calif., had previously been saved as a teenager in the parking lot of a Food 4 Less, he said, when the grandmother of a friend approached him after a tragedy, asking if he had accepted God. His long-awaited follow-up, “To Pimp a Butterfly” (TDE/Aftermath/Interscope) is about carrying the weight of that clarity: What happens when you speak out, spiritually and politically, and people actually start to listen? And what of the world you left behind? That album was the story of his redemption, not just from street gangs through rapping but from a life of sin by embracing Jesus Christ.
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city,” in 2012, the rapper Kendrick Lamar did not indulge in earthly luxuries. LOS ANGELES - Following the success of his major label debut, “good kid, m.A.A.d.