The day before my fifteenth birthday, Kendrick Lamar released his third studio album, To Pimp a Butterfly. When I learned of the album at the time, I felt as if Kendrick had given me a special gift. It was almost as if he, the universe, or whatever entity that is responsible for placing the right things at the right time, knew I needed to hear a project like To Pimp a Butterfly. In the four years since the album came into public consciousness, I have found myself revisiting To Pimp A Butterfly ever so often. And with every listen, I am once again fascinated, enthralled, and utterly enchanted by the beauty of the album and the significance it had not only on me as an adolescent, but on American culture as a whole.

The circumstances of both my personal life and cultural tensions within the country primed me to have a deep connection with To Pimp a Butterfly. Although I spent the majority of middle school enveloped in the alternative music sphere of Arctic Monkeys and The 1975, I was slowly beginning to broaden my horizons musically. For several years, I was turned off from rap genre. This was due to being solely exposed to songs and artists I thought were profane for profanity’s sake, songs that lacked lyricism, creativity, and meaning. In eighth grade, however, I had the ability to discover music on my own terms. With an iPhone and an iPad, I used Pandora, Soundcloud, and Youtube religiously. It was through these platforms that I was exposed to my first rap obsession: Tyler the Creator and the Odd Future collective. I identified with his brazen anger, his goofy attitude, and his struggles with his mental health. Yet, Tyler was not a conscious rapper. He was not one to talk about politics or the ways in which institutionalized oppression affected him. This where Kendrick Lamar becomes so important to me.

At age fourteen, I, with the rest of the country, saw the disenfranchisement and slaughter of black bodies on the news in a cycle that felt so constant it was beginning to become the norm. With the murders of black men like Mike Brown and Eric Gardner getting tons of media attention, 2014 was a time where I began to understand the implications of being black in America. It was a time where being black was especially precarious, a time where fear for my and the safety of every black person in my life felt so incredibly insecure. Being black and experiencing blackness at the time was exhausting. I needed to be empowered by something. I needed to be empowered by someone.