EXCLUSIVE: Kendrick Lamar's New Album Proves Tupac Is More Relevant Than Ever

Conceptually, lyrically and musically, Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp A Butterfly is miles ahead of most every hip-hop record from the past decade. It's been an absolute critical and commercial blockbuster. Most surprisingly, it's been able to top charts while including bold social and political commentary. Lamar has quickly defined himself as one of the most distinctive voices in our generation. His influence is clear, though: Lamar got his social conscience from Tupac Shakur.

Nowhere is Lamar's social consciousness more apparent than in the album's concluding track, "Mortal Man," when Lamar conjures a long-dead Tupac for a conversation. In a series of clips lifted from a 1994 interview with a Swedish radio host, Tupac offers some harrowing wisdom for Lamar's listeners. Within the span of a six-minute, partially fictionalized conversation, Kendrick Lamar shows exactly why we need voices like Tupac's now more than ever.

The conversation. Tupac saw the same need for social justice as Lamar does still. "I think that niggas is tired of grabbin' shit out the stores and next time it's a riot there's gonna be, like, uh, bloodshed for real. I don't think America know that," Tupac says at the end of the record.

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His words have a powerful resonance in light of the protests surrounding last year's racially motivated police brutality cases, which resulted in the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. There wasn't bloodshed to the degree Tupac predicted, but our conversations about racism have an urgency to them they haven't had in years.

But both the living and dead rappers see a solution: music as a means to influence society, of uniting history and contemporary art to affect social change. "Because the spirits, we ain't even really rappin', we just letting our dead homies tell stories for us," Tupac explains. 

With this line, Tupac sums up the fundamental philosophy that he left hip-hop: Music can change people. And if one's raps are not honoring the legacy of those not fortunate enough to be with us — if it isn't socially conscious — it's not rap at all. That's the attitude that gave us Kendrick Lamar.

Taking responsibility with your words. For Tupac, hip-hop wasn't all about crafting a perfect lyrical flow and provocative hook; it was all about the change one could create with those raps.

This article originally appeared on music.mic . Read more here >> http://mic.com/articles/113608/kendrick-lamar-s-new-album-proves-that-we-need-tupac-now-more-than-ever

BY R.D MUIA