Kendrick Lamar‘s album To Pimp A Butterfly has been widely recognized as an instant classic–a standout in a year of standout albums and a momentous change in the direction of hip-hop, funk, black music–however you choose to can’t-categorize-it. We knew almost as soon as TPAB floated to earth that we needed to know more about it than was in the liner notes. This was a gamechanger, a moment in time that demanded a deeper form of documentation–the ‘making of’, the Ken Burns treatment, the DVD Extraz!

In our music nerd mindgarden we fantasized about having Bilal, Flying Lotus, Robert Glasper, Terrace Martin, James Fauntleroy, George Clinton and Anna Wise of Sonnymoon over to the Okayplayer HQ to gather around an actual roundtable and regale us with stories of the Butterfly’s various stages of life, while passing a tallboy of St. Ides that had been blessed by the pope. It quickly became apparent that such an assembly of quite possibly the most talented musical avengers out here in the Okayplayer multiverse was neither practical nor advisable (“the day the music stopped?”). But we nevertheless began tracking down these players of instrument one by one, and although FlyLo had already spoken up and Thundercat and Dr. Funkenstein were unavailable (we assume they were shopping for muppet-fur boots together, somewhere in New Zealand–and would you want it any other way, really?) we did eventually collect the behind the scenes goods and TPAB origin stories from the other names on that illustrious list.

We present the results here today, in honor of the good kid/mad rapper’s birthday, transcribed and edited into portions digestible by us ordinary mortals, who nevertheless want to partake in the mysteries of TPAB–Happy Birthday Kendrick!

It’s all gold, really, but it’s worth identifying one or two of the tidbits contained herein: Item: Rob Glasper has an unreleased Kendrick verse sitting on his hard drive, recorded for but never included on his Black Radio 2 project. Item: There is indeed a studio version of Bilal and Kendrick’s “Untitled” collaboration…somewhere. Item: The ghosts of Tupac and Miles Davis were very much involved. We begin our story with one Robert Glasper, who spoke to us first:

Robert Glasper: