good kid, m.A.A.d city

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Fri Feb 25 2022

4

This one's taken a while to gather my thoughts on and a lot of reading through lyrics, commentary and Wikipedia… it's always a good sign to feel so invested in an album, but the result is usually a pseudo-thesis of a review that, let's face it, nobody has the time to read. Anyway, here goes! Before his instant classic "To Pimp A Butterfly", Kendrick Lamar made "good kid, m.A.A.d city": a tighter, leaner piece which begins by looking inward and gradually shifts focus to create a vivid, intense picture of inner-city living in the hood. Broader than Kendrick's own coming-of-age story, it becomes a social commentary on hip-hop, the culture surrounding it, and the pre-conceptions surrounding that. Lamar explores the origins of gang hostility and violence, covering peer pressure, fear, vulnerability and a vacuum left by the absence of state support or role models. Without a doubt, it's the most immersive hip-hop album I've heard and it's all down to Lamar's excellent storytelling. Using a thoughtfully sequenced non-linear narrative, dynamic and expressive vocal performance, and snippets of conversation with his homies and his parents, Lamar weaves a complex narrative together which has transferred to some school syllabuses alongside James Joyce. Thematically, there's real weight thrown into every song and every line. "The Art of Peer Pressure" explores how gang culture escalated Lamar's teenage life towards crime, drugs and violence. "Money Trees" covers the necessity of material pursuits for survival and the cost it might have on morality. Things reach an apex on the epic "Sing About Me/Dying of Thirst", two tracks drawn together into one twelve minute piece which Lamar uses to remember those he knows who have died. The urgency and despair mingling in "Dying of Thirst" is so potent, and Kendrick's mastery of narrative really comes into its own by personifying his deceased friends. Musically, "good kid, m.A.A.d city" isn't as sprawling and diverse as what I've heard of Lamar's later work. It's also, by nature, mellow and insular, with little to jump out as dance music or hit material. The most played tracks - including "Bitch Don't Kill My Vibe" and "Swimming Pools (Drank)"- are as close as it gets, and they're either a thoughtful musing on the state of the music industry or an ironic take on clubbing and partying. Even in these tracks, the music is consistently cerebral, insular. The beats are mostly low-key, muted, often trap-influenced. Samples include, of all people, Beach House lending an ethereal quality to "Money Trees" and Janet Jackson looped into infinity on the sultry slow-jam "Poetic Justice." Some tracks are refreshingly upbeat to signal a new voice or time within the narrative: for example, "Backseat Freestyle" turns classic braggadocio into a flashback, a young K-Dot using his words as a naïve dream and a survival strategy. "m.A.A.d city" and "Compton" bring the classic 90's hip-hop sounds with hard, bombastic beats, pitch-warped synth leads and a feature from Dre himself. They're tributes to Lamar's musical heritage, which tie in with the narrative as a complicated mixture of pride and fear towards his hometown. I could try to go on and on, but really the key to "good kid, m.A.Ad city" is to listen. Although it's far from my usual style of music, one of its key strengths is that none of it is as straightforward as it appears. By packing each track so full of dual-meanings, twists and turns in the storyline and more allusions than you can shake a stick at, Lamar invites listeners to unpack the non-linear story, peel away the layers, discover new ways of hearing each track and piece together the good kid in the mad city. It's not yet at "classic" status for me, but I can see it being a long time before I get bored of this one.

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Sat Feb 05 2022

5

Kendrick Lamar - changing the game since 2011, changing the use of capital letters and punctuation since 2012.

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Fri Mar 04 2022

3

This is better than Hotel California for sure.

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Mon Jun 13 2022

1

Offensive, disgusting and stupid. 1 / 5

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Thu Mar 24 2022

1

Musically dull, lyrically offensive.

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Mon Jan 24 2022

5

My favorite pure rap album of all time; the quintessential coming of age west coast rap album; filled with bangers and thought provoking songs; one of the best storytelling albums of all time

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Thu Jan 27 2022

2

Boring album. Some decent bass lines. Lyrics are meh and even annoying at times. Nothing great to say about this one.

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Sat Feb 05 2022

2

Bitch, don't kill my vibe. I have actually seen Kendrick Lamar live around the time this came out, but he was upstaged by a Tupac hologram...as we all are sometimes.

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Sun Nov 27 2022

1

Objectifies women and gets his rocks off fantasizing about violence against women. Pathetic and sick.

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Thu Mar 17 2022

5

One of the best narrative albums at point blank range. Sing About Me, I'm Dying of Thirst might be in my top 10 songs.

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Thu Nov 03 2022

4

But where is the ninja turtles?

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Sun Jan 01 2023

4

Yeah, in terms of gansta-rap Kendrick is definitely my pick. There's some great artistic choices through the album that subvert the earlier clichés of gansta-rap, like playing the entire voicemail at the end of the first song and not using it as a little throwaway interlude but rather as a storytelling tool. Everything sounds great but there's some needed restraint in production that elevates it all to be more than a "I'm so hard and I party hard album". Some tracks are "take or or leave" it for me, and Money Trees goes a little long for me. Bitch, Don't Kill My Vibe is prob my fav. good kid also sounds great, that instrumentation and bass-line feels like some 70s odd synth/krautrock or some early electronic experimental stuff. Interestingly enough there aren't many songs on here that feel like they can be played in isolation or on some random playlist, the material is definitely best listened in an album format, which is probably the best compliment you could get for this list.

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Sat Apr 16 2022

2

People talk about this guy like he's the second coming but all I just heard was an hour and 20min of hipster dog shit. 2/5.

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Thu May 05 2022

1

I gave up before the album had finished. Some of the background melodies were alright but I find the ranting, language and sentiments hard to enjoy. I know that means I’m an old person but it’s not what I call music.

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Thu Dec 01 2022

1

c.r.A.A.p city

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Tue Jan 25 2022

5

Et mesterværk, konceptuelt, stramt narrativ, teknisk vanvittigt, fyldt med bangers

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Tue Feb 08 2022

5

Absolute classic. Possibly my favorite modern rap album (though it's ten years old?!) I think what I love the most is the Outkast production and storytelling vibe.

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Sat Mar 26 2022

5

While I’m still a hardline tpab fan, holy shit this album still holds up. All of the singles are still great and everything about it is great

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Tue Aug 22 2023

5

no skips

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Mon Aug 28 2023

5

One of my favorite albums, I put this above to pimp a butterfly personally

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Sat Jul 16 2022

3

Tasty baked goods between the ears, but the contrasting cock strutting gets wearing. Maybe a later KL will work for me.

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Sat Feb 05 2022

2

Meh. Production is good but I'm just way to white for this shit. Never gonna listen to this again.

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Mon Jul 11 2022

2

good flow, lyrics were meh, other shit too, most annoying was the 15 out of 60 minutes of filler, background sounds

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Mon Sep 18 2023

2

It was alright

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Fri Feb 18 2022

1

This album sucks lmao

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Tue Aug 02 2022

1

Not in my edition of the book so! Obviously not essential to listen to before you die! 2012. 1 star. Purile, sexist, misogynistic, obnoxious shite that gets boring reallll fast. Strange that it's OK for black rappers to use the N* word but if anyone else does you're racist. Or that it's OK for them to call women bitches and pussy and hoes (whores), but if anyone else does you're misogynistic. Or that it's OK from them to to boast about how high and doped they get, but if anyone else does then you're just a fucked up junkie. Just saying. "I pray my dick get big as the Eiffel Tower/So I can fuck the world for seventy-two hours". FFS, grow up.

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Thu Sep 01 2022

1

Just not my vibe. Liked that one about the homies though

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Tue Oct 25 2022

1

Can we just rename this genre "Narcissistic Gun, Dick, Pussy Rap"?

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Sat Oct 29 2022

1

Auto tuned junk. No idea what the big deal about this is. Not even bordering on interesting.

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Wed Dec 07 2022

1

Didn’t listen

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Thu Dec 22 2022

1

I know that Kendrick Lamarr is viewed as some sort of god, but I cannot for the life of me work out why. "Bitch, don't kill my vibe" makes me want to question why he's putting that voice on. The flow vacillates wildly between "hey this is pretty decent" and "ohmygod, what is this amateurish tosh?" The whole album seems to delight in wobbly bass, which doesn't half get tiring after a while. TBH, not sure I'm going to sit through the rest of this.

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Tue Feb 07 2023

1

The hiphop I enjoy most has either great funky sampling and/or jazz or otherwise organic music and the actual MCing has got to be rhythmic. Right away in the first track the rhythmic rapping is thrown right out the window - I know it's a preferential thing but there's no sense of rhythm to this, it's stream-of-consciousness words that I've no doubt I'd never be able to do but it all exists completely independently from the music. As if they're 2 completely unrelated parallel entities that were just placed together almost randomly. Like - could you tell or would it matter if the chorus were the verse or vice versa? And these lyrics are junior-high level immature trash. That reaction was all from one track - yikes. BUT ... track 2 starts out almost completely differently; I like the music and the weird vocals. The lyrics are not interesting to me but there's a noticeable step up in tying the vocals to the music. The "real-life" voices (I hesitate to call them "skits") get distracting and for me lessen the impact of the songs. Have I mentioned these lyrics are weak? They're weak - come on pussy this dick that yeah yeah giggle giggle. OK the album definitely improves as it goes on - full stop - but ehh I had a real hard time getting through this - aside from the eye-rolling lyrics his voice is difficult to digest. As for my rhythmic critiques early, that aspect definitely gets much better on many of the following tracks - I know it's a stylistic choice and I choose to avoid the freestyle/stream type songs/rappers. "Money Trees" - I do like this one. I've heard some of Kendrick's later work which I do recall liking considerably more, but this one is not only not my bag but I would and will avoid this. 3/10 1 star

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Tue Mar 21 2023

1

I really don't like this sort of drugged out hip-hop sound. Something about it just makes me feel bad, sort of stretched out and depressed. Every single song seems to be about drugs, his penis or comparing women to dogs, but somehow this is considered socially conscious and thoughtful rap. It simply doesn't make a good impression on me, not being receptive to the sound and outside the culture being rhymed about. I hope that the people who enjoy this have used it to work through dark personal issues and become better people. But for me, it is the sort of thing I would turn off if I heard it on the radio.

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Mon Jan 24 2022

5

Beyond it's obvious objective greatness, this is also a personally important album to me. When I first became a music nerd, this was the first contemporary album I listened to around the time it dropped, or at least it was the first major one. What a way to start! Hip hop perfection, through and through.

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Mon Feb 07 2022

5

Kendrick’s storytelling is amazing and so incredibly immersive. The production is fantastic and so is the lyricism.

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Fri Feb 11 2022

5

Its hard choise just a favorite song

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Mon Feb 14 2022

5

Iconic album. Creative beats, lyrics, mood. Poet at heart.

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Tue Feb 15 2022

5

NO SKIPS

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Mon Mar 07 2022

5

One of the best debuts ever

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Tue Mar 08 2022

5

An easy 5, the story told in this album has really stuck with me

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Wed Mar 09 2022

5

Kicks balls and slaps titties. Hits for days, and its one of the rare albums where skit/field recordings add to the narrative.

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Thu Mar 17 2022

5

Few people can rap so grippingly, driving you deep into a narrative like K dot can. He is one of the GOATs for sure.

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Thu Mar 31 2022

5

what a fantastic album- one of my all time favorites. It has a compelling concept with great voice acting and songs that match the way the story goes. The lyrics, productions, and Kendrick's vocals are amazing. The features are just incredible with amazing performances from Dr. Dre, Jay Rock, and IMO one of the best verse of Drake's career on Poetic Justice. SAMIDOT is a top ten song of all time for me, B Don't Kill My Vibe is a fantastic song to chill out to, and m.A.A.d. city is such an exciting song. Amazing album 10/10 and the first album where Kendrick puts his name into GOAT conversation. P.S. he better drop some new music soon its been so long

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Mon Apr 04 2022

5

very good

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Tue Apr 05 2022

5

Already listened

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Wed Apr 27 2022

5

Easy five starts. The storytelling is amazing. Lost of bangers came from this album.

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Thu Apr 28 2022

5

artist and storyteller.

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Sat Apr 30 2022

5

Awesome hip-hop album! Kendrick is a lyrical madman. Great beats, amazing flow, funny commentary/narrative throughout. Certainly worth a listen.

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Fri May 20 2022

5

Rating: 10/10

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Fri May 27 2022

5

Mind-blowing, while being, at best, his second best album (I need more time with the new one before making a final decision, but it's level with Damn in being second at the moment). Hard to pick a best track, Backseat Freestyle maybe. And the fact he goes full g-funk at one point is like he is literally taking Compton's crown from Dre.

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Mon Jun 13 2022

5

You already know I love this album. I remember listening to it in college. Bitch don't kill my vibe, backseat freestyle, swimming pools, poetic justice. Kendrick is a legend

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Mon Jun 27 2022

5

el mejor album de rap de la historia, album de historia que marca al rap y demostrando de lo que esta hecho kendrck,muchas emociones y album que marca en la vida

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Wed Jun 29 2022

5

Kendrick is the best. J'adore un 5 meme si c'est un de mes moins preferees

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Tue Jul 05 2022

5

I read this album is no longer in the latest version of the book, this is an absolute travesty… one of the all time great rap albums the story telling through the album along with some huge bangers makes this a 5 star masterpiece.

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Tue Jul 12 2022

5

Two A’s in a row? More likely than you’d think. As white as I may sound, Kendrick is the best rapper alive, and while his next album is more vital, this is a brilliant introduction to his craft if Butterfly is too dense for you. Incredible music all around. A

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Fri Jul 22 2022

5

love you Nathan I'm sorry you couldn't hear the new album i think you would have loved it I will never listen to kdot and not think of you thank you for the short time I got with you IVE GOT A BONE TO PICK!

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Mon Aug 08 2022

5

Yuuuuuurrrrrrrpppppppp

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Mon Aug 15 2022

5

great story, lyrics, music.

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Mon Aug 15 2022

5

Still just as good a listen as it was 10 years ago. Easily Kendrick’s strongest, most cogent album, from features, production and lyricism. Outside of a few exceptions, skits on hip hop albums are immediate skip material. But these are so integral to the story, Kendrick’s parents bickering on a voicemail, his friends rapping young jeezy lyrics, recreating a hit. The production is so varied and interesting. Highlights: Money Trees, Back seat freestyle, sing about me I’m dying for thirst

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Mon Aug 15 2022

5

please don’t kill my wife

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Fri Aug 19 2022

5

This is a high concept album that delivers on all fronts. Kendrick's bars embody the best of west coast hip hop and pays homage to the gangsta rappers who came before while embracing an introspectiveness that adds a certain degree of gravity to everything he says. The album is a series of stories from Kendrick's like that document his struggle to stay 'good' in the midst of a violent life stuck in survival mode. The album ends by circling back to the initial phone call which starts the album off, a statement of the cyclical nature of these stories. The music itself is phenomenal. That west coast synth sound, orchestrated strings, and trap hi-hats are all present here and are used perfectly. Kendrick is a student of hip hop, and the fact that he got to work with some of the greatest for this album shows that he is already on his way to becoming one of the greats.

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Thu Aug 25 2022

5

Masterpiece of an album, amazing storytelling. Would be the best rap album of the 2010s if Kendrick didn't have himself to compete with

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Thu Aug 25 2022

5

Absolute banger. Fucking K. Dot making his mark after signing with Aftermath and Interscope. Stand out tracks: Bitch Don't Kill My Vibe, Backseat Freestyle, and Compton (with Dr. Dre).

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Fri Aug 26 2022

5

An easy 5 stars. This album is simply stunning. Here Kendrick takes the seeds planted by Nas on Illmatic and grows them into an epic story of a night out with friends gone very wrong. From the moment we hear the beat drop on "Bitch Don't Kill my Vibe" we know we are in for something special, and the rest of the album does not disappoint. The lyricism is excellent, the beats underneath are dynamic, and the features are top tier (Jay rock's verse on "Money Trees" sums up the themes of most hip hop songs in 1 minute and is prefect). Additionally, these songs work well on their own, but combine into an epic rap opera with a rich narrative and well written characters (Kendrick rapping fro mthe perspective of3 different characters in "Sing about me" is always impressive. This is one of the best albums of all time.

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Fri Aug 26 2022

5

One of the best rap albums ever. Kendrick’s story telling ability is unmatched which you can see throughout the narrative of this album and especially in songs like Sing about me. I feel that there are some similarities to illmatic but this represents the west coast perspective and the rapping is more evolved and technical. This album has some of his best hits like Backseat Freestyle, mad city, and money trees. The guest verses are all fantastic particularly Drake on Poetic Justice and Jay Rock on money trees with one of the best features of all time. And Jay Z on the bitch don’t kill my vibe remix with one of the best flexes ever “sitting next to Hillary smelling like dank”

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Fri Aug 26 2022

5

One of my all time favorite albums. The story telling and emotion on this album is some of the best I've seen. The beats go hard but don't get in the way of the lyrics at all.

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Sun Aug 28 2022

5

Preeety goood.

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Tue Aug 30 2022

5

An absolute classic

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Wed Aug 31 2022

5

Banger! Banger! Banger! Introspective exploration of gangland crime in black neighbourhoods...BANGER

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Fri Sep 02 2022

5

Great

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Wed Sep 07 2022

5

Love the Story being told Here. Evers Song ist unique and great.

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Thu Sep 08 2022

5

fire (fire fire)

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Mon Sep 12 2022

5

This is Kendrick at his finest. The production and features pay homage to 90s classics as well as his peers. The storytelling side of Kendrick pushes itself to the forefront track after track. While the whole album is almost perfect, the standout song is Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst. Empathetic, brutal, and honest, it might be the Compton rapper’s magnum opus; a story of heartbreak told truthfully from many perspectives, perhaps even more poignant because of its ubiquity.

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Wed Sep 14 2022

5

Absoluter Klassiker. Seit 2013 unter meinen all time favorites!

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Sun Sep 18 2022

5

I want to go to this ‘Maad’ city

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Tue Sep 20 2022

5

Epic album, what to say more?

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Wed Sep 28 2022

5

93/100: Few artists reach the level of fame to be publicly acknowledged by on name. Many incredibly well respected artists never reach this level (sometimes arguably for the infortune of being given a generic name). Freddie Mercury is neither referred to as Freddie nor Mercury. Elton John is not Elton. But Tupac is Tupac, Kanye is Kanye, and Kendrick is—well—just Kendrick. This album holds a special place in my heart; therefore, I will be leaving all pretenses of impartiality at the door. This is the album that quite literally opened up the world of music for me. Before listening to this album, music was just something to be listened to—pleasant sounds, ineffable feelings, surface level appreciation. The first time I heard “good kid, m.A.A.d city,” something struck me—an imperceptible intuition that something worth understanding lay beyond the realm in which I’d hitherto been existing. By the Kendrick was boasting about having a dream in “Backseat Freestyle,” I had the rap genius app downloaded on my phone and was following along, line by line. I listened and read along to that album for weeks, maybe even months, listening to nothing else. I saw a respect for language and a mastery of music as a platform for a message nothing short of genius; in fact, orders of magnitude beyond that. Most rappers interject their albums with skits as separate songs. The good artists tie this skits smartly, maybe even humorously, into the story conveyed in their album. The great ones (if pluralizing that word is even legitimate is up for dispute), like Kendrick, weave these skits within songs, backed by musical tracks. In “The Art of Peer Pressure,” interjecting skits not only provide context—in one moment, letting the listener know that Kendrick’s and his friends’ robbery attempt has flopped, in the other, highlighting a police chase—they propel the song through its story. Beyond imaginatively clever uses of skits, Kendrick writes lyrics that reveal an incomparably creative relationship with language. In “Money Trees,” one set of three lines stands out in my mind. In the first line in this set, “dreams of living life like rappers do,” Kendrick focuses in on the topic of rap artists; however, in the third line, “I fucked Sherane then went to tell my bros,” he’s locked in on ideas of sex and women. To find a good line to fit between those two, most rappers would elaborate on what a rapper’s life is like, presumably a good way to tie sex and women into the topic of rap artists—making for a pretty seamless segue. Kendrick does something entirely different and wildly creative. As the second line in this set, connecting rappers to sex, Kendrick decides on “back when condom wrappers wasn't cool.” Upon first glance, this might seem to be a pretty abrupt transition from dreaming of living a rapper’s life of luxury to sex, but when read aloud, “condom wrappers” sounds a whole lot like “Compton rappers,” and Kendrick surely leans into this with his delivery of that line. Thus, Kendrick finds a way to deliver two ideas with one line, with both ideas tying the preceding and subsequent lines together. This is mastery. There are few albums with as much to analyze and interpret as “good kid, m.A.A.d city” (most of those few are also Kendrick albums). The fact that this album opened up that world of analysis and interpretation within music for me elevates it beyond those other Kendrick albums. This is my favorite album of Kendrick’s—it was my first—it will forever remain that way, and I am in no way surprised that this album held up to the same level I remember from my last listen through.

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Wed Oct 05 2022

5

Genius stuff. Has like 3 or 4 contenders for best rap songs of all time. I love it.

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Fri Oct 07 2022

5

With such vivid imagery, structure, and a compelling story, listening to this album is so enveloping it feels like a piece of cinema. It tells the story of life growing up in Compton but not always from the perspective of Kendrick and not always in order or at the same age. Kendrick's songs never seem to have one angle, there are always multiple ways of interpreting his lyrics. This is an album that requires several listens, it can’t be understood in one pass. Unfortunately I don’t have the time to write about every song but my favorite on this album has to be the the very dark “Swimming Pools”. It is an exploration of alcoholism and in true Kendrick style it not only explores the darker sides of the struggles against inner thoughts and the devastation caused to lives, but also depicts the feeling of escape and release that comes from sating the cravings and giving in to the drink. At the time of this album Kendrick occupied that rare space where someone was properly pushing at the boundaries of their genre and yet still managing to appeal to the masses. I don't think any other artist has existed to the same extent for a long time before and since. 10 years later you can still here the influence in hip hop today on both sides of the atlantic. 5/5

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Tue Oct 11 2022

5

This is the stuff that future Pulitzer Prizes are made of. Often hilarious, bleak and just plain exhilarating, good kid, m.A.A.d city sees King Kunta approach the genesis of his ascension to the top of the rap throne with all the confidence of his then youthful ability. Hard to believe that we are nearing ten years of listening to this m.A.A.d brilliance. Was it worth it? Absolutely. Did he put enough work in? Not just yes but there will be much more to come.

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Thu Oct 13 2022

5

Lost to Macklemore at the Grammys. 10/10

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Thu Oct 13 2022

5

10/10. Was not expecting to like this as much as I did. It takes everything I like about gangsta rap, which are somewhat few and far between, and puts them together into a very cohesive whole.

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Thu Oct 13 2022

5

10/10 one of the best

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Mon Oct 17 2022

5

Fucking banger

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Mon Oct 17 2022

5

Goated

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Tue Oct 18 2022

5

Ovo mi je u top 3 najbolja albuma 2010's - a bome ima jebačkih albuma u tom desetljeću. Konceptualno i ovako, jedan od najboljih hip hop albuma ikad.

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Sat Oct 22 2022

5

Couldn't really think of any good reason not to give this 5 if I'm honest. One of the best around. Listened to this twice in full since it popped up on my list - couldn't fault it either time.

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Sun Oct 23 2022

5

One of the greatest hip hop storytelling albums of all time. Brings back major memories from early high school. Wow what a breakout album for Kendrick. Instant classic.

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Mon Oct 24 2022

5

Every time I listen to good kid mAAd city it brings me back to the first time I heard it. It's like nothing before it and nothing since. Someone once described this album to me as a visual movie, and that's always stuck with me. It's a concept album executed perfectly, Kendrick's memoir. Beyond that, every single song has something amazing about it, and the density of great songs is higher than any project I've heard except for TPAB. As with any album I love, every time I listen I find a new song to appreciate even more. This time it was Compton, which makes sense as I've been on a bit of a Dre kick recently. Just excellent, the easiest 5 I've given on this list. I know taste differs, but I can't imagine anyone who actually listened to the entirety of this album rating it less than 4.

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Mon Oct 24 2022

5

Fantastic album. It’s part concept album and part list of mega singles. I’ve always loved this album but I never gave it enough credit for how meaningful it was. It’s so personal and raw while also applying those feelings to larger societal issues (alcoholism, police brutality, etc). fantastic production and really tasteful non musical interludes. A five for sure

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Wed Nov 16 2022

5

Siendo el segundo álbum, y su debut formando parte de una discográfica, este trabajo de Kendrick Lamar se puede considerar como su primer gran trabajo y su debut en la gran industria musical. Considerando al disco una historia de vida, vemos a "good kid, m.A.A.d city" como un retrato de lo que fue la adolescencia y vida de Kendrick, lidiando con pandillas, drogas y lo que se encontraba en su entorno en ese momento de su vida. En este álbum vamos a vernos absorbidos por las letras, las cuales van contando a modo de "cortometraje" (como bien se describe en la tapa del álbum) la historia de vida de Kendrick. A modo de catacumbas nos vamos hundiendo en la profundidad de beats y letras. Siendo los beats en un principio más trap superficial y terminando en canciones bien progresivas algo jazz, con una densidad más marcada. Pasa lo mismo con las letras, las cuales van de más livianas a más profundas. Poniendo en cuestionamiento varias situaciones, formas de vida y situaciones que pasan muchos jóvenes. Me parece interesante y alucinante la forma que tiene este gran rapero para transmitir y llegar con sus trabajos, superándose desde un primer momento y haciéndolo hasta el día de hoy. Sin dudas, la gran estrella del rap.

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Wed Nov 16 2022

5

Classic

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Wed Nov 16 2022

5

I was so happy to see this album when I woke up this morning. I was in high school when it came out and I remember riding around my hometown or going to parties just banging this thing. Kendrick does so well at telling a story through the imagery of his lyrics and sound bits that pop in between songs. He also touches on a lot of relevant topics with blunt commentary that gives a good perspective to someone like me who hasn’t experience racism or gang culture. I love every minute of this record and hope I always will. 10/10

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Mon Nov 21 2022

5

The GOAT

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Tue Nov 22 2022

5

This albums awesome I love the whole connecting story deal going on. Even finding ways to make some of the not story driven tracks fit into it, very cool

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Sat Dec 03 2022

5

Kendrick Lamar AKA Comptons human sacrifice

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Tue Dec 06 2022

5

This is a truly extraordinary album, Kendrick delivering a modern classic. Kendrick is peerless right now- nobody else can match him for style, lyricism, artistry and flow. It’s thrilling to listen to an artist have a concept in mind of sounds and themes and deliver so convincingly and boldly too - few rap artists would risk sounding so vulnerable, so minimal and catchy hook free. The maturity from such an early album, the intelligence and insight. Simply stunning.

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Sun Dec 11 2022

5

It's GKMC, genuinely one of my fav albums ever and I'm buzzing I got to revisit it, just as good as I remember, easy 5 stars

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Mon Dec 12 2022

5

This was a fantastic album. I was a bit worried in the opening 2 or 3 songs that it was going to be a bit too ambitious for its own good and outstay its welcome. But as soon as the album hits its stride with "The art of peer pressure" (My personal favourite) it doesn't let up. Enough has been said about how good Lamar is as a wordsmith and rapper that at this point its almost become a cliché. But its only talked about so much because its true, he seamlessly shifts between styles and tones with such mastery its very impressive. But to me the true genius is how he puts an album together and who he surrounds himself with to do it. A great example of the fantastic sound design on show is on the titular "m.A.A.d city" which starts with quite an aggressive gangsta style beat and gradually morphs into something that would be quite at home on DJ shadow's "Endtroducing" but does it so totally seamlessly and without sounding out of place. I could keep writing for ages about this and while it doesn't fit into my usual criteria for a 5 (being usually reserved for my all time favourites) I've decided to promote it for being so engaging it makes me excited to do the review.

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Tue Dec 13 2022

5

One of the greatest Albums of all time

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