good kid is the better album. but pimp is just a prog album. like prog rap albums in the 90s. overblown, overstuffed, and all the rest of it. kind of thing someone on quannum might have made.
musically, its a bit old hat. he has a lot of great players on there but its mostly a sort of proggy version of what questlove and co were doing around 2000. which is not such a bad thing, when you consider trap is dominating so much right now, so having thundercat doing ridiculous bass runs all over the place is going against the grain, but even then, i dont really need a reiteration of like water for chocolate, etc.
lyrically/vocally, i would say its worth attention, even if i have not and cant actually be bothered to listen to it (i dont like the sermonising heaviness of it). dissensus doesnt strike me as a particularly rapper-interested place. its more a rap-sonics place. (then again, ive not really been that amazed by his lyrics, i just like *how* he raps - i dont really 'feel' kendrick as a rapper, i just think hes brilliant at it, hes very theatrical, like eminem, but eminem at least made you feel something with his voice)
i do wonder though if a lot of people are put off by it not being esp aggressive (like ice cube or PE for instance), or radical sounding. ie the music, which while being a bit bland at times, is just the kind of thing most rock/pop critics didnt really care that much about in the late 90s/early 00s, def not in the UK.
its also not a 'fun' album like good kid was, but does it have to be?
(FWIW i dont listen to it cos im too old to be preached to)