The Spike Lee movie that inspired Kendrick Lamar’s ‘To Pimp a Butterfly’
To Pimp a Butterfly is a career highlight for Kendrick Lamar in a glowing catalogue that continues to push the boundaries of hip-hop from album to album. More than any of his projects, his 2015 LP carried elements of jazz with features from George Clinton, Thundercat, Snoop Dogg and Ronald Isley, and was home to his hit singles ‘Alright’ and ‘King Kunta’.
The album was also a commercial success, debuting at number one on the Billboard 200 with 324,000 units in its first week. It also earned seven nominations at the Grammys, winning Best Rap Album. One of the album’s main producers, Terrace Martin, once revealed that Spike Lee’s 1990 movie Mo’ Better Blues had a big influence on To Pimp a Butterfly.
“The significance to Mo’ Better Blues to this process or any process, it’s a fucking movie about some gangster shit with jazz at the backdrop in the middle of the prime time of hip-hop,” he said on The Big Hit Show. “That means Spike Lee said, ‘Fuck what’s going on!’ He made a movie with jazz as the background to real life.”
He continued, “That movie just meant what we were trying to do, too. In the midst of everything going on this way, let’s go this way. And let me just be clear with everybody, the music jazz, it’s the only music that says, ‘I dare you. Dare you.’”
The musical comedy-drama Mo’ Better Blues starred Denzel Washington, Wesley Snipes and Lee himself, following the life of a trumpeter named Bleek Gilliam. Lee directed, wrote and produced the film, which had a $10million budget and made over $16million at the box office.
Lee returned the compliment to Kendrick a couple of years ago, praising his music video for ‘The Heart Part 5‘, which finds him morphing into Kanye West, OJ Simpson, Will Smith, Kobe Bryant, Nipsey Hussle and Jussie Smollett. South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone were behind the deepfakes.
When asked which rappers he listens to, Lee replied, “Well, that Kendrick Lamar short film is bananas,” he told HiZeke. “When I saw that, I’m thinking about, ‘Did these individuals that appear on his face, did they sign a waiver?'” Then, earlier this year, he was spotted dancing to Lamar’s ‘Not Like Us’ at an event to celebrate the 35th anniversary of his classic movie, Do the Right Thing.
The Kendrick and Lee crossover doesn’t end there. K.Dot recently name-dropped Lee on the track ‘Dodger Blue’, which appeared on his GNX album in November. He mentions three legendary directors in the song, rapping, “Bitch, I’m from the LAnd/ Don’t say you hate LA, but live in LA and pretend/ My neck on Tarantino, Alejandro, Spike Lee/ Just know you took the scenic route if you stand by me, stupid.”