Album · Kendrick Lamar
To Pimp a Butterfly by Kendrick Lamar
To Pimp a Butterfly is an album by Kendrick Lamar, released in 2015. 5 songs from it have charted on rock radio countdowns, with 29 countdown appearances in total. The biggest is “King Kunta”, on 11 lists with a best position of #2.
To Pimp a Butterfly, Kendrick Lamar's third album, dropped on March 15, 2015, through Top Dawg, Aftermath and Interscope, and it's a sprawling, restless record that treats hip-hop as one chapter in the whole story of Black American music. Sounwave, Thundercat, Flying Lotus, Boi-1da, Knxwledge and Rahki are among the producers, Dr. Dre executive produced, George Clinton, Snoop Dogg and Ronald Isley drop by, and the grooves slide between jazz, funk and soul.
The Compton rapper was set on this path by a trip to South Africa that took in Nelson Mandela's cell on Robben Island, and he came back with race, inequality, institutional discrimination and his own depression on his mind. All of it ends up on the record, with "i" leading the way as the first single. It opened at number one in America, gave him his first number one in the UK, won the Grammy for Best Rap Album and was named the best album of 2015 all over the place.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs from To Pimp a Butterfly on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Years |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | King Kunta | 11 | #2 | – | 2015–2025 | |
| 2 | Alright | 9 | #37 | – | 2015–2025 | |
| 3 | i | 6 | #36 | – | 2014–2025 | |
| 4 | Wesley's Theory | 2 | #123 | – | 2024 | |
| 5 | The Blacker The Berry | 1 | #802 | – | 2025 |
Only songs that appear on at least one countdown are listed. Release data from MusicBrainz.