Kendrick channeled Brown on “King Kunta” and employed the same cadence, flipping a line from “The Payback” into a diss of other rappers who use ghostwriters instead of writing their own bars, a cardinal sin in hip-hop. The poet Gil Scott-Heron is credited with bridging the gap between rap and poetry, but Brown – with his restless funk grooves and call-and-response style, is one of black music’s foremost icons. Brown was an architect of modern black music, and in a way, a pioneer of hip-hop music. James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, the Hardest Working Man in Show Business. Lyrically, Kendrick took cues from another black music legend – one Mr. “No matter what type of acts or sword you’re bringing my way,” he told NME, “you’ll never cut down the legs that’s running by the forces of God.”
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In the series, Kunta gets his foot cut off for trying to run free Kendrick used that as a metaphor to combat hate.
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The title nods to a slave named Kunta Kinte, the protagonist in Alex Haley’s 1970s TV miniseries Roots. The beat itself pays homage to a Compton rapper named Mausberg, who in 2000 released a song called “Get Nekkid.” Kendrick’s song has the same hard drums, synth chords, and deep bass line, and was meant to salute a talented musician who never made it big. He asked Sounwave to start peeling away all the jazz elements, and in its finished form, “King Kunta” is a dusty loop that sounds like Rosecrans Avenue in summertime Compton.
“I added different drums to it, simplified it, got Thundercat on the bass, and it was a wrap.” Kendrick didn’t want it to sound like hip-hop it had to be rough and straight-up funk. Kendrick said he liked it but to “make it nasty,” he recalled. Because Sounwave was such a jazz head, and because that was the sound he and Kendrick were using for To Pimp a Butterfly, the original beat to “King Kunta” was incredibly jazz-centric, “with pretty flutes,” Sounwave once told the Recording Academy. They had a song like “King Kunta” to work with, which was created by Sounwave and Thundercat as they watched the Japanese anime Fist of the North Star and ate from Yoshinoya, a Japanese fast-food chain. Ryan Porter saw the Butterfly sessions as a way to give new life to what were already great instrumentals from the likes of Taz Ar-nold, Sounwave, Rahki, and Whoarei. That was something I was already doing in my world, but for Kendrick to do it, it changed everything. “That’s the ‘real hip-hop meets jazz’ right there. “They didn’t use jazz samples, and they didn’t need old jazz musicians,” Glasper said of the To Pimp a Butterfly sessions. This wasn’t the 1950s and they weren’t John Coltrane, Herbie Hancock, or Charlie “Bird” Parker. Dodgers baseball hats, knitted beanies, African dashikis and, well, raccoon suits. Kendrick’s album took the lid off that: these musicians were the new cool, more likely to show up in L.A. Jazz was thought to be for older people, performed by gray-haired veterans in smaller clubs to particular audiences. To Pimp a Butterfly was revolutionary in the way it included jazz and other traditional forms of black music. VICE has been granted permission to publish an extract from the book, from the chapter ‘King Kendrick’. Packed with detail, like the fact “King Kunta” was inspired by an early 2000s rap song called “Get Nekkid” from Comptom rapper Mausberg, as well as intimate info from recording sessions, it is recommended reading for any fan of music, society and culture.
Zooming out on Kendrick’s career, it’s a fascinating read that lays out the context of his output in a way that hasn’t been done before. Moore, and it’s the best bit of literature currently out there on Kendrick Lamar. It’s also the first book by award winning journalist Marcus J.
The Butterfly Effect: How Kendrick Lamar Ignited The Soul of Black America is the first biography of Kendrick Lamar. It’s a must-listen.Īnd now, five years after its release, there’s also a must-read accompaniment – a book giving deep insight into To Pimp A Butterfly and Kendrick Lamar’s trajectory from upstart rapper K.Dot to his current status as a leading rap superstar. Songs like “Alright” live on as protest anthems, while many themes of the album are indelibly connected with the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement both here in the UK and in the United States. Listening to it is like hearing jazz but – as Kendrick once told TPAB producer Soundwave – “made nasty”. Kendrick employs elements of blues and soul, but combines them with the booming, crisp g-funk leaning production of good kid. The album makes for a startling listen both now and then.
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