"Musically, lyrically and emotionally, Kendrick Lamar's third album is a one-of-a-kind masterpiece - a sprawling epic that's both the year's most bumptious party music and its most gripping therapy session." — Rolling Stone. Read the whole review here.

"This is an important — a very important — piece of work that will stand the test of time. It's also an utter blast to listen to and live with." — Drowned in Sound, Read the whole review here.

To say that hip hop artist Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp A Butterfly has scored massively with music reviewers is an understatement on par with calling a trek up Mt. Everest "a bit of a hike." With a critics' score of 96 from Metacritic, the acclaim for Lamar's third full-length studio release has been nearly universal.

"It's one of those pieces of art that comes along something like once a decade, so layered with meaning, so knotted up with intent and resonance, so of-its-time yet treating issues and themes that can span eras, that I am still discovering and uncovering different meanings, references, and picking my way to an imperfect understanding of it, despite having had it — literally — on repeat, daily, since its release," wrote Jude Clarke for Drowned in Sound in April, shortly after the album's release.

Now, To Pimp A Butterfly arrives on vinyl as a 2LP 180-gram set. Housed in a double gatefold jacket, the album features guest artist appearances by Bilal, George Clinton, James Fauntleroy, Ronald Isley, Rapsody, Snoop Dogg, Thundercat, and Anna Wise.

After the success of his major label debut, good kid, m.A.A.d. city, in 2012, Lamar's long-awaited follow-up is about carrying the weight of that clarity: What happens when you speak out, spiritually and politically, and people actually start to listen? And what of the world you left behind? The Compton-bred rapper delivers another uncompromising and deeply affecting listening experience.

Packed with jazzy, dreamlike production and staggering lyrical work, To Pimp a Butterfly finds Kendrick Lamar grappling with the weight of his newfound fame-as a representative of his community and as a young black man. Through the funky menace of "King Kunta," Lamar makes blistering reference to the protagonist of Alex Haley's Roots, while the feverish standout, "The Blacker the Berry," sees him attack black-on-black crime with singular precision and ferocity.