To Pimp A Rider

An Evolutionary Psychological Analysis of Kendrick Lamar's album To Pimp A Butterfly

Abstract: Kendrick Lamar's album To Pimp A Butterfly is analyzed track-by-track from an
evolutionary psychology perspective. Themes include ego death, materialism, tribal
associations, self-acceptance, altruism, and spirituality.
It is integral to this analysis that I explain as best I can the stickiest metaphor I've ever
encountered, developed by Jonathan Haidt. Hopefully I do it some justice. Every human is of
two minds, described as a rider sitting atop an elephant. The elephant is the bulk of human
evolutionary history; it encompasses our animality as a species. It is your automatic self, driven
by intuition, emotion, and irrational desire. In biological terms, the elephant mostly represents
your evolutionarily older brain structures (ones we share in some capacity with many other
animals) that keep you alive and reproducing.
The rider atop the elephant is newer stuff. These are the brain structures that humans have
specialized in, namely cerebral cortex. Humans have more cortex than any other animal, and it's
what historically allowed them to develop language, morals, and egos. These changes were
derived during the process of humans becoming ultrasocial. That just means humans, for the
most part, need others to survive. We are like bees in this way; we require hives. We do best in
the context of social networks, like families, companies, and societies. The rider is your rational
self, your attempts at control over your various passions. It was key to the realization of human
ultrasociality that something evolved to regulate the elephant. Purely selfish animals work
together very poorly. The rider better understands the benefits of altruism.
But, look at this power dynamic. The rider cannot control the elephant by force alone. If it
hopes to do anything at all to steer its behavior, it requires finesse. Not everyone has a lot of this
finesse all the time, it requires mindfulness and energy. We're only human, both elephant and
rider at once. And because the elephant makes up most of our evolutionary history, the desires it
stirs within us are remarkably powerful. They come from places within us that we can't
verbalize. They come from our animal needs to socially integrate and survive.
That being said, the elephant was put through the process of ultrasocialization, too. By virtue
of that, it evolved to care about prestige. The elephant is driven to run you to the top of whatever

games you're playing in your head, to make you as socially successful (and attractive to mates)
as possible. The elephant, if left unchecked, will chase after what might ultimately be considered
meaningless things to achieve status. Money is a great example of one of these things.
At the start of the first track, Wesley's Theory, Kendrick finds it easy to vindicate his
elephant's material wants as he enjoys the many benefits of being on top. Then, midway through
the song, Dr. Dre chimes in with a message, ending in this line:
But remember, anybody can get itthe hard part is keeping it, motherfucker.
After that, Kendrick's tone changes. He senses danger on the horizon and becomes more
aware of the nonsensical rationalizations for his indulgences. Your rider is very good at
justifying what the elephant does, often retroactively. It's important to the preservation of your
social reputation and ego that it does this job well. Kendrick also becomes paranoid about his
money in the context of taxes. He sees himself, on several fronts, being lured into a financial
trap. Essentially, in the second half of the track, his rider is noticing that his elephant is perhaps
not pursuing things that are in his best interests as a person.
The next track, For Free? (Interlude), opens with a dehumanizing rant from a female
representation of America in which the only value she derives from Kendrick is his ability to
materially provide for her. She says that everyone knows he's worthless because of his offbrand nature. This prompts Kendrick to retaliate. He says, repeatedly, that his dick ain't free;
I take this to mean that his talents and qualities as a person are valuable beyond money. His
search for meaning in the physical realm is coming up empty:
I need forty acres and a mule
Not a forty ounce and a pitbull
It's clear at this point that he believes he's being manipulated by society into caring about
bullshit. He's feeling the pull toward something bigger than himself, more important than his
elephant's selfish desires. He wants justice for the black community that he continues to watch
suffer. Kendrick is beginning to see the opportunity to carry a message. This short track is a
powerful statement of self-worth.
But, the elephant and its reflexive reputation building can very readily distract you from
higher goals. In the next track, King Kunta, Kendrick goes back home to show off his newly
acquired status to old friends and rivals alike. He also experiences a sense of authenticity from
being in his neighborhood again. He realizes this lies in direct contrast with what he needs to do

to acquire more money:

And if I gotta brown nose for some gold
Then I'd rather be a bum than a motherfuckin' baller
Despite how much he enjoys his success, Kendrick has a strong desire to stay true to himself.
Coming home is serving to remind him that everything he earned out in the world only matters to
himself in the context of his community. But, he knows from his own life history that this
community is in many ways deeply flawed.
That leads into the next track, titled Institutionalized, in which Kendrick begins to explore
how his environmental upbringing, history of gang violence, and the current politics of rap are
proving detrimental to the higher causes he's slowly being pulled toward. He looks inside
himself and sees those flaws etched on his core. Snoop Dogg comes on at the end with a good
summary:
And once upon a time, in a city so divine
Called West Side Compton, there stood a little nigga
He was 5 foot something, dazed and confused
Talented, but still under the neighborhood ruse
You can take your boy out the hood, but you can't take the hood out the homie
The following track, These Walls, is a continuation of Kendrick's self-inflicted character
indictment. He confesses to sleeping with a woman whose baby's father is serving life in prison
and discusses the guilt he experiences at how much he enjoyed it. It would seem he was trying
to get one up on that guy in prison by having sex with her, and used his status to accomplish that.
You can hear his rider becoming increasingly unhappy with the morality of his ego-driven,
elephant-first behavior. He indicates at the end that he then fell into a deep depression, which
leads me to my favorite track on the album.
u is a conversation Kendrick is having with himself in the mirror, progressively fueled by
more alcohol. He repeatedly asks himself where his antennas were, i.e. what he was really
paying attention to, as he drags himself through his entire morally-relevant life history. He
admits several failures to do what it took to prevent terrible things from happening. He tears
down the virtues of his soul, one by one, with his own hands. When it's over, he's able to look in
the mirror, call himself a worthless hypocrite, and mean every word. He says he should have
killed himself a long time ago. He admits that his status gains have left him empty in the face of

his own depression:

And if I told your secrets
The world will know money can't stop a suicidal weakness
At this point, Kendrick has essentially eliminated his own ego. The album carries on, so it
would seem he found something in his head to keep him from ending everything once he meant
nothing to himself. That thing is a higher purpose:
Homie you fucked up
But if God got us
Then we gon' be alright
Kendrick finds solace in God's love. The track, titled Alright, involves him looking up at
the world following this major depressive event and seeing something worth saving.
Furthermore, he reclassifies his enemy. The pressures that he sensed were manipulating him,
from within himself and from society, he now recognizes to be evil. He calls these forces that
tempt his elephant and draw him away from his higher calling Lucy, short for Lucifer.
Kendrick's rider is adopting a useful narrative for controlling his elephant's behavior.
In the next track, For Sale? (Interlude), Kendrick talks about Lucy in more detail, about
how it will lure him toward purposeless distractions. But, money equals freedom. This is
especially true when you don't have very much to begin with. He also discusses how Lucy can
help advance himself and his loved ones, by enabling him to buy his mother a big house away
from Compton, for example. Lucy, in the context of my analysis, is the elephant's drive for
prestige combined with society's exploitation of that mechanic. As I mentioned, the unchecked
elephant will do everything it can to make you successful. Other humans are often happy to use
that fact for their own gain.
In the next track, Momma, Kendrick begins to rebuild his own ego with the help of family.
He realizes he has learned a lot about life, and that he has a lot to give to the world. But, as he
intuited earlier in the album, not much of it matters outside of the context of how it can serve his
loved ones and his community. He says the greatest gift rap ever gave him was making him
come home. He finds answers there.
Immediately following an elimination of one's ego and the rebuilding of it for a higher
purpose, it's easy to detect the trivial behavior around you that distracts from your new calling.
The next track, Hood Politics, is mostly about this. Kendrick indicts tribal associations

generally:
They tell me it's a new gang in town
From Compton to Congress
Set trippin all around
Aint nothin' new but a flu of new DemoCrips and ReBloodlicans
Red state versus a blue state, which one you governin?
This gets at a hugely important point. In the process of developing ultrasociality, humans
became more than selfish, we became groupish. We unite under the banner of common morality
and can then easily convince ourselves that everyone outside the group is wrong. Morality in
this context is not a right-or-wrong value judgment. The moral matrix binding a group together
exists independent of whether it's serving any greater goodit's just the set of standards (care,
fairness, loyalty, authority, sanctity, and liberty) everyone agrees to meet as they function
together to accomplish goals. A well-run business has a tight moral matrix. Cults, gangs,
armies, and political parties all overlap here. It's a powerful thing when humans get on the same
page. Kendrick is beginning to understand that this fragmentation of his people is going to be a
problem if he hopes to unite them. He's starting to regard tribal associations as evil, too.
In the next track, How Much A Dollar Cost, Kendrick encounters a homeless man asking
him for money. He is forced to reconcile his newly discovered higher purpose with his own
identity as a person who, in his mind, has never accepted handouts. The ego he has rebuilt lashes
out at the man with shame. Kendrick is then starkly reminded of what's important:
And I'm insensitive, and I lack empathy
He looked at me and said, "Your potential is bittersweet"
I looked at him and said, "Every nickel is mines to keep"
He looked at me and said, "Know the truth, it'll set you free
You're lookin' at the Messiah, the son of Jehovah, the higher power
The choir that spoke the word, the Holy Spirit
The nerve of Nazareth, and I'll tell you just how much a dollar cost
The price of having a spot in Heaven, embrace your loss, I am God
The track ends with a short bit from Ronald Isley about going through the motions of religion
but not really behaviorally living up to the meaningful promises. Demonstrating empathy to the
homeless is much harder to do than saying grace before dinner.

The following track is a positive anthem of self-acceptance entitled Complexion (A Zulu

Love). On it, Kendrick airs his thoughts on skin color and its meaning (or lack thereof). I like
him on this track, but Rapsody does a bit of show stealing here. Her fantastic guest spot ends
with this:
Call your brothers magnificent, call all the sisters queens
We all on the same team, Blues and Pirus, no colors aint a thing
Blues and Pirus are alternatively known as Crips and Bloods, the rival LA street gangs that
Kendrick references in the song Hood Politics in the context of American political parties. He
now fully realizes that the black community's fractured nature must be repaired in order for it to
come together and fight its real enemies.
The next track, The Blacker The Berry, is the manifestation of Kendrick's anger on behalf
of his people. This is a truly visceral song and gets at the passion behind the profound injustices
and prejudices facing the black community. To be honest, K-Dot is saying a lot more here than I
could possibly hope to intelligently analyze with my thin social psych background, it's a dense
track. Assassin on the hook pretty much needs his own essay. But, given the story I'm trying to
tell, I'd like to focus on this part:
It's funny how Zulu and Xhosa might go to war
Two tribal armies that want to build and destroy
Remind me of these Compton Crip gangs that live next door
Beefin' with Pirus, only death settle the score
He sees the transcendent evil in the tribal associations of others that cause his community
pain. Racism is a very groupish activity, but instead of being bound by a moral matrix or a gang
color, you're bound by a skin color. It's all very harmful and senseless and Kendrick is laying
that out for you in raw detail. However, it's important to note that he is scarcely able to get out
this message in the context of his own hypocrisy:
So why did I weep when Trayvon Martin was in the street?
When gang banging made me kill a nigga blacker than me?
He's struggling to forgive his own errors enough to be able to carry the message that he knows
he has to. Kendrick is rebuilding his ego against his own life history and realizing that deciding
to be a better person doesn't allow your head to erase the bad things you've done. He's beginning
to understand that loving oneself once you fully acknowledge your own imperfect human nature

is an uphill climb. He's also realizing that everyone else around him is facing the very same
struggle. They're all trying to accept themselves and the potentially horrible things they've done
and move on to higher purposes.
That leads into the next track, You Ain't Gotta Lie (Momma Said), in which Kendrick sets
out to give everyone permission to be their authentic selves. He's urging people to reel in their
elephants' natural reputation-building tendencies, which he's come to understand leads to a titfor-tat social game that gets the community nowhere. He also exercises empathy here, knowing
it's very hard to not be insecure:
And the world don't respect you and the culture don't accept you
But you think it's all love
And the girls gon' neglect you once your parody is done
Reputation can't protect you if you never had one
This song is a realness anthem. It's clear at this point in the album that Kendrick is laying his
heart and soul out for everyone to see in order to make other people feel more comfortable being
themselves. He understands that self-acceptance is key to pursuing higher goals.
This segues very nicely into the album's crown jewel, i. This is also the first single, it's very
catchy. Of note is that the radio version of this song is not quite the album version, which has
some lyrical changes and sounds like a live set. I like both very much for different reasons, but
this paper is getting long enough. Kendrick acknowledges that even though he sees himself as a
hypocrite, society views him as a menace, and the he sees the American meritocracy is bullshit,
he finds peace in loving himself. He paints a horrible picture of the world and meets it with
unyielding positivity:
Dreams of reality's peace
Blow steam in the face of the beast
Sky could fall down, wind could cry now
Look at me motherfucker, I smile
He continues on, finding pride in his authenticity and unwillingness to bend for trivial
pressures. Based on the song title and its contents, this is Kendrick's conclusion to the events in
u:
I went to war last night
With an automatic weapon, don't nobody call a medic

I'mma do it till I get it right

I went to war last night
I've been dealing with depression ever since an adolescent
Duckin' every other blessin', I can never see the message
I could never take the lead, I could never bob and weave
From a negative and letting them annihilate me
Kendrick finally accepts himself, for all of his talents and his flaws, for all of his rider and his
elephant. It's clear he wants everyone else to do the same. The album version of the song gets
cut off near the end by what seems to be some fighting in the audience. Kendrick gets frustrated,
asks that the music be cut, and attempts to preach the gospel of his higher purpose to the crowd:
No, for real, answer the question, how many niggas we done lost, bro?
This, this year alone
Exactly, so we ain't got time to waste time, my nigga
Niggas gotta make time, bro
The judge make time, you know that, the judge make time right?
In the final track, Mortal Man, Kendrick is forced to reckon with the fact that some of the
things he's saying to take steps toward his higher purpose are potentially dangerous to him. He
looks through history and sees that fair weather is often key to fandom, in life and media. He
knows that a lot of people are going to feel this album in ways that will make the powers that be
very nervous. Kendrick's paranoia is grounded, however, by the moral beauty of his cause:
The ghost of Mandela, hope my flows they propel it
Let these words be your earth and moon
You consume every message
As I lead this army make room for mistakes and depression
And with that being said my nigga, let me ask this question:
When shit hit the fan is you still a fan?
The song ends with Kendrick finally completing the spoken-word piece he'd been slowly
unveiling at the end of select tracks throughout the album:
I remember you was conflicted
Misusing your influence
Sometimes I did the same

Abusing my power, full of resentment

Resentment that turned into a deep depression
Found myself screaming in the hotel room
I didnt wanna self-destruct
The evils of Lucy was all around me
So I went running for answers
Until I came home
But that didnt stop survivors guilt
Going back and forth trying to convince myself the stripes I earned
Or maybe how A-1 my foundation was
But while my loved ones was fighting the continuous war back in the city
I was entering a new one
A war that was based on apartheid and discrimination
Made me wanna go back to the city and tell the homies what I learned
The word was respect
Just because you wore a different gang color than mine's
Doesnt mean I cant respect you as a black man
Forgetting all the pain and hurt we caused each other in these streets
If I respect you, we unify and stop the enemy from killing us
But I dont know, Im no mortal man, maybe Im just another nigga
At this point, To Pimp A Butterfly fully reveals itself as a concept album. Kendrick is talking
to Tupac Shakur. The ensuing interview and conversation are heavy on self-acceptance through
the struggle and broad talk of the coming retribution for a society that has trampled the
disenfranchised. It is uncomfortably prophetic. They discuss the importance of music as a form
of uniting people beyond their differences and setting a tone for peace. The album ends with
Kendrick reading something a friend of his wrote about his life situation:
The caterpillar is a prisoner to the streets that conceived it
Its only job is to eat or consume everything around it
In order to protect itself from this mad city
While consuming its environment the caterpillar begins to notice ways to survive
One thing it notices is how much the world shuns him, but praises the butterfly

The butterfly represents the talent, the thoughtfulness, and the beauty within the caterpillar
But having a harsh outlook on life the caterpillar sees the butterfly as weak
And figures out a way to pimp it to his own benefits
Already surrounded by this mad city the caterpillar goes to work on the cocoon
Which institutionalizes him
He can no longer see past his own thoughts
Hes trapped
When trapped inside these walls certain ideas take roots
Such as going home, and bringing back new concepts to this mad city
The result?
Wings begin to emerge, breaking the cycle of feeling stagnant
Finally free, the butterfly sheds light on situations that the caterpillar never considered
Ending the internal struggle
Although the butterfly and caterpillar are completely different, they are one and the same.
In my mind, the caterpillar and the butterfly are the elephant and the rider, respectively. The
elephant was derived from mankind's long, ugly, tribal evolutionary history and does what it can
to keep us alive in a very cruel world. The rider evolved to serve the elephant, and can be
capably pimped to the elephant's benefit. However, it also evolved to serve purposes greater than
oneself; it evolved for altruism. I'd like to end with an excerpt from the start of the music video
for i:
Stop! Stop! We talkin' about peace!
A piece of yours, a piece of mine!
A piece of mind:
One nation, under a groove.

References
1. Haidt, J. (2006). The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom.
Basic Books.
2. Haidt, J. (2012). The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Religion and
Politics. Pantheon.
3. Lamar, K. (2015). To Pimp A Butterfly. California: Top Dawg, Aftermath, Interscope.