Genre's
To Pimp a Butterfly is the second big label studio album released on March 15, 2015 by Kendrick Lamar. The record labels he released it through were Top Dawg Entertainment, Aftermath Entertainment, and Interscope Records.Once released the album was already critically acclaimed, being nominated to for eleven Grammy's awards, and most critics and people consider it to be th greatest hip-hop albums of all time.
Unlike his other albums, To Pimp a Butterfly took more influence from other music genre's such as, jazz, funk, and soul. Because of this he featured artist such as Terrace Martin, Thundercat, Flying Lotus, and Kamasi Washington, to provide aid with production and instrumentation of the songs.
The name of this album was orginally going to be called 'Tu Pimp a Caterpillar,' which would spell out TuPAC, when abbreviated. However, it was changed to butterfly later to represent Kendrick's evolution as an individual and his durability towards his success and life within the music industry. The album, focuses and explores issues of race, poliics, depression, fame, hate, and talks more about self-love, Kendrick not only does this through the songs in the LP, but with a poem that he reads throughout the end of some songs. Later it is revealed that Kendrick is reading the poem to 2PAC.