Kendrick Lamar is a deep and thoughtful MC who ensures no details are missed relating to his music. Oftentimes, his studio albums are conceptual masterpieces that give listeners many themes to break down and analyze.
This leads to fans coming up with wild theories about a “deeper” message he may have been hiding in his music. Many times, they’re not even acknowledged or confirmed by Lamar himself, but fans continue to do it because he is just that type of artist.
Here are some of the craziest ones throughout the years.
Good Friday and Easter Sunday album releases
In 2017, after the much-anticipated release of Lamar’s fourth studio album, “DAMN,” some fans expected that he would release another album just two days later.
The date he dropped his album was April 14, 2017. This also happened to be Good Friday, which is the day Christians commemorate the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. It is also the Friday before Easter Sunday.
Based on Lamar’s lyrics in “The Heart Part 4,” where he says, “I said it’s like that, dropped one classic, came right back/ ‘Nother classic, right back/My next album, the whole industry on a ice pack/ With TOC, you see the flames/ In my E-Y-E’s – it’s not a game.”
The theory was that “TOC” stands for “The Other Color,” (Blue), which would be the opposite color of “DAMN” which was red.
Essentially, Lamar died with the release “DAMN” on Good Friday and will be resurrected (just like Jesus) with the release of another album on Easter Sunday. Unfortunately, this never happened, and another album was never released.
Meaning of “To Pimp a Butterfly”
Lamar’s third studio album, “To Pimp a Butterfly,” is widely considered his most deep and difficult to understand, due to his experimenting with so many sounds that were new to the mainstream hip-hop landscape.
Many people took multiple meanings away from this album, but the most interesting one may come from Mark Chinapen in his Medium blog excerpt, “To Pimp a Butterfly by Kendrick Lamar: A Retrospective Look.”
Referencing the poem Lamar delivers on the album’s final track, “Mortal Man,” Chinapen says:
“Kendrick speaks very metaphorically in this excerpt, but here are three things to consider: the caterpillar, the butterfly, and the cocoon. The caterpillar is the Kendrick Lamar who is a prisoner to the streets of Compton, consuming what his environment feeds him. The butterfly is the hidden talent within the caterpillar, who has raised himself above the trappings of the caterpillar’s environment. In this case, the Kendrick Lamar we know of today.
The cocoon is a metaphor for the various elements that keep the caterpillar trapped in its environment, fooling it into thinking that it can be satisfied when in reality it stops the caterpillar from transforming into a butterfly. These can be things such as materialism, racism, imprisonment, etc.”
Chinapen then goes on to describe which songs represent the caterpillar and which tracks represent how the caterpillar gets stuck inside this cocoon and becomes a butterfly, etc.
Lamar hasn’t directly said this is what it means, but he has said in an interview with MTV that the original title for the album was going to be “To Pimp a Caterpillar,” since the acronym for that title is “TPAC” or Tupac, who’s voice is heard on “Mortal Man.”
Multiple meanings of “6:16 in LA”
Likely the least listened-to song Lamar released in his beef with Drake was “6:16 in LA.” And it wasn’t because the song wasn’t good, it’s simply because he decided to mock the Toronto rapper and drop it only on his Instagram and not on streaming services.
Not even analyzing the lyrics, fans came up with multiple meanings behind the choice to use the time stamp of “6:16.” There were many wild theories. Some fans said it represented a date, June 16, which also happens to be Tupac’s birthday. Others said that the date represented Father’s Day, which is a shot at Drake for not being a great father to his son or other alleged children he has.
Social media users noticed that Lamar tweeted back in 2011, “June 16th. Toronto. Grab tix here.”
Then there were the more analytical of fans who claimed that the numbers represented a Bible verse, specifically Jeremiah 6:16, which reads, “This is what the LORD says: ‘Stand at the crossroads and look. Ask for the ancient paths: ‘Where is the good way?’ Then walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls. But they said, ‘We will not walk in it!’”
Others said that it represented, Corinthians 6:16, which reads, “Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, ‘The two will become one flesh.’”
For all we know, these could’ve been a random numbers Lamar pulled out of thin air. But fans continued to run with it searching for the “true” meaning of the diss track. And maybe that’s what’s so great about Kendrick Lamar and his art. He keeps us thinking.