Editor’s Note: For six years running, contributing author Zach Adler has spent the month of April putting out a poem a day. By turns earnest and wry, these poems are based on prompts (and often forms) chosen at random that range from “The Grandfather Paradox” to “Emotional Adultery” to “White Person Dreadlocks”. This year we decided to turn all his entertainment-related National Poetry Month entries into a series of our own. The first doubles as an album review. 

Follow the rest of Zach’s daily poems and plumb the archives on his blog. 

Kendrick Lamar
To Pimp a Butterfly
(a Chooka)

History reigns on

Kendrick Lamar’s “Butterfly”

With samples ranging

From George Clinton to Tupac

Disco to dubstep

Over innovative beats

Lamar detonates

On this most angry, playful

And truthful release

In my recent memory

Lyrically dense

Beautiful and maddening

Even danceable

“To Pimp a Butterfly” is

Perhaps unequaled

Is it too early to crown

The best album of the year?