Our season long examination of Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly continues with the album’s eleventh track, “How Much a Dollar Cost?”
Plagued by Uncle Sam (the American Dream) and Lucy (temptation), Kendrick has stood at a metaphoric crossroads for most of the album, deciding whether to use or pimp his talent for good or evil. “How Much a Dollar Cost?” will force Kendrick’s hand.
The song tells a story of Kendrick’s encounter with a homeless man in a gas station in South Africa. The man asks Kendrick for a dollar, which he refuses due to his selfishness. The homeless man reveals himself as god in the final line of the song, and as it turns out, the cost of a dollar was Kendrick’s spot in heaven. Upon this discovery, Kendrick is humbled, asks for forgiveness, and it set on a path of righteousness.
And while Kendrick’s spot in heaven was the answer to the question of “How Much a Dollar Cost?”, we can a