There are only a few instances that I remember where I was when I first heard an artist's music. I remember my Dad playing The Rolling Stones in our living room on a sunny Sunday afternoon. I remember crying with laughter at the Foo Fighters Learn to Fly music video. I remember the horns of Kanye West’s Touch the Sky playing on the radio whilst crammed into the back seat of my Dad’s black Ford Mondeo. One day in 2012, I put a CD into my brother's black Sony sound system and sat on my bottom bunk to play a game of FIFA. I don’t remember that game of FIFA, but I remember that album. It was Good Kid, M.A.A.D City by Kendrick Lamar.
A few weeks before, my Dad had shown me a magazine cover that read:
“Dr Dre Brings us Hip-Hops Next Big Star Kendrick Lamar”
“I think you’d like him”, my Dad gestured toward me. He knew of my love for Dr Dre, Eminem (Dre’s previous protege) as well as regulars of my bedroom speaker system, Kanye West and Jay-Z. I’m fairly sure I replied with a despondent teenage remark and went on with my day. Fast forward to the day of the CD. My Dad came home from work and handed me a CD. “I got this for you, meant to be really good”.
My Dad has always known what I would like. My taste for most things in life is understandably derivative of his, and I owe many of my obsessions and loves to the sprawling discussions we had and continue to have. It’s a debt I will most likely never payback, not that I would want to. Right, back to Kendrick.
The cover of the album appeared to be a minivan on a distorted and distressed polaroid. Scribbled in the bottom right corner was the title:
“Good Kid, M.A.A.D City. A short film by Kendrick Lamar”
I played it the same night. The music was transporting. Each track advanced the story, traversing from dreamy to aggressive to harrowing. The lyrics were sharp and complex. I had never listened to an album that intently in my life, I was only 15 but still. I could see everything he rapped about. I felt like I was in his friend’s car bragging during Backseat freestyle. I felt like I was in the heart of a party on Swimming Pools. The term “short story” on the cover wasn’t misleading. The world of Kendrick Lamar had sucked me in and I wasn’t leaving anytime soon. With his return imminent, it only felt right to discuss his importance
Nearly a decade after my first experience with Kendrick Lamar, I began work on my final year dissertation. I wrote about Kendrick’s influence on civil rights movements, specifically the Black Lives Matter Movement. It was the first time I had really dissected and analysed pieces of art in such depth and it was addictive. My focus was Kendrick's transcendent anthem Alright, which had been adopted by crowds of protestors around the world who took to the streets in opposition to police violence, particularly in the summer of 2020. It was a song that wasn't a smash hit upon its release in 2015 but over time has grown and grown to slowly become, what I believe to be, the defining song of his career so far. Over months I read and watched everything there was to see about Kendrick Lamar. I read about protests all over the world who were chanting his song outside police stations and in town squares. It made me think back to the first time I heard him, and how that short story set on the streets of Compton had exploded into every corner of the world.
One of the many things I, and I assume others, love about Kendrick Lamar is his versatility. His follow up to Good Kid, M.A.A.D City could have easily been a more digestible sophomore album, leaning into his newfound success and holding onto that Dr Dre influenced sound that was so smooth and luxurious, but no. He gave us To Pimp a Butterfly. He swapped the west coast sound for a chorus of jazz-infused beats that in all honesty took me time to fully appreciate. At the time I was driving my mum's 2005 Hyundai Getz which I lovingly named 'Betsy'. Now Betsy was an old gal. She had no Bluetooth, no aux cord and thanks to my older brother, no radio aerial. CD's and a busted Beats Pill taped to the dashboard were my only salvation. I got To Pimp a Butterfly on CD a month or so after its release and played it religiously. It was a trifle of an album. Layers upon layers, each revealing something different with every scoop. Collaborators such as Terrence Martin, Thundercat and funk legend George Clinton helped build the foundations of jazz and off-kilter production for Kendrick as he created one of the most important albums of the decade.
The lasting impact of To Pimp a Butterfly has been discussed to death by people far more eloquent and important than myself and yet here I go. Throughout the 2000s and early 2010s, Hip-Hop that found itself on the charts and in radio speakers was less interested in social and political commentary. Away from the charts, it was always there but it was clear that the general public enjoyed the lighter side of Hip-Hop. This makes Kendrick Lamar even more of an anomaly. Dense lyrics, complex music and weighty themes created a cocktail of an album that hit directly at the right place at the right time. On first listen you hear the jazz and the way Kendrick raps over it like extra percussion. On second listen you hear Kendrick describing his struggles against police, depression and a country's system that is built for him and the people around him to fail. On third listen you hear the album's influences and Kendrick bridging the gap between the generation of rappers he grew up idolizing, culminating in the reveal of the album being an ode/conversation to Kendricks's idol, Tupac Shakur. Who the fuck does that?
Alright has become the standout track from that album and rightfully so. It is a protest anthem and gave an entire movement a rallying call. How Much a Dollar Cost has some of the most incredible storytelling ever put to music, with Kendrick confronting religion as well as his own demons. In my opinion, the latter is the most overlooked element of not only this album but all of Kendrick Lamar's discography. His willingness to discuss his struggles and shortcomings in a genre which so often only rewards braggadocious artists has always heavily resonated with me. It felt so rare to hear such honesty and to have it described with such precise lyrics. He switches perspectives and uses different voices to look introspectively at his mistakes and misteps from all angles and embody his harshest critics, a feeling I think most of us can relate to. Also the voices. Eminem has slim shady. Drake switches between lovestricken and adopts patois occasionally. Kendrick has a rogues gallery of different registers and voices he employs with ease. I often find myself two minutes into a Kendrick Lamar song and have to double check there isn't a feature. I don't know if this is relevant in terms of his broad importance but it is to me.
In a time where social media can be the making or breaking of an artist there is a few who have risen above the black mirrors we carry around. In August last year Kendrick released a statement announcing he was working on his final album with his label TDE. In that statement he throws in that he goes months without a phone. MONTHS. He can go away, out of the public eye completely for years with minimal to no presence online the entire time. And yet, every week for what seems like the past three years Kendrick Lamar will trend on twitter for absolutely no reason whatsoever. People are just that desperate. He is that important. I should know, I am one of those obsesssives. His work holds a special place in my life and I know for a fact its the same for millions of others.
Kendrick Lamar's words soundtracked my teenage years and I for one am waiting with baited breath to see what he says next.
Comments