How do you follow up an album that countless fans call a classic in hip-hop? This was a question Kendrick Lamar was forced to grapple with after releasing good kid, m.A.A.d city in 2012. The record is one of the rare few that could realistically be considered perfect in the canon of hip-hop. With that kind of pressure, it\u2019s incredibly easy to overthink these things.<\/p>\n
So it\u2019s all the more surprising that Kendrick<\/a> knocked To Pimp a Butterfly out of the park. You could argue it\u2019s even better than the Compton MC\u2019s formal debut album. So how did he pull it off? During a 2020 conversation<\/a> with his cousin and fellow rapper Baby Keem, Kendrick Lamar spoke about the importance of experimentation.<\/p>\n For Keem, the success of his breakout project\u00a0Die For My B***h\u00a0gave him the confidence to try\u00a0new sounds. Lamar echoed these sentiments, emphasizing the need to try something fresh. Ultimately, it\u2019s about figuring out how to remain excited as an artist without alienating the audience. It was this tight rope that made Kendrick a little scared heading into his sophomore effort.<\/p>\n Why Kendrick Lamar Was Anxious About a Sophomore Slump<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s all about finding that balance. I remember the sophomore jinx of\u00a0Good Kid M.A.A.D City. It was for that year and for that time. I was in a different space in my life. I already knew off the top I can\u2019t make\u00a0Good Kid M.A.A.D City Part Two,\u201d Kendrick tells Keem. \u201cThe second I\u2019m making that, it\u2019s corny bro. That takes the feeling away from the first. I need that motherf***er to live in its own world. Then boom,\u00a0To Pimp a Butterfly. Some people love it to death, some people hate it.\u201d<\/p>\n Baby Keem follows up by asking if it\u2019s all about surprising himself. Kendrick Lamar confirms, noting that the idea was already firmly planted in his head. The real exercise was working out the end result. \u201cThat was it.\u00a0To Pimp a Butterfly\u00a0did that for me. I had an idea in my head of how I wanted it to sound, built with jazz and blues and hip-hop. But it was more, \u2018How am I gonna execute that?\u2019\u201d Kendrick Lamar says.<\/p>\n Evidently, it worked out in Lamar\u2019s favor. To Pimp a Butterfly ended up selling 324,000 copies and raked in a ton of awards at the Grammys. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"How do you follow up an album that countless fans call a classic in hip-hop? This was a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":204543,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[146,744,85,46,2072,409,45266],"class_list":{"0":"post-204542","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-hip-hop","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-israel","12":"tag-kendrick-lamar","13":"tag-music","14":"tag-noisey"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204542\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}