Demolition Might Crush

Kendrick Lamar featuring Bilal, Anna Wise, and Thundercat “These Walls”

I’ve been listening to To Pimp A Butterfly pretty much every day since it came out, but have held off on writing about it because I found it hard to pick one song to focus on. It’s all so tied together that it feels like pulling one thread would unravel the whole piece. It’s also a dense record that reveals a lot over time, and a record that is primarily concerned with issues of blackness that I feel entirely unqualified to remark on – it’s that thing where you gain a lot from listening, but lose a lot by tossing in your white guy opinions. I know some people aren’t totally on board with where Kendrick is at right now in terms of his lyrical obsessions and the record’s smooth, jazzy sound, but I’m pretty dazzled by all that.

I love that the elegance of Kendrick’s rhymes are matched by the pure musicality of the tracks – a large portion of this album would stand up pretty well without him. “These Walls” is built around a double entendre that starts off lewd but grows deeper and darker as the song moves along and the metaphors become more elaborate. The music isn’t quite as elaborate, but it’s very sophisticated as it weaves several gorgeous, seductive melodies around a loose groove. This is maybe the most superficially pleasurable track on the record – I’m not sure I totally trust the taste of someone who could deny this on a purely musical level – but you can’t get away from the melancholy at the core of this. It’s there in the words, yes, but it’s present in the music too. You can hear it in the inflection of the lead guitar, and when the song tenses up near the end, and the mood sours as Kendrick’s thoughts go darker and he snaps out of feelings of comfort and lust.

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