“To Pimp a Butterfly”
I LEARNED TODAY that Kendrick Lamar won a Grammy award — Best Rap Album of the Year — for his record called “To Pimp a Butterfly.” Good for Kendrick Lamar. More on pimping in a second. But first, here’s how you know you’re getting old or clueless: A guy wins a Grammy. The New York Times (which I read every day) reports the news. It’s big. Even so, I’ve never in my life heard of Kendrick Lamar.
That’s okay, because I don’t know much about rap or hip hop. I do know about butterflies. And Kendrick Lamar ain’t got nothing when it comes to pimping butterflies. Don’t get me wrong. I like what I’ve read about Lamar’s motivation for his album: in part his trip to South Africa, including a visit to Nelson Mandela’s jail cell on Robben Island. So I get the pimping — the racism and exploitation — juxtaposed with a gossamer insect, an icon of flight and the light.
“The title grasped the entire concept of the record,” Lamar is quoted as saying on the Grammy’s website. “[I wanted to] break down the idea of being pimped in the industry, in the community and out of all the knowledge that you thought you had known, then discovering new life and wanting to share it.”
Great. All good. But sorry, Lamar, a dude named Scotts has got you beat. The company that brought us Miracle-Gro and lawn chemicals long ago pimped a butterfly. I noticed it first on a Scotts truck on the road in Florida in 2009. (That’s my photo of the truck above.)
Scotts pimped a Monarch.
Or is it a Monarch? Nope. Ain’t no Monarch. This is a pimped mutant butterfly. Scotts took a Monarch’s forewings and most of its hindwings. Fine. But the marketing department added a swallowtail on the pimped mutant’s trailing end.
This butterfly does not exist in nature. Scotts not only pimped a butterfly to greenwash its services, but created a lie in the process. I guess a Monarch wasn’t iconic enough. And I guess that’s marketing.
So here, intact, are a Monarch and an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail. Let the two converge only on a flower near you next summer. In the meantime, I’m off to listen to some Kendrick Lamar … and to search the skies for Taylor Swifts.
If you don’t know about something, just say that and be quiet. We don’t care. Your opinion doesn’t matter and it’s obviously not for you.
Thanks, Adrienne. Glad you liked my ending!
Yep, gotta spray ’em so that we can mow ’em! 🙂
Thanks, Veer. We miss so much without televisions. I guess that can be a pretty good thing!
It would be a cool butterfly. Not quite right — but cool nonetheless. 🙂
Thanks, Ann. I have to say, I really don’t like the music — no surprise there. 🙂
Thanks, Terry. Yeah, this is crazy. Where my mom lives, in southeastern Michigan, they spray the trees (!) for mosquitoes.
Well, I live in FL and see these and many other lawn services spraying chemicals by the TON. They are meant to kill insects (pretty much indiscriminately). That is bad enough, because it reduces a food source for BIRDS. But the fertilizer component creates runoff which is rich in nitrates and that leads to algae blooms and polluted waterways which starve the fish of oxygen and result in widespread fish kills. Such is the price of a picture-perfect lawn in SW Fl.
-maybe aging but amazing and interesting connections
love this! mutant butterflies indeed…
Agree with Sue re miracle poison-gro yet always dominant at the hardware store… I’ve no tv but today’s Guardian online has video of KLamar’s performance, genius! Excellent post, thank you.
Mutant butterflies because folks use chemicals on their lawns and gardens!
Clever post. As a hip hopping naturalist, who’s into social justice and pop culture critique, this post hit all the bases. And even ended with a laugh.