Kendrick Lamar - good kid, m.A.A.d. city

If I say this is a milestone review for me it should:
a) give away the score I'm going to give it, and
b) detract from the quality of the album.

So, spoilers aside, let's delve in. The Compton-raised twenty-five year old Kendrick Lamar has already built up enough of a reputation prior to this release: he's been signed to Dr. Dre's Aftermath label, - working with the man himself on the long-overdue but still quite exciting Detox album - he's worked with Wu Tang Clan legend RZA on his own debut Section.80 last year and has already put out six mixtapes since he was sixteen. So although this doesn't quite feel like the breakthrough some might sell it as, good kid, m.A.A.d city has enough about it to generate more than a little excitement.

It's something of an odd coincidence that two of the greatest albums of 2012, and indeed probably the two contenders for the year's accolades (not my personal two favourites - Perfume Genius just pips Frank Ocean for me) are introduced with cassette tape sound effects and pasted-on nostalgia. "I come to you a sinner," a group of prayers opens, before 'Sherane a.k.a. Master Splinter's Daughter' properly gets going with a howling, eerie backdrop. Driving on his way to a hook-up, Kendrick waxes lyrical over sex ("Love or lust, regardless we'll fuck 'cause the trife in us"), and the idea of sin and eye-widening reality in light of innocence is a recurring theme: "I am a sinner who's probably gonna sin again" opens 'Bitch, Don't Kill my Vibe'. But far from a puritanical diatribe, Lamar posits himself in the stance of a newcomer, or a misfit, surrounded by vice. String sections bow the song out and jar lushly with the standard beats, before a much more urban and straightforward 'Backseat Freestyle' kicks off. "Martin had a dream!" is growled, before Lamar ascends scales and adapts about fifty different vocal styles. "C-O-M-P-T-O-N, I win then ball at your defeat/ C-O-M-P-T-O-N, my city mobbin' in the street" he concludes, in a track so laden with charisma and machismo it could make 'Niggas in Paris' look like a lullaby. "Respect my mind or die from lead shower", he riffs on the track's hook, and it's an unusual threat.

The samples are pretty far and wide, too - using a Danish hip hop group Suspekt's 'Helt Alene' on 'The Art of Peer Pressure', using the Ohio Players on 'm.A.A.d city' - and only add to the multilayered oddity of it all. Even Lamar doesn't feel entirely at home: "Really I'm a sober soul but I'm with the homies right now" he sighs in perfect diction on ...Peer Pressure, where "we seen three niggas in colours we didn't like then started interrogating" leads onto robbery and the discussion of a drive-by shooting. The storytelling isn't entirely linear, giving the album a Tarantino feel - as the closing dialogue reveals this to be prior to the events of Sherane. It's staggering that it takes until now for our first guest spot: Jay Rock on 'Money Trees', and coming with it is a great heap of personal pain and loss that paints Compton in all of its darkest colours: "Two bullets in my Uncle Tony's head/ He said one day I'd be on tour, ya bish" might appear non-committal and carefree for something so tragic, but Lamar also resolves "Everybody gon' respect the shooter/ But the one in front of the gun lives forever". It's a warming mantra. On 'Poetic Justice' we're met with Drake, and a much more lush and R&B production should naturally follow.

Even more lavishly produced is the Neptunes' take on 'good kid', a brief little (almost-)lounge number that deals rapidly with racial profiling ("he don't mind, he know he'll never respect") before 'm.A.A.d city' just tears the entire album apart in a fit of rage and blunt violence, with perhaps the best opening verse of a rap song I've ever heard. "Aw man, god damn, all hell broke loose/ you killed my cousin back in '94, fuck yo truce" sets the scene and anger quickly, before the mother of all rhymes and pop-culture references unleashes itself: "Bodies on top of bodies/ IVs on top of IVs, obviously the coroner between the sheets like the Isleys". The productions - although accomplished each time by different men - really deserve credit at this point, too, because the beats are ridiculously and consistently fantastic. 'Swimming Pools (Drank)' is the album's rare attempt at a crossover hit, and appears to be working, currently sitting in the Billboard top 20; its rarity is piqued when followed by the twelve-minute epic 'Sing About Me, I'm Dying of Thirst'. The last excellent hip hop album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, was all ego, and a little dab of that rubs off on the "promise that you will sing about me" philosophy here, but it feels more fearful than arrogant. Love is the main message of 'Real', racking up tens of mentions on the second verse and with good reason: the track subsides to a skit from his mother that tells more than the whole album can with its fear and wisdom, "when you do make it, give back with your words of encouragement, and that's the best way to give back to your city... and I love you, Kendrick". The album bows out with a bombastic tribute to the album's setting, 'Compton', with Dr. Dre's guest spot really powering home just how he's made it.

I can just tell that this album's going to be one I find new things to admire in every time I listen to it, and for that, and its raw storytelling, and its slick production, and its ambition, its emotion, it more than deserves my first ever 10.

Rating: 10/10
Highlights: Sing About Me, I'm Dying of Thirst, Backseat Freestyle, The Art of Peer Pressure, Compton, Swimming Pools (Drank), m.A.A.d city
Avoid: n/a

Artwork Watch:  Damn, I miss Polaroids.
For fans of: Dr. Dre, Ghostface Killah, Frank Ocean
Up next: Tame Impala