A review by speculativebecky
The Butterfly Effect: How Kendrick Lamar Ignited the Soul of Black America by Marcus J. Moore

3.0

I know I say this all the time, but reading along with The Stacks Book Club is one of my favorite parts of my bookstagram experience. Last month’s pick, The Butterfly Effect: How Kendrick Lamar Ignited the Soul of Black America by Marcus J. Moore was, for me at least, the classic Stacks experience, i.e. reading a book I never would have picked up if not for the podcast. Music isn’t really my wheelhouse and I was almost entirely unfamiliar with Kendrick Lamar, but I still enjoyed reading this brief biography, which discussed both Lamar’s early career and rise to prominence as well as the way his music has been a part of the Black Lives Matter movement. I always prefer works of biography/history that progress chronologically, so I found it sometimes difficult to follow the timeline after this book jumped around a little at the beginning. The lengths of time spent on different periods of Lamar’s life to date felt sort of uneven too, but overall this was a pretty smooth and informative read. It was fun reading it while listening to To Pimp a Butterfly, especially cool when several times the chapters and songs lined up without intervention. Of course, best of all was the fascinating discussion the book sparked with The Stacks Pack.