Genius | Song Lyrics & Knowledge

...o To Pimp a Butterfly, you might think otherwise. The album is a treatise on blackness, and a very loud one at that. It's obsessed with racist imagery like "monkeys," "mammies" and "master's chains." "I need forty acres and a mule," Kendrick raps, "not forty ounces and a pit bull." He describes the etymology of the word “Negus,” which is a word for “African king.” Pharrell called the album “unapologetically black and amazing.” It's a political statement, or an attempt at one, a... Nobody Hates Kendrick Lamar | LA Weekly

400,287

9 years

I need forty acres and a mule
Not a forty ounce and a pitbull

(Citation from “For Free? (Interlude)”)

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On first listen to To Pimp a Butterfly, you might think otherwise. The album is a treatise on blackness, and a very loud one at that. It's obsessed with racist imagery like "monkeys," "mammies" and "master's chains." "I need forty acres and a mule," Kendrick raps, "not forty ounces and a pit bull." He describes the etymology of the word “Negus,” which is a word for “African king.” Pharrell called the album “unapo... Nobody Hates Kendrick Lamar | LA Weekly

400,287

9 years

If I was the president
I’d pay my mama’s rent
Free my homies and them
Bulletproof my Chevy doors
Lay in the White House and get high, Lord
Who ever thought?
Master take the chains off me

(Citation from Anna Wise’s and Bilal’s interlude on “Institutionalized”)

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400,287

9 years

You goat mouth mammy fucker

(Citation from the beginning of Verse 3 on “King Kunta”)

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400,287

9 years

You’re fuckin' evil I want you to recognize that I’m a proud monkey
You vandalize my perception but can’t take style from me

(Citation from Verse 1 on “The Blacker the Berry”)

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When Kendrick Lamar compares himself to past greats — to Nelson Mandela, for example, or to Tupac, as he does so blatantly on To Pimp a Butterfly — he gets a pass. Nobody Hates Kendrick Lamar | LA Weekly

400,287

9 years

The outro of the album, which also appears same track on which he shouted out Mandela (“Mortal Man”), Kendrick provides the listener with a fictional discussion between him and 2Pac.

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400,287

9 years

Kendrick Lamar gave a shoutout to Mandela on the first hook of “Mortal Man”:

The ghost of Mandela, hope my flows they propel it
Let these words be your earth and moon you consume every message
As I lead this army make room for mistakes and depression
And with that being said my nigga, let me ask this question

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...ero. Its last five minutes are Kendrick "interviewing" Pac, using clips of an interview from 1994 as responses. It's an ingenious, eerie experience that makes Pac feel very alive, an audio version of the hologram from Coachella. Nobody Hates Kendrick Lamar | LA Weekly

400,287

9 years

A reference to the 2Pac hologram created for the 2012 Coachella event.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGbrFmPBV0Y

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..."mammies" and "master's chains." "I need forty acres and a mule," Kendrick raps, "not forty ounces and a pit bull." He describes the etymology of the word “Negus,” which is a word for “African king.” Pharrell called the album “unapologetically black and amazing.” It's a political statement, or an attempt at one, and we should listen to it and judge it as such. Nobody Hates Kendrick Lamar | LA Weekly

400,287

9 years

He actually Kendrick’s song “King Kunta” “unapologetically black and amazing”, not the album. This was according to Scott Vener, who was with Pharrell Williams while listening to it in October 2014, almost 5 months after the album’s release.

https://twitter.com/brokemogul/status/527629201021468672

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They love him because he is not Tupac. Not even close. He is not a rebel. He is not the voice of any anti-establishment movement. At least not yet. Nobody Hates Kendrick Lamar | LA Weekly

400,287

9 years

…as opposed to 2Pac, who was a rebel of the underground.

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... he ultimately transcended the music industry because his politics were consistent. Many people in the mainstream hated Tupac, and Tupac recognized that hatred as a necessary burden to create change. He was condemned by the vice president of the United States, who demanded 2Pacalypse Now be removed from stores. He killed cops in his songs and in his music videos, and got sued by the families of murdered police officers. His songs caused parental uproar after parental uproar. But he didn't care. All the hatr... Nobody Hates Kendrick Lamar | LA Weekly

400,287

9 years

Referring to former Vice President Dan Quayle, who served with President George H. W. Bush from 1989-1993.

In 1992, he made a statement about the album, 2Pacalypse Now, claiming that the record was “responsible for the death of a Texas state trooper, who was shot to death in April (1992) by a suspect who allegedly was listening to the album on the tape deck of a stolen truck when he was stopped by the officer”:

There is absolutely no reason for a record like this to be published […] It has no place in our society.

(Source: Los Angeles Times: “Quayle Calls for Pulling Rap Album Tied to Murder Case”, by John Broder, September 23, 1992)

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