Kendrick Lamar's Sneaky Album Release Was All About Relieving The Pressure

How do you reduce the stakes when it comes to following up a career-defining album? By releasing a quickie album in the middle of the night.

Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp A Butterfly wasn't just the most critically (and presidentially!) adored album of 2015—it was also the sort of artistic statement that threatens to overwhelm a young artist's career. It was Kendrick's third album, coming after a promising debut and a powerhouse major label breakthrough. The pressure was on before he released To Pimp A Butterfly—and after the year he's had, that pressure was at an all-time high. And not every artist deals with it well. Lauryn Hill followed up a similarly epochal breakthrough by retreating for four years, then releasing her new music only in the form of an MTV Unplugged live recording; Outkast did it by waiting three years, then releasing a soundtrack album to a movie that the duo starred in; in both cases, the world's been waiting over a decade for a proper studio follow-up.

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