Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show was the most watched performance in the history of the game five for five at the grot [Music] like that’s all I can do man is just work on the art form and everything my daddy and my mama came to to accomplish one thing this is my brother Kendrick Lamar you always have somebody to relate to with Kendrick Lamar that’s what I represent man I just represent the people Kendrick Lamar Coming Out of Compton California has reached the global stage the pulit surprise in music Dam by Kendrick Lamar was being the King
of the West Coast gave the crown of Kendrick Lamar actually took it and uh he been running wild w in me rap fans everywhere are celebrating the return of Kendrick Lamar Kendrick Lamar Duckworth born on junee 17th 1987 to a workingclass family in Compton California grew up in one of the most infamously poor and violent cities in California after a childhood defined by a series of violent and traumatic events around him he was eventually saved by a love of Music poetry and songwriting that manifested into a series of amateurish rap mixtapes
that didn’t attract a huge audience but then throughout his early to mid 20s he would produce a series of award-winning albums that set his name in stone as one of the most popular and revered rappers alive but not just a great rapper of which there are many Kendrick transcended and became what many people considered the greatest rapper with his music becoming intrinsically linked to political issues he told stories that connected deeply with the listener as well as addressed broader issues and as American culture fell into a period of
civil unrest and political turmoil he became a sacred figure more than just a rapper or musician but instead an icon who spoke truth to power through his music giving a voice to the dreams and the struggles of a whole generation his music became the soundtrack to an Era booming from speakers at every protest and rally but most of all it elevated him to near mythical status placing him on a Golden Throne where few artists had ever been able to reach after climbing from the bottom of the bottom he reached millions of albums sold 18 Grammy Awards
and became the only person outside of jazz or classical to ever win the Pitzer prize for music but then he disappeared for five long years even at the peak of the political moments that many people felt he represented he remained silent but when he came back he was more controversial musically and personally more divisive more aggressive his music changed completely and so who really is Kendrick Lamar and what does he really represent if you’re interested in more of my Creations my brand spirit world just launched two new necklaces chaos
and Harmony every necklace is solid silver with hand painted enamel and they’re the craziest designs you’ve put out yet the brand directly supports volksgeist it’s all designed by me I made these necklaces to be a reminder that whatever your goal is the only way to reach it is to just keep going persistence and belief is the key to success and there’s no Harmony without chaos first if you want to support my work and pick up a necklace you can scan the QR code on screen or go to spiritorium the Robert Taylor homes an
Infamous housing project not far from the modern-day oock Kenny was running with the Gangster Disciples on the south side of Chicago Paula his girlfriend was afraid he was going to end up dead or in jail eventually she gave him an ultimatum they could escape the cycle of Violence by leaving Chicago to look for a better life or their relationship was over and so before long they were on a train to California bringing with them only two garbage bags full of clothes and $500 in cash looking for a better future by going as far away from home as
they possibly could even if they had no idea what was waiting for them on the other side and only had one distant relative in the entire State of California to rely on it took a long time for the couple to figure out a stable living situation in their new state for 3 years they worked in fast food slept in their car sometimes stayed in motels if they could afford it and sometimes they even slept in the park if it was warm enough on summer nights finally they saved enough to get an apartment in Compton a small
workingclass City south of downtown LA in Los Angeles County things were finally going better A lot better and not long after they moved into a more permanent residence their first son was born a boy named Kendrick after Eddie Kendricks of the Timeless R&B group The Temptations it was the summer of 1987 and things were finally looking up for Kenny and Paula but their troubles were far from over in reality they had unknowingly sent their own family into an even worse situation than they had been trying to escape back in the
streets of Chicago La is one of the world’s Global cities one of the top locations on Earth for business cultural experience and entertainment everything from the warm weather to the beautiful beaches and mountains makes La a global icon its lifestyle being a dream for millions of people around the world but for millions of others it can also be a nightmare for many years Greater Los Angeles has suffered from Air pollution poverty gang violence drug trafficking homelessness police brutality a housing crisis and countless other issues that
can make everyday life a struggle for millions of people as the city’s problems reached a boiling point in the late 80s and early 90s Compton became Ground Zero for California’s Urban Decay sitting in the middle of LA’s endless concrete sprawl an ocean of rundown homes stretched out beneath an infinite blanket of smog with Streets Run by gangs and a community suffering from addiction Compton and LA in general had once been a symbol of the American dream but it was now devolving into an underworld where violence could erupt at
any moment beneath the harsh California Sun and Kendrick Lamar Duckworth a young kid growing up in Compton in the early 90s had a front row seat to watch it all unfold in front of him and shape the way he viewed the world forever but first of course he would have to survive Kendrick Lamar has always described his childhood in Compton as chaotic outside but stable inside with his parents support and guidance being a big force in his life despite the turmoil around them he’s talked a lot about them putting a strong
emphasis on education in a safe home environment despite everything else going on and how that shaped who he became as he grew up even though they often struggled there was always food to eat at home and Christmas presents under the tree every year his mom later said that Kendrick was a very quiet and observant kid showing maturity from a young age that inspired his family to start calling him manman as a toddler he’s talked a couple times in the past about things like riding bikes around his neighborhood with friends sneaking
into his parents house parties and dancing in living room when he was supposed to be sleeping and walking to and from school with his mom all being positive childhood memories while he was a little kid in Compton but Kendrick’s childhood innocence wouldn’t last long his parents couldn’t hide the outside world forever especially not in a city like Compton he tells the story of seeing a young man shot dead outside their Section 8 apartment building when he was 5 years old a guy was outside serving narcotics and somebody rolled up
with a shotgun and blew his chest out Kendrick later said it changed him forever he said admittedly it did something to me right then and there it let me know that this is not only something I’m looking at but that it might be something I have to get used to and despite his parents working hard to give their family a better life Compton in the early 9s wasn’t a land of opportunity where you could lift yourself up by your bootstraps overnight and achieve the American dream it was a place where the cops were just as bad as
any gang members and high-paying jobs are few and far between with a grim reality drowning out the sunny weather and Landscapes that most people imagine when they think of life in Southern California one defining moment in Kendrick’s young life was the LA riots in the spring of 1992 following the jury AC quiddle of four LAPD officers who had been in charge with beating an LA resident named Rodney King the following protests and riots resulted in not only over a billion dollars in Damages making it the most destructive period of civil
unrest in US history but also the deaths of over 60 people and the arrest of more than 12,000 for more than a week La was at war with itself with over a thousand buildings being destroyed from Compton to Korea Town and everywhere in between according to Kendrick Lamar that week was one of his earliest memories he was 4 years old almost five riding down the road near Compton with his dad I was with my pops down Bullis Road and looked out the window to see people just running I could see smoke we stopped and my pops goes into the Auto Zone and came
out rolling for tires I knew he didn’t buy them and I was like what’s going on his dad said we were all taking stuff that’s just how it was gedrick also said then we got to the house and my uncles were like we’re going to get this we’re going to get that I’m thinking they’re robbing there’s some real Mayhem going on in La as time progressed I’m watching the news hearing about Rodney King and I said to my mom so the police beat up a black man and now everybody’s mad I get it now the US military was eventually
deployed to restore order to LA but in the aftermath of the riots a hole was left where the community once was massively affecting almost everybody in South Central LA The Story Goes that the majority of commercial buildings that were looted and burned in the riots never reopened with many business owners being rejected for loans to rebuild their property leading to a loss of jobs Economic Opportunity and general decline in an area that was already struggling and despite his parents working around the clock the Duckworth family situation
in Compton hadn’t improved very much even by the time Kendrick was in school and his younger siblings were starting to be born they were on food stamps living in Section 8 Housing and overall struggling to make ends meat even worse it wasn’t long until the lifestyle that Kendrick’s family had fought to escape and leave behind in Chicago found them again in California Kendrick has talked over the years about how his dad had a job at KFC but he eventually realized his work schedule wasn’t adding up Kendrick had figured out that his dad
was secretly working in the streets to make ends meet for his family his dad later said I did what I had to do but that wasn’t all two of Kendrick’s un eventually got sent to prison on robbery charges and one of them was even shot in the head outside a burger restaurant in Compton in 1995 when Kendrick was in elementary school the murder rate in Compton was 10 times higher than Chicago and 20 times higher than New York and so once he was in school exposed to the outside world on a regular basis Kendrick Lamar would have some of the
most turbulent and difficult experiences of his life so far while also discovering a passion and Obsession that would change his life forever around the same time as Kendrick was opening his eyes for the first time as a kid only to be surrounded by Darkness he was also surrounded by energy and art for all the violence the struggle the inequality and Chaos of Compton it also brought Kendrick Lamar a moment of inspiration that he would remember for the rest of his life in 1995 when he was 8 years old a core memory was formed when he and his
dad were out in Compton and happened to come across Tupac and Dr Dre filming the video for California Love just a few blocks from where they were living lifting Kendrick up on his shoulder so he could see over the ocean of other neighborhood kids who had grouped around according to Kendrick it was a moment that changes life forever that moment right there whether I knew it or not eventually branched me off to what I’m doing now 15 years later I met Dr Dre and explained that story to him and he remembered the exact same moment and all
the kids that were out there and one of them was me he also said when Tupac was here and I saw him as a 99-year-old I think that that was the birth of what I’m doing today from the moment that he passed I think the things that he was saying would eventually be carried on through someone else but I was too young to know that I would be the one doing it in school Kendrick was an observant student with good grades struggling with a stutter in Elementary in middle school he was also quiet and found it difficult
to express himself but as he started to overcome that he was also introduced to poetry for the first time by a teacher he had in seventh grade he quickly became obsessed with Rhymes metaphors and double on tandas even writing for fun when he was at home which his parents encouraged him to keep doing even though his early material included a lot of curse words they didn’t approve of we used to wonder what he was doing with all that paper his dad said I thought he was doing homework I didn’t know he was writing lyrics I had never
even heard him say profanity before said his mom but then I found his rap lyrics and it was all Fu this d i c k that and I was like oh my God Kendrick’s a cusser but by the time he got to high school the outside world had become more disruptive and dangerous than ever before and it was about to change him forever but only after it almost killed him first in nth grade when Kendrick failed gym class and had to go to summer school to pass to the next grade he ended up having to avoid a gang war that would pop off in the hot evenings as he
walked home 10 grade summer school I had to class and this was the time the the gang Rivals was Heavy between you know my neighborhood and the neighborhood a few blocks down we always debate like damn I hate going to the summer scho class cuz we got to walk home at this time in the summertime where we know the war likes to pop off around the evening people like to ride through and that’s when the senseless violence like to happen eventually even he got caught up in it the school he went to Centennial sits in the heart of Compton and at the
time Kendrick went there had a graduation rate of less than 60% and even Kendrick who who had always been an observant smart kid couldn’t help but get swept up into the world he was surrounded by while Kendrick got A’s in high school and even graduated which many of his classmates didn’t he was surrounded by what most people would consider a bad crowd Kendrick never went to jail or joined a gang but he found himself Towing the line more than once whether it was getting shot at or taking a friend who had been shot to the
hospital or driving around Compton with guns in the car it got to a point where his parents even kicked him out of the house for a while although Kendrick was pretty smart and motivated even someone someone like him couldn’t completely avoid everything he was surrounded by watching his friends lose themselves to drugs Rob people join gangs go to jail or even die the pressure to give up his potential and lose himself in Compton was ever present if it weren’t for the people in Kendrick’s life pushing him in the right direction anything could have
happened there’s a quote from the book The Butterfly Effect by Marcus J Moore that says this by the time Kendrick got to high school his career path was set he was going to be a rapper and nothing could make him Veer off the course one day in particular Matt Jeezy and Kendrick were walking home from Centennial High School when the budding rapper just couldn’t stop rapping he started coming up with Rhymes off the top of his head and he didn’t stop until four or five blocks later when he and Matt Jeezy were close to their homes it
was about 20 minutes worth of rapping Jeezy recalls at that moment his friend knew that Kendrick had what it took to be a star all he needed to do was stay away from the pitfalls of life in Compton his friend said I was like damn Kendrick if you stay out of jail and stay alive you’re going to make it the words that literally came out of my mouth were don’t go to jail and don’t die because sadly prison and death beset many of their friends at one point in high school Kendrick was found by his mom crying on the front lawn of their
house which his parents thought had something to do with his grandma passing away only to find out later that he was breaking down after his friend had been shot in front of him another time the police showed up at his parents house to tell them that Kendrick had been involved in an incident in the neighborhood which made his parents kick him out of the house for 2 days and that was a big part of what saved Kendrick from what he was getting into at the time the loving yet power ful influence of two parents especially his dad I was
the only one in probably only one in America if I with a actual active father in his life I don’t know well at least in Compton he always had so much of a love for me he give me the wisdom in the game to say you know what I did that don’t do that and sometimes he can stop it sometimes he couldn’t because I still had my friends surrounded me in the community and each block in coment is a gang you know what I’m saying so these the people I grew up with these people that I love for and when you’re around them you have peer pressure of course as
a kid so I bumped my head a few times but what they didn’t have what I had was somebody to say all right you bumped your head now see what happened you in back of a police car see what happened you at the station nobody was telling them that so they cute doing it over and over again at age 16 he started running with the wrong crowd partying drinking alcohol it was really just kid stuff the same stuff that teenagers had done for Generations but given Kendrick’s neighborhood in family history his behavior foreshadowed a possible life of
crime and even gang affiliation Kenny his dad wasn’t having it he had come too far to watch his son fall victim to the same habits Kendrick says my father told me I don’t want you to be like me Kendrick later said it himself my dad had a big role I think one of the biggest influences in my life just off the fact of growing up in Compton and having all these peers around me with no fathers and even seeing my homies the way they grew up and the route they went down I couldn’t do nothing to stop it you know as a kid the biggest influence
on you is your pops not only that but your pops being an active pops I grew up around all types of [ __ ] my whole family is Crips and pyrus I always had that right there but just out of respect for my Pops I never jumped into the life that was around me at of respect that I have for him I still got into ignorant [ __ ] and did rebellious [ __ ] and even that almost [ __ ] my life over but he was always right there to yanked me back into a reality check he wasn’t the most perfect person in the world he had been
through a whole lot of [ __ ] but he didn’t want me to follow the same steps he went through so it was a big influence on my thoughts and my music and my actions having him in my life this conflict Kendrick experienced as a young kid this moral war between the violent streets outside and the talent and the potential inside this would become the exact theme that Kendrick would channel into his musical storytelling as he became a young adult and decided to pursue a career as a rapper this idea is the story of section
80 and good kid Mad City the albums that would turn him into a star but first of course he would have to grind for a long time and turn himself into a master of his craft and even though his high school was such a turbulent and dangerous experience it also set him on the path that would make him a legend at the start of 10th grade he met Dave free another kid from the local area whose family had also moved to California from Chicago Dave was business-minded running rap battles at school during lunch and building a makeshift studio with a
microphone gifted by his older brother and from the first time he met Kendrick he could see that he was on a different level of creativity and before long they had put together a mixtape thanks to the help of Dave’s big brother who made beats for fun and that was the first small step towards their future success at 17 years old Kendrick dropped his first mixtape Young Neighbor In Charge together with Dave free they gave it a professional touch with the few resources they had burning CDs and staging photo shoots that captured a
young Kendrick looking like a little kid in oversized t-shirts outside in Compton and musically Kendrick’s first ever mixtape isn’t that bad it’s definitely not the most amazing thing ever but nothing made by a 17-year-old is going to be when Rolling Stone magazine did a 10-year later review of it they said it did sound like something made by someone who would later be the best in the business but they also said that his flow was overly beholden to people like Jay-Z and Lil Wayne and his Bars were clumsy and that sounds pretty accurate
to me the cover art is just a picture of Kendrick Lamar with an email and a phone number next to it and the email is hold the@ yahoo.com I mean obviously this is just made by some kids at the end of the day the weird thing about this mixtape though isn’t actually the fact that Kendrick was pretty good at rapping back then it’s the fact that he basically manifested his future on one of these songs there’s a track where he says What Separates Me from the other local young rappers there is no separation because
I’m not competing with them I’m competing with their favorite rappers and it actually later came true anyone could say that but listening to Kendrick predict his own future into some shitty old USB mic andc comped in 18 years ago on top of an R&B be it’s pretty mind-blowing but as far as actually getting the mixtape out there was concerned they didn’t have a lot of options the internet wasn’t yet a viable platform for music distribution in 2004 and their local connections were pretty limited the only place Kendrick had ever
done a show was Tiny local comedy clubs and a tattoo two parlor but they did have one promising lead Anthony Top Dog tiffith a local producer from the Compton area but top dog was no stranger to the streets in fact his big motivation for pursuing music in the first place had been to use it as an escape from dealing drugs his own uncle had been shot and ended up in a wheelchair from a gang shooting and later turned to music as an outlet eventually producing songs for NWA in the early 90s and Top Dog also saw that
same path as his best shot for getting out of his lifestyle with his life still intact he ended up producing a couple of successful songs for artists like the game and juvenile in the late ’90s and he even built a recording studio in his apartment and started an independent record label Top Dog entertainment in 2004 and so essentially this guy with a home studio and a small amount of clout in the industry was Kendrick Lamar and Dave Free’s best shot at getting their music heard by the outside world Dave free later recalled trying just about
anything to get into top Dog’s good graces at this point he and Kendrick were just recent high school graduates with no equipment no connections and no EXP experience and they didn’t even know Top Dog personally but Dave who had recently gotten a job working as a computer technician while still helping Kendrick on the side one day got a call from Top Dog himself because he was having computer troubles at his home studio one day he received a call from TDE founder Anthony tiffith a local underworld operator gone legit who at
this point in time needed his computer fixed when free arrived at tith’s house he assessed the situation and immediately realized he wasn’t going to be able to fix the computer but he knew he had an opportunity to get Kendrick Lamar’s music in front of an important pair of ears so he put on the rapper’s latest mixtape and started to take apart Tiff’s computer as slowly as he could as soon as the mixtape was over Dave free turned to tiffith and said man I don’t think I can fix this but Top Dog did like Kendrick’s music he liked it enough
in fact that he agreed to hear him audition and signed him to Top Dog not long after as the labels second artist this is a quote from a 2014 interview on their first meeting at TD Studio Anthony tiffith ran young Lamar through his trademark Talent test he said I told k to get on the mic and flow over some beats I chose I like to make rappers spit over double time beats to try to stumble them up but he was rapping like a mother effer I tried to act unimpressed but that made him go even harder he stepped up and we’ve been
rocking together ever since and so finally Kendrick had at least some resources to help him Chase his dreams a real studio to record it other artists to collaborate with it was a chance at recognition he wouldn’t be able to get otherwise but it would still be more than five more years of hard work writing performing and recording non stop making music his entire purpose in life before he would finally perfect his sound and get introduced to the masses at last Kendrick Lamar had to grind for a long time before his career took off
even though he got signed in 2004 he was still a kid trying to find his sound and it wasn’t like top dog was a major label that could just turn him into a star overnight it was an independent company with two or three artists and it was started by a guy with limited industry experience and a studio in the back of his house Kendrick spent some of these years working regular jobs including his last job before the fame which was working as a security guard in Compton looking at Kendrick now and seeing the way that people talk about him and the
way that people view him it would be easy to assume that he was instantly a genius at music and songwriting but in reality that wasn’t the case he started off a lot like anybody else making mixtapes that no one really listened to and just grinding for a long time with no real payoff in sight besides the joy he got from making music in 2006 at the age of 19 Kendrick even landed a deal with Def Jam it was a development deal that led to a feature on a track by The Game and he even got free access to professional studio time but the label
ultimately passed on signing him looking back Kendrick even said it was just a situation where I wasn’t ready but even though he had been grinding for a few years and not only hadn’t blown up yet but had even lost a huge opportunity he still didn’t give up The Story Goes that at this point after C4 wasn’t his big break Kendrick was forced to face his choices and reckon with his career so far he ultimately decided to stop using the name k dot the pen name he had been going by so far far and instead use his real name Kendrick Lamar in an attempt
to grow as an artist and take his career to the next level why why the name change from K out to Kendrick Lamar [ __ ] just felt like I need people to know my story I’m mature now I want to I want to let people know that I’m an actual uh artist who does music and why not start if you want to know who I am as a person first then get into the music Why not start with my real name so and early in 2010 Kendrick got his first shot to go on tour and rap on a big stage when Tech 9 a famously independent artist known for huge touring schedules
and crazy concerts recruited not Kendrick but jayrock another TDE artist to open for him but with Jrock and Kendrick being friends and coming up on the label together Jay brought Kendrick along to be his hype man basically Kendrick was the opener for the opener he spent most of his time on stage yelling put your hands up in between jrock’s verses but he also usually got to play one or two of his own songs every night when a member of tech 9’s team was asked later if Kendrick seemed like a future star back in 2010 he said
said this could I predict he was going to be a superstar definitely not nobody could if anybody says that they’re lying unless it was somebody from his own immediate Camp who really believed in him if you saw Kendrick in 2009 or 2010 you wouldn’t say that guy’s going to win a Pulitzer Prize someday this kid reinvented himself and separated himself from the pack there’s also this quote from Tech 9 a review of the tour’s Eugene Oregon stop has a small mention of Kendrick saying that he and Jrock please the audience Tech agrees
remembering that people love Kendrick’s brief moment in the spotlight even though they didn’t know who he was he said when he blew up all the fans were like I didn’t know I met Kendrick Lamar at the meet and greet but sure enough not long after that Kendrick dropped the mixtape that changed his life forever and that project was overly dedicated dropped in 2010 when he was 23 years old way before the world knew him as Hip Hop’s best living Storyteller it’s a raw Restless project from a young man carrying the burden of his City it
wasn’t as polished as his later work but it’s not that far from it either even though it was his fifth or sixth mixtape it’s the first one that really sounds like Kendrick Lamar all throughout you can hear the skill in the rapping the hunger the voices the flows something had changed plus the dark Jazzy slower beats paint a vivid picture of his life in Compton so finally Kendrick Lamar had arrived no longer was he a kid named K dot but now an artist with his own identity and sound tracks like the Heart part two and ignorance is bliss show an
artist caught between his environment and his conscience Torn Between the street politics of Compton and the self-awareness that he’s meant for something greater and portraying the good and bad of life in Compton in a more artistic human way is what makes overly dedicated so good it’s Kendrick Lamar standing on the edge of something huge staring into the abyss and deciding which way to go it’s the last moment before success and you can hear how it changed him it’s an interesting preview of the road he would eventually go down
with his music and it even reached the billboard hip-hop charts but it lacked a powerful single to reach the airwaves Kendrick was almost ready he was really close but still not quite there yet at least not compared to to where he would later end up while overly dedicated is an hour long and full of songs that a lot of Hardcore Kendrick fans consider to be just as good as anything he made later there was one particular song on the project that literally took him to the next level and made his career possible that song is ignorance is bliss
a song where Kendrick seems at first to be glorifying violence but in reality it’s a chilling commentary on the cyclical self-destructive mentalities that cause violence in places like Compton it’s not just a song it’s an internal monologue a conversation between Kendrick’s cont ious mind and the version of himself that might have never left the streets over a slow hypnotic beat he wraps with unsettling calmness breaking down the psychology of violence this approach would become one of Kendrick’s signatures using
character-driven narratives to explore complex social issues in a way that everyone can relate to and understand but this particular song was so good that when Dr Dre one of the most legendary producers to ever come out of California caught it on YouTube he had to reach out and maybe even sign him to his label but Kendrick at this point was so fresh that when the call from Dr Dre came in he didn’t even pick up because he and his friends thought it was fake Kendrick later said he called my phone he called my engineer’s phone and he
said he was looking for us but we thought it wasn’t real finally Dr Dre got in touch with Kendrick’s management and locked in in the studio with Kendrick for 8 or n days banging out records for detox and years later Kendrick would laugh about their first meeting he said it came to a point where I had to snap out of fan mode and become a professional after we were introduced he said he liked my music and I said I liked his music then he said okay now write to this write to this and right to that and then right after Kendrick just
kept going on and saying man Dr Dre you’re the greatest and Dre was like you know what you’re good too now go right to this beat but thanks to Kendrick’s hard work on his fifth mixtape overly dedicated he finally had more connections and resources available to him he had gone from a guy opening for the opener on a tour to someone who had Dr Dre in his Corner in just a year but in reality it had been several years of hard work to get there but less than a year after this would come Kendrick’s true debut album that would boost his
career more than ever before Kendrick Lamar’s debut album section 80 despite now being considered an exceptional piece of music was released without significant mainstream promotion or coverage it debuted at number 113 on the billboard 200 just a few spots above Tyler of the crator goblin which had already been out for 6 months it was Kendrick’s first time hitting the charts but that still isn’t a very high number it was a slow burn though and as Kendrick rapidly became more popular after it came out it would end up going
gold a few years later despite only selling 5,000 copies in its verion week and the reason for that is because artistically section 80 was huge Forbes wrote that it was the Genesis of Kendrick Lamar balancing social commentary with Mass Appeal One reviewer wrote that Kendrick Lamar is always clear as a bell he’ll be great or he’ll die trying that much is obvious but section 80 will always be an amazing sounding hip-hop album other West Coast artists showed respect as well Snoop Dog declared him the new King of the West
Coast while he did shows at college campuses and small clubs around the US musically it’s a lot like a more mature version of overly dedicated it’s prettyy funny that if you go back and read old reviews and comments about section 80 a lot of people didn’t like Kendrick’s voice when this album first dropped people complained about his high pitch which is funny because that’s not something you’ll ever hear people say anymore some people though didn’t even like his writing they said Kendrick Lamar always felt promising but he’s
also weird not just his voice but the way he decided to explain ideas feels like a guy whose mind is racing so quickly that he’s incapable of tying Big Ideas to understandable verbalizations the instrumental are darker and more interesting the mixing is clear and of course Kendrick storytelling is on a whole other level in my mind section 80 is a lot like a collection of campfire stories it’s not so much an analysis of social and political issues themselves but a meditation on the way different vices and pitfalls can affect people in
a much more personal way not as an aloof disconnected commentator or conscious artist but as someone who’s surrounded by the people in issues he’s talking about growing up in Compton and centering the story of the project around the different ways that life in Compton can be dark and light at the same time Kendrick had seen the darkest parts of the world of life and society and that’s what gave him the wisdom at a young age to explore complex issues in his music without it sounding forced or corny of course the album also has ADHD
which would become Kendrick’s first real hit song but there’s a lot of great stuff in the Deep cuts too my favorite track is the dark Jazzy Kush and Corinthians in which Kendrick explores the record’s ultimate question removing himself from the humanity on Earth and asking God if he can still be a good Christian and be worthy of despite his human nature the same human nature that allows for sin plus the production on this song is basically a precursor to to pimpa Butterfly but for his career section 80 was a turning point before
Kendrick had been a minor player a talented yet Niche rapper who made his money from touring with bigger artists someone who just a few years earlier had been working a regular job as a security guard and had even been dropped from a major label because he wasn’t ready yet well now the switch had flipped his music was reaching New Heights combining deep storytelling with undeniable rapping and great production he was ready and while section 80 might not have been a huge commercial hit it did exactly what it needed to do making sure
that Kendrick’s next project would have all the support the industry could possibly provide there’s an interview from a few months after section 80 came out where Kendrick pretty much gets interrogated about why he wasn’t yet on a major label again section 80 was a download only independent release and so basically the interviewer asking do you want to be famous or do you want to be Niche because at that time for people who were watching Kendrick Lamar it wasn’t really clear the interviewer asks I saw a tweet a couple of weeks ago that
you were in contact with nas how did that happen you have Beats from Dr Dre Beats from farel these are pricey guys to get and then what’s up with your mixtape with J.Cole they even asked if he had recently met up with Drake who at the time was a bit further along in his career than Kendrick was section 80 might have been a small independent drop but it was good enough to attract some of the biggest names in music at the same time and so if section 80 was the only album Kendrick had ever made he’d still be a good artist but within the
next year of that he would become one of the great ones after going from playing shows at Compton comedy clubs to getting signed by Top Dog entertainment to opening for the opener at Tech 9 concerts to forming a close relationship with Dr Dre Kendrick’s next big opportunity came when a 26-year-old rapper from Toronto called Drake who was quickly becoming one of the biggest new pop stars in hip-hop called and asked for him to join as an opener on the tour for his second album take care take care had debuted at number one on the
billboard 200 a big enough hit that he was suddenly selling out venues with room for 10 15,000 people or more all over the world it was a big opportunity for essentially who was a broke young rapper like Kendrick to be on stages that huge while on the road with Drake and ASAP Rocky throughout Europe and North America Kendrick Lamar got to rap in front of bigger audiences than ever before and even form a bond with the artists he was out there touring with a bond that would continue long into the Future For Better or For Worse this is
my brother ASAP Rocky this is my brother Kendrick Lamar you for one of the greatest nights of our lives and until the next time we see you take care not long after the tour he finally signed to Dr Dre’s aftermath label under iners scope and started putting together his biggest album yet with all the resources a major label could provide they say as an artist you have 25 years to make your first hit and then only 6 months to make your second good kid Mad City is Kendrick’s second album but it was so good that it was almost like
nothing came before it even counted at all it was the story of his life like a massive cinematic version of everything he had made up until that point in the 9 years he had been recording music till then and good kid Mad City was a massive hit debuting at number two on the billboard 200 and selling 200,000 copies in its first week even more than that though good kid Mad City was nominated for seven Grammy Awards including album of the year and it was listed by many magazines as the best album of 2012 just a couple months after it came out
complex wrote that good kid Mad City will surely catapult Kendrick into the upper echelons of rap his debut will have to be compared to the like of Jay-Z Snoop Dogg and Nas If you think those comparisons are lofty consider the fact that the people involved in the making of This Album have compared Kendrick to everyone from Bob Dylan to John col train and soundwise good kid Mad City was a masterclass in simple yet Timeless West Coast Production with heavy baselines funky syns and smooth background vocals while also
incorporating elements of jazz soul and even trap throughout the project with downtempo production and a warm cozy sound with background vocals and piano throughout the album many people compared it to out Outcast when it came out and the technique of using smooth music as a backdrop for rough stories was true to the west coast rap tradition according to many critics and it was put together by a pretty crazy team producers like Dr Dre Fel Williams hitboy Terrace Martin all came together to create Timeless West Coast sounds for
Kendrick to tell some of the craziest stories ever told by a rapper on top of because that was what really made it a masterpiece the legendary producers the amazing production the features from stars like Drake Dr Dre and even a remix from Jay-Z that was all great but but none of that defined the album as much as the story because if section 80 was a documentary about life in Compton capturing the atmosphere of the city and the spirit of the people living there good kid Mad City was an autobiographical Coming of Age movie and
in the eyes of many people it’s one of the greatest albums ever made with a story as Vivid and deep as any movie by Tarantino or Scorsese with the album literally saying a short film by Kendrick Lamar on the cover the way that you can sit back and sink into the story about the drug infested streets and Gang Lifestyle experienced by Kendrick and his friends like it’s a movie is no mistake plus making the album itself was a Coming of Age experience for Kendrick Lamar it might have been his seventh project he might have already been
rapping for 9 years but in his words it was the album he always wanted to make he later said I’ve been planning this for years everything was premeditated I already knew what I wanted to talk about what I wanted to convey and I had the album cover ready for years I knew I was going to use it and that it was the best description of what I was talking about in the album It’s a long time coming for me the album cover of good kid mat City shows a young Kendrick Lamar probably around 2 or 3 years old sitting on an
adult’s lab and in the frame you can see this toddler sitting next to his uncle throwing up gang signs with a baby bottle and a 40 oz liquor bottle sitting right next to each other a stark contrast that symbolizes the loss of Innocence theme that runs throughout the record and of course it is literally a real photo of Kendrick from his childhood but despite it being so candid perfectly describes the themes of the album and throughout the course of the record Kendrick illustrates his own real life experience of growing up and
maturing where losing his innocence or even his life was just as likely as him making it out alive the album takes place in 2004 so the skits are reminders of what’s going on in the story it’s basically as if you were to go back in time and put a microphone in the middle of Kendrick and his people before they were going to go do the house lick or going to visit people or meet up with girls in the beginning of the album he’s a distracted kid who takes a lot of risks and runs with the wrong crowd he’s chasing women getting drunk even
burglarizing a home with his friends his character is on a path towards self-destruction and the story of the record comes to a head at the end of swimming pools when one of Kendrick’s friends Dave is killed and Kendrick comes to the abrupt realization that he must change his ways or face severe consequences Kendrick later said this that’s the story of it all right there in that song I’m breaking down the actual incident that changed my life one of my partners got smoked and I was there to witness it but the next song on
the album sing about me I’m dying of thirst is one of my favorite songs of all time Kendrick explores the ways that his rough upbringing made him him obsessed with death how his constant exposure to violence abuse and drugs at a young age gave him a dark outlook on life my favorite lines come in the third verse where he WPS cursing the life of 20 Generations after her soul exactly what would happen if I didn’t continue rapid he Compares poverty to a curse referencing the idea that a lack of education and financial stability can
influence one’s Offspring for Generations creating a cycle of poverty that lasts forever to me that’s what good kid Mad City is all about that makes it one of the best albums I’ve ever heard by examining the cycle of poverty Kendrick was born into looking at himself and his actions with Clarity he can not only change his cycle but Inspire others to do the same as well at the end of the 12-minute Masterpiece song The outro depicts a neighbor played by Maya Angelou scolding Kendrick and his friends for carrying guns and
looking for revenge against the people that killed their friend she tells them that they’re dying of thirst and must be saved by God in order to avoid further destruction before leading them through a prayer Kendrick later said that even this was a real incident he went through in his life he said the same my homeboy got shot I ran into an older lady I don’t want to say she was religious but she was spiritual and she broke down what life was really about for us he said I’m dying of thirst represents being in a situation where all this
happens throughout the day but at the end of the day we run into a particular person and she breaks down the story of God positivity life being free and being real throughout every song brilliant storytelling shines through and what makes good kid Mad City truly remarkable is how it transcends its specific setting of Compton it does tell the deeply personal story of a young black kid growing up in an impoverished la area but the album captures not just Kendrick’s youth but the universal journey of growing up that a lot of
people have to go through but what makes it so powerful is that every word of it was drawn from his real experiences and he was talented enough to use those experiences and share it with the world ultimately it’s a story about not letting the chaos of the outside world around you change who you are despite being tempted with gangs drugs women violence alcohol and crime and even having that picture of an innocent young kid sitting next to a 40 o liquor bottle with someone throwing up a gang sign Kendrick manages to stay true to himself
and become who he’s meant to be it’s a story that can Inspire countless people to do better and look for more good kid Mad City is a generationally significant piece of art there have been many stories like this throughout history and good kid Mad City represents the life experiences of a lot of people who are around today after it came out Kendrick Lamar was instantly a star someone who could make conceptual highlevel deep music but also be loved by millions and millions of People 2012 frell Williams said this about Kendrick Lamar Kendrick
Lamar is the Black Bob Dylan he’s a phenomenal rapper and his album will completely change the direction of rap but he’s so good that he doesn’t even have to care what’s going on with the radio after good kid Mad City came out Kendrick Lamar’s stock went to the moon he was so respected and loved that when mmore ended up getting Best New Artist and rap album of the year instead of him at the Grammys in 2014 mmore ended up apologizing because even he didn’t think he deserved to win over Kendrick Kendrick he a friend of mine he’s
somebody that I love his music and in my opinion had the best rap album of the year um and knowing how the Grammys usually go I knew that there would be a great chance that we could win that award and and in essence Rob Kendrick so um that’s what happened tonight it’s uh it it kind of sucks I mean I think that there I think we made a great album I think that Kendrick made a better rap album and that’s what it is that’s how loved he had become and with big hits like [ __ ] Don’t Kill My Vibe swimming pools money trees and more coming off
his last album he was no longer Niche or underground in any sense of the word as good kids started to settle Kendrick went out on various tours to promote his music including opening for Kanye on the yeus tour the absolute biggest shows he had done yet he also opened for Eminem’s Marshall matters LP2 tour and went out on his own good kid Mad City tour the first that was completely his he had reached a whole other level versus opening for the opener at a tech 9 concert just a few years earlier in 2013 among countless other singles features
and collaborations he also put out a particularly impactful verse on big Sea’s control a verse where he singled out a long list of rap Rivals mostly other young guys coming up at the same time as him essentially saying he’s the best rapper alive and he’s going to musically murder people like MC Miller Jay Cole ASAP Rocky Tyler the Creator and even Drake and in a way it was true Kendrick now had the awards the sales the critics a claim to the point where he could confidently claim his place among the best Rising rappers at the
time his journey from Compton to hip-hop royalty was complete but this was just the beginning of an even more ambitious artistic Journey because Kendrick Lamar wasn’t going to rest on his accomplishments or double down on his success instead he was going to completely reinvent himself an evolution that would challenge not his fellow hip-hop rivals in their mid-20s but actually the entire history of music but it wasn’t all positive at the exact same time he finally found the spotlight and became this Rising hero of hip-hop the
next greatest Lyricist alive Kendrick was also about to go through some of the darkest moments of his life in a way that would push him through pain and suffering to create music that was somehow even better than anything he had made before when Kendrick was touring with various artists throughout 2013 and 2014 after good kid Matt City had come out Grand nephew of John Crain and producer of legendary albums like cosmog Grandma and You’re Dead The Story Goes that at one point while flying Lotus was making beats and playing them for
Kendrick he accidentally played one that he hadn’t meant to turn on and quickly skipped it but it had already caught Kendrick’s ear who asked him to run it back only for flying Lotus to say that’s Funk you’re not going to rap on that and Kendrick later said it was like a dare you can’t blame flying Lotus for what he said up until that point Kendrick hadn’t ventured far from the west coast rap sound a lot of the production on his albums was Dynamic sensitive and beautifully crafted but it wasn’t like he was rapping over free form Jazz but
then that changed during a studio session with terce Martin a legendary producer and jazz artist from La who had been working with artists like Snoop Dogg the game and Stevie Wonder for years he had even worked on a few songs from good kid Mad City as well but the story goes that at a certain point during this specific studio session he looked at the way Kendrick was picking out chords and beats and he told him hold on a second you don’t understand you’re a jazz musician and that simple statement sent Kendrick down a path of
discovering a whole new side of Music itself and creating a new paradigm on his third album to pimp a butterfly made up of a long list of some of the greatest producers alive studios around the country and enough background in the production that you could make a whole movie Out of This Album alone the finished product was to pimp a butterfly a 78 minute long album including but not limited to experimental rap conscious hip-hop Jazz Soul Funk and more recorded with live instrumentation instead of traditional beats Kendrick was assisted
by artists like terce Martin doing sacks horns keys and strings Thundercat on the bass kamasi Washington on Sachs and Robert Glasper on Keys among many others Kendrick had the best instrumentalist he could possibly get on his side and the result was beautiful the saxophones are erratic the bass groupes are hypnotic the vocals are out of this world feverish and unique the energy just goes up and down some songs are dreamy and mellow some are like drunk nightmares some are both at the same time and arguably it was the kind of album that
hadn’t ever really been made before at all it can be brutal violent and beautiful all at the same moment and with every moment feeling spontaneous and real unlike the often sequenced and pre-recorded sounds of popular music it was unlike anything else Restless impossible to put in a box a million piece picture puzzle the way that Kendrick pulled together influence from almost every genre to make his third album every single classic album every legendary artist having representation in its sound and then he also released a
series of bsides from this era a year later called Untitled unmastered that’s basically an album of its own with some of the best jazz rap you’ll ever hear in just eight songs to pimpa Butterfly was instantly hailed as one of the greatest albums to come out in decades the response to this project was on a different level from it being a great album it was a whole other kind of respect and admiration he was nominated for 11 Grammys that year the second most of any artist in one year ever and so Not only was it commercially successful
with its number one debut on the charts but it was intellectually and musically significant as well there are many hit albums but there are way fewer that get their own page in the history of music but butterfly became such an object of Fascination for people that there are college classes and books about this project alone being ranked as the greatest album of all time on rateyourmusic.
com and receiving the best album ever made award from dozens if not hundreds of magazines and Outlets it’s safe to say that Kendrick’s insane swirling psychedelic dreamlike Odyssey to pimp a a butterfly solidified his place as one of the greatest musical artists alive but even more impactful than the Jazz was again the story and a big part of that was that during the making of to pimpa Butterfly behind closed doors Kendrick Lamar was hurting while he may have left Compton to tour around the world and accept Awards on any stage you could think of his parents
his siblings his friends and even his fiance were still out there in Southern California navigating the same ups and downs they always had been and at a certain point that started to hurt k without him there life had continued but unfortunately so did Death after good kid Mad City had come out and Kendrick was writing and working on early versions of to pimp a butterfly on the road he lost three of his close friends back in Compton in just one summer he later spoke of them saying this at about 9:00 p.m. on Friday July 12th 2013 a
white sedan with two African-American men inside drove by and shot at Chad he didn’t die that night or the next night he died 31 days later Chad was not in a gang and did not have a criminal record which unfortunately leads to the assumption that he was murdered in the wrong place at the wrong time Kendrick stated it all happened when I was overseas I talked to him over Skype on the hospital bed before he passed Kendrick States when Chad was killed I can’t disregard the emotion of me relapsing and feeling the same anger
I felt when I was 16 or 17 when I wanted the next family to hurt because you made my family hurt those emotions were still running in me thinking about him being slain like that whether whether I’m a rap star or not if I still feel like that then I’m a part of the problem rather than the solution the frustration and the agony of losing people when he was far from home threw Kendrick into a negative self-destructive mindset because he was going through survivors guilt completely powerless to help the people he cared about the crushing
weight of watching his friend die through a phone screen while he wrapped and danced on stages thousands of miles away was almost too much to bear on the song You from butterfly Kendrick fights his inner demons in a hotel room room wrestling with the feeling that he abandoned his community to achieve success the song’s second section delivered in a drunken tearful voice captures the devastating feelings he went through watching his people die from thousands of miles away and even the feeling of wanting to end his own
life to escape the torment and this Darkness Kendrick experienced at that time became the emotional Foundation of to pimp a butterfly pushing him to create something raw and honest about the true cost of making it out and the responsibility he had to be real and change the the cycle by any means possible although in the end butterfly wasn’t a mostly dark album in all it’s full of just as many if not more beautifully uplifting tracks like all right I King kuna and more because the lesson that Kendrick took away from the
nightmare he struggled with after the release of good kid Mad City was to use his influence for good and bring people up one hugely important moment came in 2014 when he paid a visit to the Jael cell where future South African president Nelson Mandela spent 18 years in solitary confin findan sleeping on a mat on a stone floor with no Plumbing even losing his mother and son while imprisoned and then still went on to be the president of South Africa just a few years after he was released Kendrick later said this Mandela was fighting for
equality serving 27 years in prison but still kept his mental capacity and still kept his integrity and enthusiasm to motivate people around him it inspired me 100% he said I took that experience and I looked Within Myself for my own experiences coming from a background of a neighborhood that wasn’t perceived to be great but I can’t let Four Corners Define who I am or who my homeboy are he said I took that experience and the whole concept about to pimp a butterfly was to share that to go back to Compton and tell people what I’ve learned it was
me explaining my emotions and what it brought up and to tell them the world is bigger than Compton and where we came from to pimpa Butterfly is so deep that it isn’t really something you can talk about in one video it somehow achieves a really deep narrative and meaning dealing with the struggles of black people in contemporary America while also being a high level accomplishment in jazz and poetry you have to listen to it for yourself but the way that Kendrick illustrates his journey out of depression not through a magical
Revelation or a sudden change in perspective but through a brutal process of clawing his way out of hell it’s an amazing story and one of the most unique albums ever made with an impact unlike anything else and then less than 2 years later in the spring of 2017 Kendrick dropped the biggest album of his career in every sense of the word with it also being again different from anything he had ever made this project Dam felt engineered to be as much of a hit as possible dropping the West Coast boombap free form Jazz for something much more
accessible and Broad that had massive replayability the impact of dam was immediate and huge critics were stunned by Kendrick’s ability to create something so accessible while maintaining his Artistic integrity and depth with Dam selling over 600,000 copies in its first week while every song on the album charted on the Hot 100 it would go on to win the pit Sur for music in 2018 making Kendrick Lamar the first non-jazz or classical artist to ever receive the award meanwhile Kendrick set out on a $62 million Dam
tour with Travis Scott as the opener while rolling stone called it a masterpiece of rap full of expensive beats Furious Rhymes and Peerless storytelling the album’s combination of radio-friendly production and complex material proved that Kendrick could dominate both commercially and critically eventually being certified triple platinum and winning best rap album at the Grammys while butterfly was an experimental jazz fusion Odyssey that Dove deep into complex social themes through metaphor and poetry Dam took a
sharp turn in the other direction Kendrick now wanted to reach the biggest audience possible but still without sacrificing the depth he was known for Dam Embraces hard-hitting trap beats and radio friendly hooks with to pimpa Butterfly being an abstract painting that requires careful study to appreciate Dam delivers its message through direct force it connected immediately with millions of listeners and it did lead in a way to to the absolute peak of Kendrick’s popularity to that point this was the moment that
he truly became a household name Dam goes triple platinum it spawns multiple hits like Pride humble DNA and more it dominates streaming platforms and social media for years after it came out and it became one of the defining popular albums of the 2010s these were songs that you could hear at a protest in a club songs that defined this moment in life for a generation but Dam didn’t give up Kendrick’s trademark themes narratives and stories he explores throughout the album The Duality human nature weaving together themes of Pride
and humility love and lust and fear and faith the album’s track titles represent opposing forces pride and humble lust and love fear and God creating a complex meditation on morality and personal identity Kendrick grapples with his success and fame while questioning his own virtues and vices all while examining broader ideas of religion race and culture at this point Kendrick had unquestionably become one of the most respected and popular rappers alive the three repeat of good kid Mad City into to pimp a butterfly into dam was unlike
anything else in modern music history none of his peers had done it and it almost hadn’t ever been done before each album got bigger and better while all being vastly different from the last but then as dam and the Black Panther album started to settle as the tours and the appearances came to an end Kendrick quietly faded into the background where he would stay for the next 5 years disappearing without a word right when the world was looking for him to say something or anything more than ever before because throughout the 2010s Kendrick’s
rise as an artist had come alongside a series of tense political moments that his music became inextricably linked to starting in 2014 the highly controversial and highly publicized police killings of black men like Eric Garner Michael Brown Tamir rice and others led to massive widespread large-scale protesting and civil unrest as tensions Rose in the Years following Kendrick’s music and messages became increasingly intertwined with the growing movement for racial Justice which was only becoming even more of a
mainstream issue as time went on songs like all right kinkuna humble and more were synonymous with the political mood of that time in history simply put he was probably the most important artistic voice during this pretty pivotal period in modern American history he never shied away from that either despite his mainstream popularity this is from a book about Kendrick Lamar by Marcus J Moore it says Lamar delivered one of the best most provocative Grammy performances ever he and his crew shuffled silently on stage in prison
chains demanding the audience digest the meaning behind the powerful image this country treats black men like criminals he performed an incredible theatrical medley of the black or the berry and all right fueled by tumultuous live jazz closing with an evocative image of a map of Africa and the word Compton written on top of it his performance spoke to the complex issues of black identity intergenerational trauma and joy with the emotionality and Nuance it required and people from all walks of life were paying attention and while Kendrick’s
music had always been primarily a personal expression ex of his experiences and his beliefs and lessons his writing and ideas got to the point that many people started to see him as an artistic leader of the Contemporary Black Liberation movement each one of his albums contained not just songs but genuinely meaningful political themes reflected off his life experiences and so when the situation reached a major boiling point in 2020 with the protests and riots following the death of George Floyd and the entire world every
celebrity artist politician and athlete were making their statements of support and solidarity EX except Kendrick Lamar his silence became a point of contention among onlookers many of whom said that he had abandoned the movement when it needed him most even though his music contained enough commentary for a lifetime and he himself was present at his local protests some people still felt that his lack of statements indicated a lack of interest when Kendrick finally came back 2 years after the largest series of
protests in American history and 5 years after his last album almost everything about his music was massively different from anything he had made before Mr morale and the big steppers was by far the least commercially accessible album he had made yet even less than the experimental Jazz of to pimpa butterfly with a sound that took inspiration from electronic genres with strange sound design introspective piano compositions and all throughout the album these piano-driven Melodies erupt into chaos with Kendrick’s voice shifting from
vulnerable Whispers to aggressive shouting often within the same few minutes a Sonic tension can be felt throughout but it wasn’t just that the music stood out as different instead Mr morale was defined by a shift towards deeply personal songwriting Kendrick was stepping away from the responsibility to be a voice for social justice instead his fifth album was his most personal yet and of course Kendrick had grown a lot dam was released when he was still in his 20s but Mr morale came out when he was 34 he and his fiance had had two
kids he left top dog to start his own creative agency with Dave free he helped launch the career of his cousin baby Keem he had grown and changed immensely as a person and a lot of that growth naturally had been difficult Mr morale plays out like a therapy session where Kendrick explores the most vulnerable topics and stories he’s ever touched on with his music he talks about his family his kids and his wife his mother father uncles and aunts he talks about his role as a protector and the people that protected him when he was younger he
talks about salvation and the journey towards forgiveness and the acceptance of trauma and even opens up about some trauma that he went through as a younger person he talks about his own Duality Reckoning with his capability to both be good and bad at the same time and the main them of the album isn’t a new one for Kendrick the struggle of the generational curse and the ways that the actions of one’s ancestors can follow you throughout your life creating a Perpetual cycle of negative behavior it’s definitely a dark and deep album
and it’s probably the least commercial album that Kendrick ever made but I think the people saying that Kendrick fell off were very wrong just because something doesn’t have as much pop appeal doesn’t mean it isn’t meaningful in fact I think Mr morale is his most emotional album yet he doesn’t extensively address all of the political expectations that were placed on his shoulders throughout the Last 5 Years leading up to the project but the closing track mirror is an implicit response where he says I choose me I’m
sorry referring to the idea that he can no longer be a cultural savior without first addressing his own family problems and personal struggles personally it’s one of my favorite albums Kendrick Lamar ever made and then a couple of years later on the 9th of February 2025 Kendrick Lamar took the stage for the single most viewed NFL Super Bowl halftime show ever even more than Michael Jackson’s performance in 1993 which held the record for over 30 years after 133 A2 million people tuned in to watch viewership of the game actually
went down after his performance was over Kendrick had become such a cultural force that more people wanted to watch him rap than see the Super Bowl but how did he get there after 5 years of mostly silence followed by the least commercially successful record of his career The Story Goes that it all started back in 2013 when Kendrick wrote that verse for big Sea’s control where he says I’m going to kill me Mill Tyler the Creator so on and so forth you know because he wanted to be the best obviously it was more friendly than
serious and everyone took it as what it was Kendrick was just bragging everyone except for one person Drake and Kendrick at least publicly had been good friends for a while already had brought a then mostly unknown Kendrick on his Club Paradise tour putting him in front of more people than ever before and they had both spoken several times about their mutual respect and friendship is even one of the only features on good kid mat city after control came out though Drake took that personally he ended up going on an ESPN TV interview
with marcelus Wy and absolutely spazzed out on Kendrick to the point where he had to make threats and beg the TV network not to air the interview to avoid an allout beef right then and there but it seems Kendrick ended up finding out anyway and a 10-year Cold War Began Kendrick was someone for whom Hip Hop was always a survival tactic it was a real cultural art form true to his life experience and when he got out into the world after years of hard work and started to get recognition and the first thing he saw was someone disrespecting
everything he stood for that was a problem over the next 10 years he made more and more music and became a more prominent figure in rap like I said he became an icon a Guiding Light but Drake did not Drake arguably became even more popular than Kendrick had more hit songs More album sales bigger tours but he couldn’t be more different from Kendrick Lamar Drake was a middle- class kid from Toronto who made a name for himself on TV before turning his interest towards rapping and his passion for hip-hop while strong wasn’t something
particularly true to his life in Old Drake interviews you can see him talking about how he doesn’t like the nword because it’s too thuggish and countless other examples of him being disconnected from the art form he later claimed at first though he had been putting out really good music Drake’s first few albums were cult classics and really popular too but as time went on and he got bigger the quality of his output became worse and worse until people felt he wasn’t a great rapper anymore even though he was more popular than ever not
only that but Drake’s questionable personal choices lifestyle and values became a subject of Interest as well having a kid out of wedlock promoting alcoholism and gambling to his impressionable audience having sex offenders on his staff his privileged background and his pattern of interest in underage women it’s easy to see how tension could come up between him and someone like Kendrick Lamar Kendrick who avoids drugs after an experience getting laced as a kid Kendrick who proudly raises his family Kendrick who’s used
his voice over and over to advocate for change at the highest level while Kendrick saw hip-hop as a path to Salvation both for himself his family and his community Drake’s relationship with the art form just couldn’t be more different of course though Kendrick Lamar isn’t a bulletproof Saint many people have pointed out his hypocrisy in calling out sex offenders so many times while also supporting people like Kodak Black and Dr Dre but not seeing him as a savior has been a theme throughout his recent music regardless and so their
contrasting life stories and approaches to music perfectly illustrate their fundamental differences plus they had been sneak dissing each other for many years already before their Feud erupted in public and if you want you can see an entire documentary on that that I made last year so it wasn’t a big surprise when Kendrick came out of nowhere and separated Drake’s soul from his body on three of the nastiest most devious brutal vicious disgusting dis tracks ever made Drake did put up a fight but he ended up walking away with his tail
between his legs on the Heart part six and when the dust settled the entire world was in agreement that Kendrick had destroyed him Euphoria was brutal meog GRS was disgusting and dark and not like us was a manic dance on Drake’s grave with Kendrick’s final disc becoming the biggest song of 2024 reaching over a billion streams on Spotify and finding constant AirPlay Kendrick started heading out on maybe the greatest Victory lap ever a huge music video the widely publicized pop out concert and then some months later GNX a surprise
album dropped just 30 minutes after it was announced GNX is the first album in Kendrick Lamar’s Adult Career that doesn’t feel like it could have almost killed him from the sheer burden of making something so crazy it’s the most concise the most in the- moment album he’s ever made which results in a really dense memor series of songs that you can listen to for fun over and over again tracks like squabble up Luther Hey Now TV off and more they’re completely Unforgettable while Kendrick made the choice to feature primarily other
rappers from the south LA area instead of artists with prior mainstream recognition and all that comes together to make it not only concise but also memorable it’s Unique and it cements Kendrick’s versatility to make all kinds of music even as his career enters its third decade with him having first been signed to TDE almost 20 years ago the story of Kendrick Lamar started off not that different from a lot of people who are watching this video right now after starting to rap in high school and getting signed to a local independent
label when he was 18 he spent the next five or six years making mixtapes and performing in comedy clubs around South Central LA and he even got cut from a major label opportunity when the executives felt he wasn’t ready but he kept going and he finally popped off for real when his six project section 80 brought him some mainstream success but the series of albums that followed was unmatched good kid m City having the Cinematic feel of a Coming of Age movie to pimp a butterfly matching political themes with highlevel poetic lyrics and
Timeless Jazz to dam being a commercial giant when it came out all the way to the Deep intense self-reflection of Mr morale and then the punchiness of GNX overall Kendrick Lamar has proven himself to be one of the most versatile and consistently excellent artists of his generation each album showcases not just his growth as an artist but also the story of a person wrestling with Fame responsibility and his major role in shaping cultural conversations in modern America that will go down in history and be remembered for a very
very long time the thing about Kendrick’s story though is that it really couldn’t have happened any other way coming from Compton and seeing the things he saw living through what he lived through that’s what made him who he is those experiences as difficult as they were gave him the perspective and the depth that later defined his generation defining music and so for anyone out there right now living through their own struggles and trying to make something of themselves Kendrick’s Journey shows that difficult
Beginnings can create strong Foundation from wrapping in tattoo shops and comedy clubs to becoming the most viewed Super Bowl Halftime performer ever his path proves that Raw Talent isn’t the entire story although he has a lot of it it took him many years to develop into who he became and that only happened because of his unwavering dedication and so it’s not just about making it big it’s about staying true to your story your experiences and using your life to create something meaningful that’s the real lesson in Kendrick Lamar’s story
often times the hardest roads can lead to the highest peaks and that’s something I always want to remind everybody watching these videos every artist rapper singer photographer writer videographer content creator you have to keep going there’s no other way to make it and that’s also the meaning behind chaos the solid silver hand painted pendant that I designed and I’m wearing right now it’s from my new brand spirit world and this vibrant character tells a story about pushing forward it represents the Journey of an artist the
student the entrepreneur looking for success in finding their own path chaos represents the idea of working to achieve your goals even when it feels impossible to keep going because that’s when it matters the most creativity and art it’s not supposed to be easy and meaningful art doesn’t get made without real work behind it we’re all sitting here watching videos about successful artists people who change the world and I want to motivate all of you pursue your dreams and never give up in fact for a lot of people accepting that
things can get pretty chaotic is often the key to accepting the success that’s coming your way and not accidentally missing it when it shows up the only thing crazier than chasing your dreams is not chasing them chaos is my experiment with fashion it’s my emblem of that story trying to create a figure that reminds us all of what we’re capable of and giving us the strength to get there while on my own Journey as well it’s the same story with the darkest night and the brightest day our bestselling pendant about the
persistence and determination showing a vibrant sun rising over a night full of silver stars that’s finally back in stock after 6 months of being sold out spirit world can go where you go and remind you to let yourself dream big the way you deserve to it’s highquality solid silver hand painted jewelry only the best because I I don’t want to create some stupid little merch product I want to make something real that’s welld designed feels good and actually has value so if you want to support my new brand and invest in a piece of
highquality silver jewelry go to Spirit world. store and get the new pieces now and as always shipping is completely free in the US and spirit world. store is the only place you can take advantage of our buy 1 get one half off bundle deal again that spirit world. store for free shipping in the US and a buy 1 get one half off bundle deal only for our new pieces chaos and Harmony thanks again for watching and I’ll see you all very soon so
Disclaimer : This content may be created by AI for entertainment purposes. Any resemblance to real persons, events, or places is coincidental.
