Living in Africa as a Black American is something entirely different; you don’t realize just how traumatized you are until you move to the continent. The idea of even visiting Africa is presented as a vague notion that would be cool to realize one day, but to actually go is incomprehensible. Through public schooling and propaganda, the United States teaches you that it’s the land of opportunity and everything else is inferior. They tell you, indirectly, that black is lesser than, while ignoring the brutal history of slavery that brought our ancestors to these shores in the first place. But once you’re in Africa, you instantly feel connected with your heritage. There’s an innate sense that this is where you belong, followed by the anger of not knowing your true lineage, and realizing that the public school system doesn’t care to teach the full scope of black history. Sure, we’re taught the usual names—Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey—but there’s no comprehending the full beauty of Africa until you set foot on the soil. As a Black American, and as an American in general, you’re trained to be on guard at all times, to duck when you hear loud popping noises, and to always assume the worst in people. You’re trained to believe that the man walking toward you is going to ask for something, that there’s no way he merely wants to wish you a prosperous day, to ease the worry on your face. We’re trained to look for the catch, and to be surprised when it isn’t there. We shouldn’t be so shocked by acts of goodwill, but we are. “Momma” perfectly encapsulates the moment when Kendrick—through a chance encounter with a little boy in town—realized he wasn’t so far removed from the Motherland, at least not as much as he thought. You also don’t realize the economic disparities within Africa until you’ve lived with them for a while. It’s one thing to live in, or walk past, public housing in places like New York City, but nothing can prepare you for the so-called “slums,” where millions of people live without regular access to food and clean water. It makes you realize that our problems are insignificant in the bigger picture. Kendrick realized this, too, during his time in Africa. He realized that his views of the continent were skewed, and that his being there was a dream he didn’t know needed to be realized.
The song “How Much a Dollar Cost,” a deep cut featuring celebrated soul singer Ronald Isley, was conceived after a chance encounter with a homeless man at a Cape Town gas station. Kendrick assumed the man wanted money and nothing else. According to the song, Kendrick reacted like many people would, by saying he didn’t have the cash while quickly brushing the man off. Kendrick thought the man was addicted to drugs; he asked for ten rand—or roughly sixty-seven U.S. cents—for what the rapper assumed would be used to achieve some sort of high. After staring at each other for what seemed like forever, it turned out the man simply wanted to put Kendrick on game. This song, like others on To Pimp a Butterfly, has dual themes working at the same time. On one end, you have Kendrick fighting against his own ego; he’s Kendrick Lamar now, and with burgeoning fame comes the tendency to recoil. “I know when niggas hustlin’,” he raps at one point in the song. Turns out the man is actually a reflection of God, and his appearance saves the rapper from descending toward a life of despair. In that way, “How Much a Dollar Cost” draws a direct line to “Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst” on good kid, m.A.A.d city. Also situated near the end of the album, “How Much a Dollar Cost” is almost the exact same story: Kendrick is near the end of his rope and headed for a spiritual demise when he meets a divine being right at the time he needs it most. In this instance, the man warns him to not be so consumed with money, that it could make him hollow, and that the life he fought so hard to achieve isn’t everything. Sensing Kendrick’s fatigue, he puts a word on the rapper’s heart, encouraging him to reconnect with the higher power he discovered as a teenager.
On “I’m Dying of Thirst,” the enlightenment arrived in the form of a religious woman who stopped Kendrick and his friends from killing the guys who killed their friend. At this point, a decade removed from the incident that changed his life as a teen, Kendrick recenters his divinity, which led to the unclouded reflection of “i,” which found new life on the LP as a makeshift live performance that’s interrupted by a physical altercation in the crowd. Once again channeling James Brown, the track’s scene is eerily similar to a show on April 5, 1968, the day after Martin Luther King Jr. was killed, in which the soul icon had to calm down an audience in the Boston Garden that openly grieved the assassination of its beloved civil rights leader. Brown famously waved off security and calmed down the crowd himself. “We are black!” he declared at the show. “Don’t make us all look bad. You’re not being fair to yourself or me or your race. Now, I asked the police
