KENDRICK LAMAR GOOD KID, MA.A.AD CITY
by JASPER RYDEN
C
ompton rapper Kendrick Lamar’s major label debut, good kid, m.A.A.d city, opens with the ominous “Sherane a.k.a Master Splinter’s Daughter,” which itself begins with a recording of a family saying grace before dinner. Lamar then goes on to relate a story about a girl named Sherane with “the credentials of strippers in Atlanta” who he met at a “house party on El Segundo and Central.” As he soon reveals, he was “seventeen, with nothing but pussy stuck on [his] mental.” We discover that Sherane’s cousin is a gangbanger as the story plays out. In the closing seconds, as Lamar pulls up to her house wondering, “What position’s next,” he sees “two black hoodies” and freezes, when suddenly his phone rings. It goes to voicemail, and Kendrick’s mother leaves a message, demanding to know where her son is. Immediately, the brilliant “Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe,” turns the mood around entirely. As the track begins, Kendrick sings a hymn over a splash of serene guitar chords: “I am a sinner / who’s prob’ly gonna sin again / Lord forgive me / Lord forgive me / things I don’t understand / Sometimes I need to be alone.” This kind of introspection is one of Kendrick’s trademarks, recalling tracks like “Kush & Corinthians” from last year’s independently released album Section.80. After the hook, Lamar
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gets right to the rhythmic, polysyllabic, rhyme bending flow that made him famous in songs like Section.80’s “Rigamortis.” Good kid, m.A.A.d. city is full of contrasts, from the tension between Lamar’s “sober soul” and the Compton streets he grew up on to the industrial complex presented by modern mainstream hip-hop to which Lamar has just become a party. GKMC debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard’s Top 200, shifting 241,000 units in its first week, and features the likes of Dr. Dre, MC Eiht, and an unexpected verse from Drake on the baby-makin’ “Poetic Justice,” which also features a familiar (and pricey) Janet Jackson sample. The album was jointly released by Lamar’s own Top Dawg Entertainment and Dr. Dre’s Aftermath Entertainment, a subsidiary of Interscope Records. Dr. Dre’s support of Kendrick Lamar is a big deal in the world of hiphop; the man who helped found NWA, invented G-funk, and mentored and produced for Snoop Dogg, Eminem, 50 Cent, and The Game, in addition to selling unholy amounts of exceptionally average headphones, has found another protégé. There is little G-funk to be found on the album; rather, it draws influences from a remarkably comprehensive view of the hip-hop world. Besides the classic gangsta beat on “m.A.A.d. city” (which contains an excellent verse from Lamar’s fellow Black Hippy member Jay Rock) and the 2Pac talkbox at the tail end of “Compton” (the track featuring Dre), there is not much to designate GKMC as a West Coast rap album. Yet it still seems that West Coast hip-hop is back, in spirit if not necessarily in musical style. Lamar certainly has the credentials to be considered Los Angeles rap’s spiritual successor. He’s claimed in the past to have been visited in dreams by Tupac Shakur himself, who allegedly said to Lamar, “Keep doin’ what you’re doin’. Don’t let my music die.” And at a concert last August, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, and The Game crowned Lamar the new king of the West Coast and, in Snoop’s words, “passed on the torch.” At one point, The Game interjected: “Ain’t no hate in Dr. Dre’s blood, he passed the torch to Snoop, Snoop passed it to Game, Pac restin’ in peace, so is Eazy…I hate when people say the West ain’t poppin’. I told you it was coming.” <
