"good kid, m.A.A.d. city" - Kendrick Lamar (Oct. 22nd, 2012)

[Trimss]

https://twitter.com/Eminem/status/255762528884359169

[King Lance]

it's a nice thing imo, didn't rly expect that

[King Lance]

it's a nice thing imo, didn't rly expect that

Aftermath family son.

did eminem talk about 50's album (bisd) before the official release ?

[King Lance]

No idea, but he was on it.

right, forgot about psycho

article from Spin.

Like his hero Tupac Shakur, Kendrick Lamar grew up heavy in the game. Living in the midst of, but apart from, Compton’s roiling gang life, Lamar is now facing down hip-hop’s brightest spotlight as the next protégé of Dr. Dre. But unlike most new rap stars, he is humble, composed, mature, and palpably aware of what he’s already lost. Which means he might be the most special of them all.

The story of Kendrick Lamar is not the story of a rapper from Compton. It might be the story of the most important rapper since Jay-Z. It might be the story of how hip hop got real in 2012. But the only story that Kendrick Lamar wants to tell is how he got out. Lamar's major-label debut, good kid, m.A.A.d city (Top Dawg/Aftermath/Interscope), is a totemic memoir to mark the distance from where he came. It is, says Lamar, about how "everything in the dark comes to light."


On the cover of the album is a Polaroid dating from 1991. Lamar identifies himself as "baby Kendrick," even though he was pushing five when it was taken. He sits nestled in the lap of an uncle who is throwing a gang sign with the same arm that's wrapped around his nephew. On the table sits a 40-ounce and a baby bottle; baby Kendrick is wide-eyed, staring directly into the camera. "We got photo books full of pictures like that," he says. "I was in that atmosphere every day until my teenage years."

He picked the photo "for the innocence in that kid's eyes, not knowing that a baby bottle and a 40-ouncer…." He trails off. "It's still so vivid to me. This picture shows how far I really come."

The 25-year-old MC is curled up in a corner of the couch at the back of his tour bus, wearing the pajamas he slept in, hoodie drawn and sleeves yanked over his hands. With the air conditioning on full-blast, the bus feels like a meat locker. Hundreds of fans cue up outside Chicago's Congress Theater, hours before doors open. It is Lamar's first headlining tour and tonight's show is sold out.



Kendrick Lamar at his mother's home in Compton, 2012 / Photo by Dan MonickKendrick Lamar at his mother's home in Compton, 2012 / Photo by Dan Monick

Lamar may be from Compton, but his roots are here. Tonight's entire 200-person guest list is made up of family, including Lamar's grandpa, one of many relatives he helps support. "I ain't even made my first big purchase yet," he says. "I live in Los Angeles and I don't even have a car. My ends go to take care of my family." He used his Aftermath signing bonus to move his parents out of the Compton neighborhood where they raised him.

Lamar's parents met while they were kids working on Chicago's South Side; his mom was one of 13 kids, his dad one of seven. In 1984, while still teenagers, they moved to Compton in order to start a family away from the gang warfare that was tearing up the city, where Lamar's dad was affiliated with the Gangster Disciples. "Compton was just as rough, but they didn't know that," he explains. His parents had him three years later, and his three siblings came seven years after that. Lamar's mother also moved much of her family — siblings, cousins — out to Compton, as well, effectively transferring their Chicago life to California proper. In Kendrick's earliest memories, his parents are 25, the same age he is now. He shakes his head in disbelief.

Kendrick Lamar and Danny Brown onstage at Bonnaroo, 2012 / Photo by Getty ImagesKendrick Lamar and Danny Brown onstage at Bonnaroo, 2012 / Photo by Getty Images



"I always play back these house parties in my memory," he says. "Takin' off my shirt and wilin' out with my cousins, getting in trouble for riding our big wheels inside the house. They'd be playin' oldies and gangsta rap. Just drinkin' and smokin' and laughter. A young crowd enjoying themselves. They were living the lifestyle."

Growing up, his mom worked in fast food, and his dad did too — sometimes. "My pops did whatever he could to get money. He was in the streets. You know the story." There were stints of being on welfare. "I remember always walking to the government building with mom. We got our food stamps fast because we lived across the street," says Lamar, laughing. "I didn't know it was hard times because they always had my Christmas present under the tree and for my birthday."

Like his hero Tupac Shakur, Kendrick Lamar grew up heavy in the game. Living in the midst of, but apart from, Compton’s roiling gang life, Lamar is now facing down hip-hop’s brightest spotlight as the next protégé of Dr. Dre. But unlike most new rap stars, he is humble, composed, mature, and palpably aware of what he’s already lost. Which means he might be the most special of them all.

It wasn't until middle school that he realized there was a different kind of normal for kids who weren't growing up in Compton. There were kids from the Valley, north of Hollywood, who were bussed 30 miles to Compton to attend Kendrick's school. "I went over to some of their houses…and it was a whole 'nother world. Family pictures of them in suits and church clothes up everywhere. Family-oriented. Eatin' together at the table. We ate around the TV. Stuff like that — I didn't know nothin' about. Eatin' without your elbows on the table? I'm lookin' around like, 'What is goin' on?!' I came home and asked my mama, 'Why we don't eat 'round the table?' Then I just keep goin', always askin' questions. I think that's when I started to see the lifestyle around us." He pauses and continues. "You always think that everybody live like you do, because you locked in the neighborhood, you don't see no way else."

It's for those neighborhood kids, he says, that he made good kid, the follow-up to two acclaimed mixtapes — 2010's Overly Dedicated and 2011's Section.80. It's a self-portrait in which others might see themselves. Both of his parents had gang culture in their families, and it was a fundamental part of Lamar's childhood, as well. "Being around it, it just seemed like what you gonna do, what you gonna be," he says.

As a teenager he started drinking and partying, emulating and embracing all the things he'd grown up around, until his father sat him down at age 16 and told him something that would alter the course of his young life. "My father said, 'I don't want you to be like me.' I said, 'What you mean you don't want me to be like you?' I couldn't really grasp the concept." An only child until he was seven, Lamar was, and is, extremely close to both his parents. His dad took him to the swap meet every weekend for as long as he could remember (a detail that reappears in the song "Westside, Right on Time"), and to see Dr. Dre and Tupac shoot the "California Love" video around the corner from their house — which set off his dreams of being a rapper. "He said, 'Things I have done, mistakes I've made, I never want you to make those mistakes. You can wind up out on the corner.' He knew by the company I keep what I was gettin' into. Out of respect, I really just gathered myself together."

Lamar began to view life around him with more clarity. "I saw the same things over and over. A lot of my homeboys goin' to jail. Not, like, in and out. Sentences. And dyin' — it was a constant. It was a gift from God to be able to recognize that."

When you begin to type "Kendrick Lamar" into Google, one of the auto-fill suggestions of popular searches is "Kendrick Lamar gang affiliation," perhaps owing to the assumption that an unaffiliated rapper from the home of hardcore gangsta rap seems impossible. Or maybe it speaks to today's skeptical hip-hop fans, who have grown savvy to the frequent disconnect between MCs' images and their real backstories. On the contrary, though, Lamar has several songs refuting that he's ever banged (most notably, "Average Joe," off Overly Dedicated).

He says he's not offended that people may not believe him. "Here's the thing about gangbanging. I was born in that area. Where you have to be affiliated. The difference was I didn't turn 17 and say, 'I wanna be a gang member.' Gangs is my family, I grew up with them, I hung with them. So, I been around it, been through it, but I can't sit here and claim a gang. That's my family more than anything." He smirks, then grows animated, "People saying I am 'gang-affiliated' — yeah, I almost wanna say that I am because I wanna change the idea. I don't wanna separate myself. I don't wanna be in the hills. I wanna be in the center. I want them to know they can still touch me."



Lamar began writing rhymes at 13, but it wasn't until he saw 50 Cent's early mixtape success that he realized he could be recording and releasing his music on his own. His first tape made its way to local label Top Dawg Entertainment; the story of his audition for founder Anthony "Top" Tiffith has become part of the rapper's creation myth. The 16-year-old MC stepped into the booth and freestyled for two straight hours, while Tiffith pretended to ignore him. The label had already signed Jay Rock two weeks prior and the two MCs immediately began recording at the label's house studio in nearby Carson. In 2009, as the Top Dawg roster expanded to include Ab-Soul and Schoolboy Q, the foursome formalized the crew as Black Hippy, "the conglomeration so cool it could freeze L.A." as Lamar describes it on the group's "Zip That Chop That."

Jay Rock was stunned the first time he went into the studio with Lamar. "I was working on lyrics, writing, writing, writing on paper. And Kendrick goes in the booth with nothing. I asked him where's his paper? He'd written it all — the whole song — in his head in about five minutes. That's when I knew he was crazy. And a genius." Jay Rock cribs the trademark line about Dick Clark to describe Kendrick's maturity level at 17 years old: "He was like the world's oldest teenager."

"He hasn't changed," says Ab-Soul, who has been tight with Lamar since they met eight years ago. "He has a glow about him; he carries it with him. He's just a deep guy." He too recalls being humbled the first time he heard Lamar rap, on a mixtape recorded under the name "K.Dot." "I was certain I was the best MC in my area," Ab says, laughing. "Or at least my age bracket. But to hear someone rapping at that level at our age, it was incredible. [Kendrick] was recording full songs with hooks and bridges and melodies and things to keep the crowd. He was not just interested in being the best rapper, he was making songs that the world could sing."

Here's one the many places where Lamar diverges from the archetype of the "conscious" rapper. He's not enough of any one thing to be categorizable. Sure, he's self-aware and shouts out Marcus Garvey, working in tropes of black liberation without being political. He's got nuanced songs about women with real-life struggles and names, yet plenty of pop-that-pussy clichés. He represents the purely-for-the-love-of-the-game underground, but has also collaborated with Lady Gaga. He broaches all of the street shit with an emotionalism that signals he's seen it and been deeply touched by it. (Recently, he was quoted as saying that the scariest thing he's ever witnessed was someone being shot in the head.) He reanimates narratives about life below the poverty line that we've become desensitized to. His appeal is broad, but still full of thoughtful detail.



Lamar doesn't tout himself as a moral authority, instead using the story within good kid — his chronicle of a Compton childhood as a Reagan-baby born amid poverty, gang war, and the crack epidemic — as an object lesson that there can be a different path. Unlike many of hip-hop's survivor's-tale albums, good kid gives its recounting of the good old-bad old days without nostalgia. He doesn't brandish what he's been through in order to establish how hard he is or to earn street credentials.

And he also doesn't contend that other depictions of the streets are less valid. His family hails from Chicago's 76th Street & Stoney Island, two miles from the O-Block projects where tendentious teen-rap flashpoint Chief Keef grew up. The two are now Interscope labelmates, and the subjects of two of the most sizable bidding wars in recent memory (Keef reportedly pulled down three million, Lamar confirms his deal at 1.7 million). Lamar, who has never met Keef in person, grows emphatic when discussion turns to the moralizing about the grim violence in Keef's songs.

"You can't change where you from," he says. "You can't take a person out of their zone and expect them to be somebody else now that they in the record industry. It's gonna take years. Years of travelling. Years of meeting people. Years of seeing the world." It becomes unclear whether, in talking about Keef, Lamar is actually talking about himself. He values Keef's success on the same terms as his own. By doing music, they represent two dudes who are not on the streets. "Maybe he'll inspire the next generation to want to do music. Convert that energy to a positive instead of a pistol."

With good kid, Lamar is also trying to shift how South Central, Los Angeles has been portrayed historically on record. "He's telling his truth — the typical story of a kid growing up in Compton," explains Top Dawg's president Terrence "Punch" Henderson. Like everyone around Lamar, Henderson is respectfully mum on what is and isn't on good kid, but he's clear about how it's a departure. "It's not what you know from N.W.A, it's not about gangs he's representing. It's a classic. The only thing separating him from the greats is time."

That potential is what drew the attention of hip-hop legend Dr. Dre, who signed Lamar to his Interscope imprint Aftermath after being turned on to a K.Dot mixtape by Eminem's manager (Lamar's Interscope deal also includes a label deal for Top Dawg). Dre is one of good kid's executive producers and is featured on the album's Twin Sister-sampling lead single "The Recipe," plus the track "Compton." Lamar also has worked on several tracks for Dre's eternally delayed Detox. He smiles broadly when talking about the iconic producer, a fellow graduate of Compton's Centennial High School, who he alternately refers to as his "big homie."

While much has been said (including by Lamar himself) about picking up where his hero Tupac Shakur left off, Dre's patronage cements the extension of that classic '90s West Coast legacy. It's worth noting that the last young rapper who Dre ushered into the mainstream with such support was Eminem. So, is the world ready for this next evolution? Kendrick Lamar, the earnest, introspective Compton kid, an emotionally sober non-gangster rapping his ass off? What about an album that doesn't promote unchecked hedonism, that doesn't luxuriate in copious consumption of lobster bisque for breakfast? Can you go to the top of the Billboard chart with nary a rooster in a 'rari? What if there is no 'rari at all?



Ab-Soul believes that what's on good kid is universal: "It's Kendrick's story, but it's my story; it's not just an L.A. album. Everyone will get an understanding of why my generation is acting the way they are — violence, vulgarity, anguish, resentment, rebelliousness, and eff the police. He puts it all in perspective. Not just 'black-on-black crime,' but telling the whole story of homies we all had."

While good kid is pure autobiography, like much of Lamar's work, it's also allegorical. While he is rapping about himself, his songs are heavy on observed experiences and feelings that are easily relatable. It's hard to imagine him ever dropping a song about his jewelry or creeping towards itemized-receipt rap. The closest archetype is, perhaps, Jay-Z — the swaggering good guy, the kid who got out. Lamar is peerless in his ability (he never rides a beat the same way twice), separate from the pack, and virtually alone in the space he occupies. He is the closest thing to a "conscience" that hip hop has, but he's still unique amongst previous would-be rap saviors — he's not a scold and his hooks are tantamount to the message. Despite all this, though, Lamar still seems ghosted by what might have been; he can't shake his Compton past.

And while aware of the power of his influence, he's not out to change the world. "The idea of me sparking change? It's got to come from within," says Lamar, firmly. "I couldn't be saying I want Compton to change. You know, Compton is a beautiful place, but it's unpredictable. You just gotta keep your eyes open."

[Ruffryder247365]

Kendrick had the best cypher verse of the night. Like anyone's surprised by this? Dude is literally the illest right now. Lyricist of the year award...pretty good performance of the recipe and swimming pools and best cypher verse of the night. Kendrick can't lose right now. I love it. btw I've been reading this thread since page 3, every day when I get off work, trying to get every little piece of new info that pops up. Figured it was only right that I finally say something. Keep up the good work guys.

[Mitchell3K]

Kendrick had the best cypher verse of the night. Like anyone's surprised by this? Dude is literally the illest right now. Lyricist of the year award...pretty good performance of the recipe and swimming pools and best cypher verse of the night. Kendrick can't lose right now. I love it. btw I've been reading this thread since page 3, every day when I get off work, trying to get every little piece of new info that pops up. Figured it was only right that I finally say something. Keep up the good work guys.

Yeah Kendrick killed it tonight. I'm still holding off on listening to any leaks from this album tho, gonna listen to it top to bottom for the first time the day it drops

[King Lance]

“If Snoop passed me the torch, I’ma burn you rappers with it.”

[deaneedog]

Still haven't head any leaks apart from Art of peer pressure, can't wait for this album. Can't be long before it leaks now.

[King Lance]

pretty ok/good song quality.

live preview of bitch don't kill my vibe (intro) + the song prod by hit boy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LomiipINRCs

would have been better without the voice effects imo




I also have a feeling that the album wil lbe leaked soon
Na seriously, some ppl say they can leak it in a few hours (coz the album will be released on oct 19th in some countries/shops) and the guys seem legit
Albums from aftermath usually leak early =d (still, nothing sure the man gave several leaks before )

[ImANoob]

when it leaks i will have a heart attack

[King Lance]

if it leaks
But as I said, the man is pretty legit but he wasn't that sure =p

[Almostlity]

1000th REPLY IS MINE.

[King Lance]

1000th REPLY IS MINE.

we won't have it I think, fuck the hype, it's killing me
I'm not reading that someone from ktt says he can leak it, but I don't even know ppl from this forum

[Ruffryder247365]

This dude has the album. So it should leak soon. He says he isn't leaking it tho. I'm buying it either way, I'd just like to have it as early as possible. Also looks like a double disc for the deluxe so Aamazon was right.

https://twitter.com/i/#!/mjhead23/media ... 2FICZ2VKDh

[SG.]

Could be leaking around 8-9pm "somewhere in America" time.