To Pimp a Butterfly

The first time George Clinton heard rising

Compton rapper Kendrick Lamar, he was underwhelmed. “I knew [Lamar’s 2012 hit] ‘Bitch Don’t Kill My Vibe’ and thought it sounded silly as hell,” the P-Funk legend recalled. But Clinton agreed to meet with Lamar while the rapper was working on his second major-label album, and his opinion changed immediately: “The conversations we had reminded me of myself in ‘68 and ‘69. He had that same kind of enthusiasm about social issues and the world.”

The initial jolt of inspiration for To Pimp a Butterfly came while Lamar was visiting South Africa, a trip that included a stop at Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was in prison for 18 years. “It felt like I belonged in Africa,” Lamar said. “Probably one of the hardest things to do is put [together] a concept on how beautiful a place can be, and tell a person this while they’re still in the ghettos of Compton. I wanted to put that experience in the music.”

Accomplishing his vision required a murderers’ row of collaborators, not just Lamar’s regular accomplices — including producers and instrumentalists Terrace Martin and Sounwave — but luminaries like Clinton, Pharrell Williams, and Snoop Dogg. Lamar also brought on polymath players who moved easily between genres, including Kamasi Washington on sax and Robert Glasper on keyboards.

Lamar sparked, shaped, and synthesized songs all at once. “King Kunta” started as “the jazziest thing ever with pretty flutes,” according to Sounwave, until Lamar instructed the producer to

“make it nasty.” When Lamar heard bassist Thundercat playing an unreleased track from the L.A. underground hip-hop act Sa-Ra, the rapper liked it so much he called up Sa-Ra’s Taz Arnold, who went on to help produce three To Pimp a Butterfly tracks. Time was no object — Lamar sat with Pharrell’s beat for “Alright” for six months before transforming it into the LP’s centerpiece mantra of persistence.

When To Pimp a Butterfly finally came out,

“it went beyond everything else . . . harmonically, instrumentation-wise, structurally, lyrically,” Washington said. “It just didn’t change the music — it changed the audience.”