It’s taken over two weeks to get to the point where I feel I can write something worthy of this album and I expect I’ll still be discovering new things about it month (years?) into the future. People will write essays about it. It really is that dense, that deep, that powerful.

For some reason hip-hop doesn’t get the literary credit it often deserves. Partly because it’s colloquial, partly because, well… it’s black. Them’s just the facts. But what other form of music gives such a platform for storytelling? We’re not talking Hemingway-esque prose, but we’re talking something with equal potential for heart-breaking beauty or devastating truth. There are just as many terrible novelists as there are godawful hip-hop lyricists. Kendrick Lamar is not one of them.

I remember you were conflicted. Misusing your influence. Sometimes I did the same.

The measure of the genius of a writer in any chosen context or medium is the ability to write relatably. To create relatable characters and situations. It’s a struggle that forms one of the many within ‘To Pimp A Butterfly’. Kendrick’s feelings of guilt for rapping about - glorifying even - the life he grew up in back in Compton. Using his fame and his reputation to sell a part of himself that he traded away in order to gain that same fame and reputation. He had to leave to make it. Beneath the braggadocio, beneath the confidence, there’s a self-declared hypocrite.

Abusing my power, full of resentment. Resentment that turned into a deep depression. Found myself screaming in the hotel room. I didn’t want to self-destruct.

And it’s real, it’s so real. Kendrick writes it with such clarity of emotion, he sells it with such passion in the delivery. Listen to ‘u’. That desperate, wailing voice he takes on in the back half, having already scathed himself viciously for two minutes straight… “Loving you is complicated, loving you is complicated, loving you is complicated…”. Listen to it. Try not to feel his pain. And then there’s the intricately arranged production, the soft jazzy bed with the horns spinning out in discordant madness, driving up the tension, making the vocals feel like they’re perched on a precipice. ‘u’ is the companion piece to the lead single ‘i’, and it puts that feel-good anthem into a whole new frame. By the time you finally reach it (it’s the penultimate track) it’s become this triumphant, cathartic conquest. Well, the whole album’s cathartic, but you get the idea. Especially with the faux-live take that’s included on the album, with a K.Dot sermon about the use of the tabooed N-word. Which brings us to the cultural message of that song, he’s not just singing about loving his own self but also the personified Black Culture as a whole. He’s trying to make sense of the on-going struggle for equality and the search for self-worth in the face of an oppressive system.

The evils of Lucy was all around me. So I went running for answers. Until I came home.

‘To Pimp A Butterfly’ is a concept record. A grand, focussed and intense concept album. Offering more questions than answers but ultimately coming back to that one strand of hope that he has to offer, that of self-respect and unity. Love. And it comes at such a key point in his career too. After the unanimous critical acclaim of ‘Good Kid…’, Kendrick was primed for superstardom with his next release, a release that was shrouded in mystery and reclusiveness for almost all of its creation. What was Kendrick up to? What is he going to do with his newfound power and influence? Man, he did not hold back.

The poem that unfolds throughout the record is the Rosetta Stone to understanding it all. Feeding it to us mysteriously, a couple lines at a time is absolutely brilliant, the lines take on a new meaning with each unfolding turn. While the songs run on in an evolving narrative, from fame and scepticism (‘Wesley’s Theory’) to power and pushback (‘King Kunta’) to doubt and panic (‘u’) to social conscience and guilt (‘Hood Politics’) and so forth. Impossibly, the two songs that we’d been mercifully given to listen to ahead of time (‘i’ and ‘The Blacker the Berry’) are even more potent arriving as they in their intended context. There isn’t a weak track in the bunch, which makes it hard to process at first, and on repeated listens you’ll find yourself picking a new favourite each time.

But that didn’t stop survivors’ guilt. Going back and forth trying to convince myself the stripes I earned. Or maybe how A1 my foundation was.

The fascinating thing is that where he was expected to make his defining claim to the throne, he instead came up with a vulnerable, generous offering. And you know what? That throne is his. All hail King Kendrick. When rappers, musicians, creative people of any nature, try to make that deliberate magnum opus… well, let’s just say that there are bargain bins full of failed egotistical exercises. Only a select few people have swung for the fences and cleared the stadium, and those people are all remembered as greats within their fields.

Is it worth getting into the list of collaborators on this album? That might take a while, but suffice to say that if you judge an artist’s worth by the lines of talent waiting outside their door for a chance to work with them, then Kendrick Lamar is right up there. In particular, Thundercat deserves a special mention for his bass mastery and the atmosphere it brings to proceedings. There’s a fella who has been quietly influential on several great projects recently, not to mention his own stuff. Flying Lotus (who appears here on the opening track) won’t go to the mailbox without him.

But while my loved ones were fighting a continuous war back in the city, I was entering a new one. A war that was based on apartheid and discrimination. It made me want to go back to the city and tell the homies what I learned.

Kendrick plays with some high stakes. The Devil makes an appearance as Lucy throughout (as in Lucifer) while he encounters God himself in the guise of a homeless man in ‘How Much A Dollar Cost’, a stunning, chilling tale of compromise and capitalism. And of course, there’s the soon to be legendary finale. The culmination of it all, where the tortured messiah seeks guidance from the prophet that inspired him. Tupac Shakur.

Yep, the ghost of ‘Pac rises, emerging from the ether to be interviewed by his latest and most potent protégée. If you don’t know it’s coming, it takes a while to realise what’s going on. It’s not just the weirdness of it that catches you off guard but also the incredible ambition of it. Kendrick’s not averse to playing with the format, just listen to ‘Good Kid…’ again, but this is something else. When it ends, Tupac returning to wherever his soul makes keep as Kendrick calls out his name in vain, eager for a few more short minutes of inspiration, it’s an awestruck feeling that remains. Sitting, staring into space trying to process the grandiosity of what you just heard.

The word was respect. Just because you wore a different gang color than mine doesn’t mean I can’t respect you as a black man.

Patterson Hood, of Drive-By Trucker fame (greatest Southern Rock band of all time, no joke), wrote a piece saying that Kendrick Lamar is the best storyteller in music today. TPAB is profound on many levels, but most importantly it works as an album. Not many people aim for this depth of meaning, but likewise few get close to the quality of the music. It’s just a great album. The hooks are strong, the rhymes outstanding, the guests all flawless, the rhythms and beats immaculate.

All hail King Kendrick.

Forgetting all the pain and hurt we caused each other in these streets, if I respect you we unify and stop the enemy from killing us.

But I don’t know.

I’m no mortal man.

Maybe I’m just another n*gga.