Kendrick Lamar Surprise Releases New 2015 Album 'To Pimp A Butterfly' On iTunes, Spotify

Album release dates are apparently a quaint relic of the past, and now new music just shows up on iTunes. Kendrick Lamar's new album To Pimp A Butterfly is now available on iTunes and Spotify, proving that official album release dates are gone and never coming back. According to Verge, Lamar previously suggested the "as-then untitled record" would come out on March 23rd, but the much-anticipated follow-up album to good kid m.A.A.d city came as a surprise on Sunday night, similar to Drake's recent surprise release of If You're Reading This It's Too Late. 

TO PIMP A BUTTERFLY. https://t.co/jaMCXJ7SNG (explicit version)

— Kendrick Lamar (@kendricklamar) March 16, 2015

To Pimp A Butterfly features guest appearances by Bilal, Anna Wise, George Clinton, Snoop Dogg, and others, with in-house producers Flying Lotus and Pharrell Williams. Buzzfeed reports that in a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Lamar explained the album's title is "a play on the classic Harper Lee novel To Kill A Mockingbird." Lamar told Rolling Stone, "Just putting the word 'pimp' next to 'butterfly'... It's a trip. That's something that will be a phrase forever. It'll be taught in college courses - I truly believe that."   

According to SPIN, it seemed at first that the album might have been released by mistake, advising fans: "The LP may not be available officially for long once Lamar's team catches wind of the goof up." However, To Pimp A Butterfly has stayed on iTunes, and it looks like the release was absolutely intentional. Leading up to the release of To Pimp A Butterfly, Lamar kept fans guessing by staying fairly quiet about the specifics of the album, strategically sharing details and possible new tracks bit by bit. Previously, he released "The Blacker the Berry" and "i," and last week Lamar revealed the album's cover art on Instagram. Most recently, the same day Lamar played the Pot of Gold Music Festival, his new song "King Kunta" "surfaced" online in what was called a leak, but the details of the song's release aren't clear.  

A photo posted by Kendrick Lamar (@kendricklamar) on Mar 10, 2015 at 9:41pm PDT