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![]() ![]() Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. ![]() This is a reference to Matthew 6:24, which claims, “No one can serve two masters. It is at this low that he begins to defer to the authority of God: “God himself would say ‘you f***in’ failed, you ain’t try.’” This song ends with the powerful claim “the world’ll know money can’t stop a suicidal weakness.” At this point, the light of the gospel is beginning to spark in this album. He realizes that no matter how much money, power, and influence he has he still is not the ultimate authority. He covers the death of one of his best friends, the pain of watching his little sister struggle, and how he his attempts to be God of the streets have failed him over and over again. Then he turns to my favorite song, “u.” This manically depressed, alcohol infused, introspective rant represents the bottom of Kendrick’s life. This is the conclusion Kendrick is forced to come to in a world without God. These walls of society, prison, and the womb for Kendrick all seem to say, “it’s too late” to be forgiven of your sins. He uses birth imagery in this song in a way that is parallel to the doctrine of original sin. And in “These Walls” he explores the human mind’s propensity for both good and evil. In “Institutionalized” he realizes that wealth corrupts and brainwashes people. As he falls into the evils of abusing money and women he becomes more introspective in the songs “Institutionalized” and “These Walls.” In these two songs he enters into the cocoon phase of his life after exhausting the resources of the world. However, just like Adam and Eve, Kendrick’s vanity turns into vice. By desiring to be king of the hood, he ignores the advice of the battle-hardened beautiful butterflies, and seeks to make himself God of the streets. He is a prisoner to the streets that conceived him and he finds himself consumed with vanity. By humans desiring to amend God’s divine creation order we end up destroying it.īy the third song, “King Kunta,” Kendrick realizes that he is a caterpillar. The theme we see here is one of the fallen fruit. This idea is repulsive to the listener because the butterfly, as God designed it, is already beautiful, and if we added anything to it that was not meant to be there, we would end up destroying the beauty of the butterfly. The butterfly is an image for a being that is already beautiful, and the fact that society wants to “pimp” the butterfly means they want to try and make it more than it is meant to be. Kendrick starts off To Pimp a Butterfly with two songs (“Wesley’s Theory” and “For Free?”) commenting on how America, fame, and society all try to “pimp” a butterfly. Keeping this quote in mind, in this post I will go through and break down all of the Christian themes throughout his album in an attempt to show that God’s word can shine in the darkest places. This quote makes clear the theme and purpose of the entire album. Wings begin to emerge, breaking the cycle of feeling stagnantįinally free, the butterfly sheds light on situations that the caterpillar never considered, ending the internal struggleĪlthough the butterfly and caterpillar are completely different, they are one and the same When trapped inside these walls certain ideas take roots, such as going home, and bringing back new concepts to this mad city ![]() He can no longer see past his own thoughts The butterfly represents the talent, the thoughtfulness, and the beauty within the caterpillarīut having a harsh outlook on life the caterpillar sees the butterfly as weak and figures out a way to pimp it to his own benefitsĪlready surrounded by this mad city the caterpillar goes to work on the cocoon which institutionalizes him One thing it noticed is how much the world shuns him, but praises the butterfly While consuming its environment the caterpillar begins to notice ways to survive Its only job is to eat or consume everything around it, in order to protect itself from this mad city The caterpillar is a prisoner to the streets that conceived it Here’s the last quote on Kendrick’s final song of the album, “Mortal Man”: I am not denying that death exists within hip-hop, but just like Jesus uses the tomb as his cocoon, Kendrick Lamar, in his recently released album To Pimp a Butterfly, uses the metaphorical death that he experienced in Compton to explore his transformation from death to life and to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Where they see vulgarity, cursing, and profanity there is struggle, love, and holiness. Where they look for death, there is life. Jesus is right in front of them, but they do not see it. When it comes to hip-hop music too many people pull a Mary Magdalene. “ Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus” (John 20:14). ![]()
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