Last week, Kendrick Lamar took the hip-hop community by storm, accidentally dropping his already legendaryTo Pimp A Butterfly a week early. Tuesday night, he continued that momentum in one of the most unexpectedly awesome ways possible.
Rocking a grey sweatsuit and some fresh Reebok sneakers, Kendrick performed a mobile concert on the back of a flatbed truck. This is how you promote an album:
One of the defining characteristics of Kendrick Lamar’s sophomore album, To Pimp A Butterfly, is a running poem that builds and unfolds as the album progresses, with K.Dot sharing more and more of the piece song by song. The piece culminates after the music fades out during the album’s final track, “Mortal Man,” and as Kendrick finishes he asks a question, answered by the voice of Tupac Shakur. The two proceed to have a conversation about metaphors, social inequality, classism and maintaining sanity in the face of so much pressure; towards the end, Kendrick asks ‘Pac for his take on the future of Kendrick’s generation and receives an answer that wouldn’t seem so out of place if it was given today. The only difference is, that interview with Tupac happened in 1994.
How exactly Kendrick came across that particular interview—which you can hear in full here—is still a slight mystery, but the origins of ‘Pac’s answers are not. The interview was conducted in the Atlantic Records office in New York City around the time of the release of ‘Pac’s Thug Life: Vol. 1 album with his group Thug Life, which came out Sept. 26, 1994. The journalist in question: Mats Nileskår, a Swedish radio host who has been documenting the careers and music of African-American musicians through the jazz, soul, funk, R&B and hip-hop eras since 1978, conducting around 6,000 interviews in the past 37 years by his estimation. Nileskår’s P3 Soul radio show has grown into an influential and now-legendary European institution over that time period, with this Tupac interview one of the crown jewels of his collection.
Album Link Here: To Pimp A Butterfly
LOS ANGELES — Following the success of his major label debut, “good kid, m.A.A.d. city,” in 2012, the rapper Kendrick Lamar did not indulge in earthly luxuries. Instead, he got baptized.
That album was the story of his redemption, not just from street gangs through rapping but from a life of sin by embracing Jesus Christ. His long-awaited follow-up, “To Pimp a Butterfly” (TDE/Aftermath/Interscope), which was made available online Sunday night, ahead of a planned March 23 release, is about carrying the weight of that clarity: What happens when you speak out, spiritually and politically, and people actually start to listen? And what of the world you left behind?
Mr. Lamar, who grew up in Compton, Calif., had previously been saved as a teenager in the parking lot of a Food 4 Less, he said, when the grandmother of a friend approached him after a tragedy, asking if he had accepted God. “One of my homeboys got smoked,” Mr. Lamar recalled. “She had seen that we weren’t right in the head. That was her being an angel for us.”
This does not include any guest appearances that the album may include.
Wesley’s Theory
For Free? (Interlude)
King Kunta
Institutionalized
These Walls
U
Alright
For Sale? (Interlude)
Momma
Hood Politics
How Much A Dollar Cost
Complexion
The Blacker The Berry
You Ain’t Gotta Lie (Momma Said)
I
Mortal Man
https://instagram.com/p/0EwnbSlecE/?modal=true
The Behind The Scenes video to his Rolling Stones shoot is after the jump.
Got The Drop 