Los Angeles rapper Kendrick Lamar recently came out with one of the most anticipated albums of 2015, with expectations being sky-high after his previous concept album Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City. His previous album was a sleeper hit, and has been regarded as one of the greatest Hip-Hop albums in the past decade.

To Pimp a Butterfly had been a work in progress since 2012, and includes some small demos, forming its first concepts during the Yeezus Tour of which Lamar performed in. He met and worked with the multitude of talents who helped produce or feature on tracks, from Flying Lotus, Rhapsody, Pharrell Williams, The Isley Brothers, Pete Rock and more. The album became more anticipated as the first single “i” was released, which led to the song winning Best Rap Song and Best Rap Performance at this years Grammy’s.

With the great talent attached and the positive public reception to the singles released, people were going crazy waiting for this album. It’s hard to have this come out without being compared to previous works. With this album, Lamar took all conventions and went crazy to create something creative, provocative, and original.

The album is something that can’t truly be consumed casually–its challenging, conscious and requires attention. Each song has its own message and story, that often doesn’t fit as something to listen to in passing– it’s integral to pay full attention to the message and lyrics. This style comes with its pros and cons, in that it leads to smart and challenging art, but can lead to songs sounding incredibly strange and unconventional. Listening song by song you can be confused with the scratchy and strange tempoed songs like “Hood Politics” and “u” that can catch the listener off guard. The idea is not to create a “weird” song, but to capture the mood of the song and create the message told by Lamar’s lyrics.

This album strays from sticking to one convention, and delves into multiple genres and styles throughout its 79 minutes of album time. It goes from sounding like classic west coast rap, to spoken word, to funk, to jazz–sometimes all in one song. The styles and choices made reflect and challenge the expectations of this work in many ways. Lamar knew he could not come out after all his success with dry and already established song style, so he goes with an experimental route with the song compositions.

This idea can be identified in the highest case of taking chances by putting in an extended, live version of the hit single “i”. In a world where people not only can download only that one song instead of buy the whole album, its a huge chance to do that with the song everyone wants to get straight off the album. It also makes it special that you have a new version of the track you already have heard and have downloaded already. It gives some incentive to stick to buying the whole album instead of select songs or listening to the singles on the radio.

The album as a whole paints a great picture of the opinions of Kendrick Lamar’s position in the world and his opinions on social issues today. It serves as a fantastic follow up to Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City, in that its an album dealing with the forming of a young kid in Compton being formed and changed by everything around him, and To Pimp a Butterfly is an album that deals with what that young kid has to do afterwards. What that person’s duty is now to change the world for the future to fix what happened in the past. Pointing out the wrongs and expectations of being black in america, comes from experiencing the worst of the worst of it while growing up. The characters and stories told throughout Lamar’s work are personal and socially conscious, and are growing album by album.

With work that can not only challenge constructions in music, expectations of an artist, and the social conditions of today, while creating enjoyable music, is when you know it’s going to remain important for years afterward. In talking about the title, Lamar stated it was inspired by the famous Harper Lee novel To Kill A Mockingbird. Calling the title, “something that will be a phrase forever” and how it will be  “taught in college courses”. It will not be the only thing taught for years afterwards. This groundbreaking album that owns the provocative title will and already has been referred to as one of the greatest rap album of all time.