good kid, m.A.A.d city opens with a prayer over a haunting synth, layered vocal samples and a short bassline, and Kendrick Lamar doesn’t say his first word on the album for over a minute. In some ways, it’s much like his opening tracks on his past two albums, but “Sherane a.k.a. Master Splinter’s Daughter” is decidedly different. Whereas before Kendrick had opted for quick jazzy chord progressions and a panicked, almost angry flow on “The Heart Pt. 2” and “Fuck Your Ethnicity,” the emotionless delivery that Kendrick adopts on “Sherane” is striking. Here, he’s weaving a mesmerizing story of helpless seduction, rather than a Lupe-esque preaching session. In that aspect, good kid, m.A.A.d city is most likely the most decidedly polished project that the Compton-hailing rapper has ever released. #Section.80 might have the piano swirls and brash horns, but good kid, m.A.A.d city is a stunningly compelling concept album that rivals the likes of the genre’s best.
The story that Kendrick tells throughout good kid, m.A.A.d city is, quite literally, the story of a good kid in a mad city, driven to crime through the pressures of his friends and the violence that surrounds him. At times, the narrative seems to lose steam, such as with radio-player “Swimming Pools (Drank),” but for the most part it’s a fast-paced story that keeps the album moving. The skits that close most of the songs are excellent: minimally written and well-acted.
Kendrick Lamar has always been regarded as one of the foremost upcoming lyricists in hip-hop, and with the added personal dimension that the story behind good kid, m.A.A.d city brings to the table, he may just be one of the most singularly talented rappers alive. He never displays the level of rawness that labelmate Ab-Soul does on songs like his “The Book of Soul,” but Kendrick’s usage of cadence and versatility within his delivery is something that few can match - Kendrick has a masterful sense of emphasis, even when he’s being simple, like in the third verse of “The Art of Peer Pressure” when he raps, “We made a right, then made a left then made a right, then made a left, we was just circling life.“
Halle Berry, or hallelujah - pick your poison tell me what you do, everybody gon’ respect the shooter, but the one in front of the gun lives forever.
But it’s been evident for years that what Kendrick lacked in pure emotional substance, he more than made up through pure technical talent. good kid, m.A.A.d city, however, deals with far more powerful subjects: gang violence, corruption, drugs, alcohol, money. The production on good kid, m.A.A.d city falters compared to the excellent in-house production on #Section.80, but with a rapper as purely talented as Kendrick, the best production is often the type exhibited on “Sing About Me”: jazzy, driven by piano chords with a backing drum track. At times, Kendrick sounds legitimately exhausted: his normally hyperactive delivery lagging behind the beat, his voice scratchy and out of breath. It’s a talent that rappers like Game have been trying to develop properly for years. There’s room for improvement, but Kendrick’s finally taken that step from rapping about personal experience to broader, more hard-hitting subjects.
But, although Kendrick has taken huge strides artistically, good kid, m.A.A.d city is (unsurprisingly) not perfect. Despite the impressive producer list that was behind the boards for Kendrick’s debut (including Hit-Boy, Pharrell, Scoop DeVille, and Just Blaze, among others), it’s lacking compared to both these producers’ previous works and to Kendrick’s previous album. Throughout Hit-Boy’s contribution (“Backseat Freestyle”), there’s a sense that the beat never drops: it never has the frantic urgency of Kanye West and Jay-Z’s “Niggas in Paris,” or the buzz of A$AP Rocky’s “Goldie.” Pharrell-produced “good kid” is a significant departure from Pharrell’s synth-heavy instrumentals, and Just Blaze’s “Compton” never comes close to the grandiosity of Drake and Rick Ross’s “Lord Knows.” But what might be good kid, m.A.A.d city’s most striking flaw is Kendrick’s surprising reliance on gimmicky voice filters, given his absurd talent at rapping. When utilized well, it’s impressive (as in pre-album release “Cartoon & Cereal”), but when Kendrick starts rapping in a high-pitched, agitated voice that he declares as his conscience speaking in “Swimming Pools (Drank),” it might be too much.
good kid, m.A.A.d city is one of the most impressive city-themed albums in recent memory. It’s a hauntingly helpless, ever-so-slightly hopeful depiction of life in one of the most notorious cities in America: Compton, CA. Kendrick’s remarkable versatility is on full display, as he goes from pronouncing “I pray my dick get big as the Eiffel Tower, so I can fuck the world for 72 hours” on “Backseat Freestyle” to brooding on the effects of the culture around him on “The Art of Peer Pressure,” when he raps “Rush a nigga quick and then we laugh about it - that’s ironic ‘cause I’ve never been violent, until I’m with the homies.” good kid, m.A.A.d city certainly stands out for its musical excellence, but that’s not all.
It exemplifies the third step in the natural progression of hip-hop: from a chronicling of the greatness of life on the streets (Jay-Z’s “Reasonable Doubt,” for example), to a move toward the 9-5 working man (Kanye West’s “College Dropout”), to now good kid, m.A.A.d city: a musically underground but mainstream-backed, emotionally volatile portrayal of the terrors of the streets. It’s not as lyrically groundbreaking as Nas’s Illmatic or poignant as Blu & Exile’sBelow the Heavens, or as influential as 50 Cent’s Get Rich or Die Tryin’. But it comes at an important time in hip-hop and American culture, when a rapper like Kendrick Lamar is being thrust into a mainstream dominated by the “fuck bitches get money” attitude of Big Sean and Meek Mill. As cliché as it is, Kendrick Lamar may just represent the future of hip-hop. Act and listen accordingly.