 This video is brought to you by CuriosityStream. If you sign up to CuriosityStream with the link in the description you'll also get free access to Nebula, where you can be the first to watch all of my videos, see them without ads, and now get directors commentary. How do you follow up an instant classic? That question was following Kendrick Lamar everywhere early in his career. After the smash success of 2012's Good Kid Mad City, the hip-hop world waited with bated breath to see if its newest rising star could live up to the hype. Then in March 2015, Kendrick posted a photo on Instagram. It was a stark and instantly iconic image, a black and white photo of smiling black men partying in front of the White House. It wouldn't be long before that photo was known as one of the greatest pieces of album artwork of the modern era. Welcome to Cover Stories. Good Kid Mad City was an unflinching coming-of-age story pulled from Kendrick's own lived experiences. He made this clear in the album artwork. One version featured photos of Kendrick as a child, while another featured his mom's beat-up van where he spent much of his youth. After the success of Good Kid Mad City, Kendrick's experience with wealth and fame gave him new perspective that he wove throughout to pimp a butterfly. Westley's theory explores how American institutions exploit black entertainers for profit. The black or the berry is an embodiment of the Black Lives Matter movement confronting institutionalized racism and the violence it brings to black communities. And to finish the album, Mortal Man is a sprawling 12-minute track that glides effortlessly between Michael Jackson, Nelson Mandela's jail cell, and an interview with the late Tupac Shakur discussing the fate and history of black men in America. As a whole, the album paints a rich political commentary over personal themes concerning African American culture and racial inequality. Such a sprawling album needed iconic artwork that could capture all of these feelings in one simple photo, and Kendrick had an idea of how to do that. To fulfill his vision, Kendrick and long-time collaborator Dave Free called on professional photographer Denny Roof. Roof was a photographer who alternated his work between celebrity photos and intimate, yet anonymous portraits of people from every walk of life. This is the exact juxtaposition that makes to pimp a butterfly so powerful. The cover shows a crowd of everyday people parting in front of the White House, a mythic icon of American symbolism. The photo is so densely packed that many of the details can get lost at first glance. Many in the crowd are holding stacks of cash and 40 ounce bottles in celebration, but there's also children there. And perhaps the most powerful detail can be found in front of the crowd, where the body of a white judge is laying with crossed out eyes. Speaking with Mass Appeal, Kendrick explained that this image was meant to convey that the crowd weren't bad people, but instead products of their environment. It was meant to shun the judgment that society would lay on them and show that only God could judge them, not anybody with a gavel. The people that make up the crowd aren't random models, they're people that Kendrick grew up with in Compton, people whose stories he told on Good Kid Mad City. By bringing his real friends and family to the cover, Kendrick tied the artwork into another one of the album's themes, staying true to your roots and uplifting your community. The artwork for Tupimpa Butterfly was greeted with a claim matched only by the album itself. Lamar won seven nominations for the album at the 2016 Grammy Awards and it's since become one of the most critically acclaimed records of the modern age. This success turned the artwork into a prophecy of sorts. A few months after its release, Tupimpa Butterfly earned Kendrick Lamar an invitation to President Obama's state dinner inside the White House. There, Kendrick Dave Free and a few others re-enacted the iconic cover, This Time Indoors. So how do you follow up an instant classic? For Kendrick Lamar, the answer was, you make another one and celebrate with everyone who made it possible. It'll probably come as no surprise to you that I'm a big fan of music documentaries and that's why I was really excited to see the new documentary rise, the story of Augustine's On Curiosity stream. That documentary tells the strange and incredible tale of an indie band fighting their way through strange and tragic situations to rise and perform once more. It's a really gut-wrenching watch and I highly recommend it. If you want to check it out, the best way to do so is by going to the link in the description. 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