When asked in an interview, discussing To Pimp a Butterfly, about the rates of PTSD being 30% higher in inner city youth than in soldiers Kendrick only said two words "that's real".
The album could at first glance be seen to some as crude and nonsensical, with lyrics like in the song institutionalized "shit don't change until you get up and wash your ass" and "If I was the president, I'd pay my mommas rent". But the song harbors a meaning firstly about institutionalization in inner cities and how much like a prisoner is institutionalized and always comes back to prison, people seem stuck in their ways in coming back to the inner city. But even further the second meaning of the song is completely genius, the meaning being that people are as a whole institutionalized by the idea of getting rich, that they are held prisoner by the institution of money and capital.
The album is full of these types of double meanings, and Kendrick's production, delivery, and wit are on display throughout the whole album, as well as his penmanship. Halfway through the song "U" after an interlude of a housekeeper knocking on his door while a somber choir sing, Kendrick begins to sob and scream his way through a drunken self-hating rant rife with his feelings of survivor's guilt from making it out of his poor hometown of Compton, with the people he loves left behind. Accompanied by a gorgeous saxophone, the song is both breathtakingly beautiful, and soul crushingly sad.
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