Instalments and Interludes:

Charles Dickens and Kendrick Lamar in Serialised Conversation

By Alexia Heasley

Before vinyl pressings and streaming services, Victorian readers once anxiously waited for the next instalment of a novel, just as modern listeners await the next track in a carefully curated concept album. The two mediums share more interests than just extended storytelling – they rely on accumulation, conscious structure, and bated breaths lingering between one part and the next. Kendrick Lamar’s 2015 album To Pimp A Butterfly is widely considered one of the most prominent, if not the definitive modern concept album, while Charles Dickens, 200 years earlier, was pioneering the tradition of serialised fiction, particularly in Great Expectations (1861) and Bleak House (1852). Differing starkly in historical and autobiographical context, the two authors are united by the episodic structure they employ, with each track or chapter coming together to form a completed narrative. 

Victorian novels are famed for their serialised format, typically published in weekly or monthly instalments to make their contents more affordable and accessible to a wider readership. To maintain loyalty amongst these readers, each instalment had to hold its own satisfaction within the larger narrative agenda, relying on subtle cliffhangers that weaved seamlessly into the following chapters. Dickens’ chapters frequently ended with heightened tension and opened with coy revelations that built anticipation and kept his issues so highly in demand over the years. These techniques are certainly recognisable within his characters, whose development may often seem stunted or gradual, constantly being set back by these winding paths of suspense and closure. In Great Expectations, Pip’s rise in social class is in no way a simple journey, appearing instead as a moral education shaped by ambition and plagued by guilt, in line with rollercoaster rise and fall of instalments beginning and ending. Serialisation became not only a financial benefit for Dickens but a tool for his craft. It allowed him to introduce growth incrementally, giving his themes the space to twist and change over time. His readers are subtly made to hang on to his every word in anticipation of the next one, until they realise at the end of the novel they have become entirely engrossed by his moral messages.

Concept albums maintain a surprisingly similar principle. Though released as a complete album, each track can be viewed as an instalment, made separate by the time in which it was written and the time in which it is designed to take up. In Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly, each track traces Lamar’s psychological and political evolution in line with the album’s progression. The album’s title, To Pimp A Butterfly is the first allusion to systemic financial entrapment that the following lyrics will muse over, concerned with societal structures that “pimp” black artists and communities. An overarching theme is established before the music even begins, as with Dickens’ stark titles, Bleak House and Great Expectations.

Following the structure of episodic release, a lot of pressure is placed on the first instalment to reel the readers in. Lamar’s opening track, ‘Wesley’s Theory’, introduces the crucial themes of exploitation and self-destruction that continue throughout the album, later contextualised by the speaker’s sudden fame. The following track, ‘For Free? – Interlude’ assumes a more urgent pace, crammed with words as though Lamar is grasping at his listeners to keep on listening, to stay engaged with what he is saying and all that is yet to follow. The title’s suggestion that it is simply an ‘Interlude’ is deceptive to the song’s contents. Expecting a filler episode of sorts, the listener is instead prompted to understand that nothing in Lamar’s concept album will be irrelevant to his message.

The album progresses and Lamar’s confidence and vulnerability begins to fluctuate, aware that he has convinced his loyal listeners to stay, and now using their attention to state his message with extended clarity and nuance. While ‘King Kunta’ asserts resilience and creative authority, drawing upon historical references of slavery to frame contemporary struggles for autonomy, the confidence becomes destabilised by ‘u’ that shifts to a tone of self-loathing formed from depression and survivor’s guilt. Movements between empowerment and despair reflect the speaker’s psychological strain of representing their community while navigating personal successes in an inequitable society. His inner conflicts become reflected in the music and the rollercoaster structure of his instalments.

With the 12-minute long closing track, ‘Mortal Man’, Lamar makes his listeners aware that he is stepping away from the microphone, having learnt all he needs to from the 15 prior tracks. Dropping the names of historical leaders through the first half of the song, ranging from Mandela to Moses, Lamar meditates on legacy between individuals and their society. With this, he makes way for the final cliffhanger and revelation of the album, contained within one instalment, as he stages an interview with Tupac, using an old recorded interview with his own voice intercepting the interviewer’s role. The two discuss race, culture, fame, and image, leaving Lamar to make the final revelation that his voice is contributing to a long line of influential leaders, endowing his music with a newly weighted responsibility. Lamar later shared the extent of Tupac’s influence on him in an interview with MTV, revealing that the album had originally been titled, Tu Pimp A Caterpillar: Tu.P.A.C.

The album culminates in reflection rather than the satisfaction of resolution. Having recognised that individual growth is inseparable from the collective memory of a community, Lamar makes clear that each track is contextualised by its contribution to the album as a completed narrative. In the same manner, Kendrick Lamar’s music cannot stand on its own. It relies on its listeners to understand his message and project his voice by enacting social change. Though with different aims, Dickens also advocated for social reform through his writing, using the wider readership that serialisation granted him to spread his message. Cumulative revelation plagues Dickens’ Bleak House, when the seemingly disorderly web of legal disputes and personal tragedies gradually resolves into a bureaucratic criticism of institutional stagnation. Individual storylines, dispersed over chapters and instalments, come together to expose systemic injustice. Each of Lamar’s tracks cohere into a critique of racism, internalised oppression, and the burdens of representation. For both artists, structure enforces their themes and climaxes in a call for social change. The episodic format gives the readers and listeners time to reflect on each chapter and track before understanding the unity that connects them all. To Pimp A Butterfly then, alongside other concept albums, deserves to be listened to in the order it is presented to us so the authorial intentions may be truly understood.