Kendrick Lamar - "To ? 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 ? a Butterfly” (TDE/Aftermath/Interscope) 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 ? . “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.”

Nearly a decade later, having found that fame and riches did not offer additional salvation, or happiness, he “wanted to take it to the next level — being underwater,” he said. “I felt like it was something I had to do.”

For many fans, “I’m the closest thing to a preacher that they have,” Mr. Lamar, 27, said from the couch of a Santa Monica studio where he recorded much of the new album. “I know that from being on tour — kids are living by my music.” However, he added: “My word will never be as strong as ? ’s word. All I am is just a vessel, doing his work.”

Mr. Lamar is working to purify hip-hop, a genre he hopes to ground in his true experiences of growing up poor, the son of a former gangbanger. He offers a corrective, or at least an alternative, to the opulent fabulism of some mainstream rap. “You know the songs that are out — we all love these songs,” he said. “They sell a lot of singles and make these record labels a lot of money.”

But those “really living” in the streets don’t want to hear boasts about murder and drug dealing, he continued. “They want to get away from that,” Mr. Lamar said. “If it comes across as just a game all the time, the kids are going to think it’s just a game.

“From my perspective, I can only give you the good with the bad,” he said. “It’s bigger than a responsibility, it’s a calling.”


But at the start of Mr. Lamar’s new album, George Clinton intones over a Flying Lotus beat: “Gather your wind, take a deep look inside, are you really who they idolize? To ? a butterfly.” In repeated spoken word sections, each telling more of the story than the last, Mr. Lamar acknowledges the risk of “misusing your influence” and in song aims criticism at himself as well as the powers that be.

Kiese Laymon, who has taught Mr. Lamar’s music as a professor of English at Vassar College, said the rapper recalls singers like Marvin Gaye and Curtis Mayfield — “artists who have positioned themselves as prophetic witnesses.” While Mr. Lamar is “reckoning with violence, race, police power and white supremacy,” Mr. Laymon said, “he’s implicating himself in what he’s witnessing.”

On “good kid, m.A.A.d city,” interstitial phone calls re-enacted by Mr. Lamar’s parents went to voice mail because he was a teenager getting into girls and home invasions; this time around, the chasm is fame. “Where was your presence? Where was your support that you pretend?” he raps to himself in character on “u” after a friend is shot. “You ain’t no brother, you ain’t no disciple, you ain’t no friend/A friend would never leave Compton for profit.”

“You even FaceTimed instead of a hospital visit,” he adds tearfully over a slow, unsteady saxophone plea, his voice cracking.

Mr. Lamar, who now lives in a condo not far from his old neighborhood, said he was not prepared for the uncertainty and depression that came with being accepted as a voice of his community. “You can tell a person about fame and fortune all you want, but until you’re really in it and you know the person that you can become ...” he said, trailing off.

“I know every artist feels this way, but in order for it to come across on record for your average 9-to-5-er is the tricky part,” he said. “I have to make it where you truly understand: This is me pouring out my soul on the record. You’re gonna feel it because you too have pain. It might not be like mine, but you’re gonna feel it.”

This hurt and insecurity is noticeable only in song. Dave Free, the president of Top Dawg Entertainment, Mr. Lamar’s label, and a friend since ninth grade, said the rapper is “the most sane person around” and compared him to Gandhi. “He’s so calm,” Mr. Free said. “You’ll never get a crazy reaction out of him.”

“When I speak, I speak for self first — this is my experience,” Mr. Lamar said in response to critics who said he was ignoring institutional racism. “I know where I come from. I know the hurt that I’ve caused families,” he added. “These are my demons.”

As for police brutality and political disenfranchisement, “I know the history,” he said. “Black and brown pride have been taught in my household for a long time.”

At 15, Mr. Lamar said, he experienced his first of two Los Angeles Police Department house raids. “I’ve been stomped in the back,” he said. “I’m not talking to people from the suburbs. I’m talking as somebody who’s been snatched out of cars and had rifles pointed at me.”

But, he added, “Playing the victim only works so long.”

The cover of “To ? a Butterfly” addresses that juxtaposition in a striking image by the French photographer Denis Rouvre: shirtless black men of all ages, gripping 40-ounce bottles and stacks of cash, posing in front of a White House backdrop.

Mr. Lamar said the cover represents “taking the same things that people call bad and bringing them with me to the next level, whether it’s around the world or to the Grammys or the White House. You can’t change where I come from or who I care about.”

While material possessions failed to move him, Mr. Lamar said, “what gives me inspiration is giving thought and game to people who don’t have it.” Compton, he said, is “where we’re putting in the real work with these kids and these ex-convicts.”

The album ends with “Mortal Man,” Mr. Lamar’s attempt to own his role as hip-hop prophet while maintaining his defenses. “As I lead this army, make room for mistakes and depression,” he raps, invoking the ghosts of Mandela, Huey Newton, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Michael Jackson. “Do you believe in me?” he asks, before challenging the listener: “How many leaders you said you needed then left them for dead?”

But to call “To ? a Butterfly” a political record “would be shortchanging it,” Mr. Lamar said. “It’s a record full of strength and courage and honesty” but also “growth and acknowledgment and denial.”

“I want you to get angry — I want you to get happy,” he said. “I want you to feel disgusted. I want you to feel uncomfortable.”