Kendrick Lamar will kill your favorite rapper for money

nah i'm not about to morb it up over here

fantastic review deej

this album feels much more like Late Registration that ATLiens to me. that's not a knock, though, i'm a bigger fan of the former than the latter.

― my mansplain songz (some dude), Tuesday, October 23, 2012 2:20 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

he actually quotes from "we major" on it

xp thnx!

Agreed. Excellent review.

great review & the building it around "back in the day" by ahmad made me smile :)

yeah it's great

and because everyone here seems averse to actually linking things when they praise them

http://www.complex.com/music/2012/10/kendrick-lamar-good-kid-maad-city-review

yeah the Ahmad thing was a really good connection to make, as soon as i saw it i was like ahhh yes of course

damn deej -- that's terrific. Even the pullquote was well chosen.

how old is kendrick?

like some of the best rap albums this leaves me feeling slightly ashamed of my past (and current tbh) immaturity

i've listening to the album for hours now. so much better than section 80

He's 25.

ok that makes me feel a bit better

(not much tho)

well this is lovely

the skit/interludes are definitely immersive and scene-setting, if the dialogue is written/'staged' it works so much better than the usual rap skit m.o. of having dudes awkwardly recite lines in studio vocal booths

Heard a few tracks, is endearing

backseat freestyle is VERY kanye; i'm hearing a lot more college dropout than outkast on first listen too

xxp yeah definitely, i couldnt at all get my head around evan's beef about the skits being too heavyhanded handholdy

great review deej, your best work imo

o shit the janet sample

oh shit there's drake
ugh

wow preciate that rtc

Just read it, awesome work, nailed it, etc.

yeah definitely, i couldnt at all get my head around evan's beef about the skits being too heavyhanded handholdy

I'll be interested to see what people think of the skits once they've lived with the album for a couple of weeks. I think they gum the pacing of an already pretty slow album and seriously cut into the record's replay value

i just wish they were separate tracks so i could remove them instead of having to reach into my pocket every time

how long are the individual skits at most? 30 seconds? they feel pretty short and unobtrusive

There's a stretch of three songs in a row that each end with about a minute of dialogue (mostly leading into the next track). It gets overbearing.

no skits on this are as obtrusive as the biggie dick sucking / fucking skits on certified classic 'ready to die'

they're not obtrusive they're just not preferable to actual music

I ended up skipping them on my second play. Sue me.

it's really not a huge deal

i'll listen to good skits anyway some of the time

they're not that bad, and if it's really killing you there are edits floating around online with the skits cut off into separate tracks for easier rapp access

(excellent review by the way deej, one of the few really substantive pieces i've seen on this album so far)

Are there any reviews yet that discuss the religious motifs that run throughout the album? It's pretty upfront for a rap album.

These are some of the least obtrusive skits ever, they fit the atmosphere and flow of the album perfectly, so even though I've stopped paying much attention to the content I haven't once felt impelled to skip them.

Great job on the review Deej.

I love on the first skit that his dad is "where's my motherfucking dominos at?" then when informed that he's got kendrick's voicemail and not kendrick himself he's "oh..where's my fucking dominoes at?".

I really like this so far. I've spent all week respinning other recent-ish Black Hippy stuff and decided that Section.80 was my least favourite but I think I can come to love this once I really give it some time. The skits seem really quite immersive imo, esp. how they are murkily lost in the sound like you tend to get when rap/r&b albums do the tape machine thing (mjb's debut and hard to earn come to mind but this is spread out in small doses whereas they are one offs) and not totally in yr face like most rap skits.

so hey is there any meaning behind how the title is stylized or is 'm.A.A.d city' just an eyerolling affectation

http://smokingsection.uproxx.com/TSS/2012/10/the-meaning-of-good-kid-m-a-a-d-city-as-explained-by-kendrick-lamar

so, both

OK, this drives me nuts:

Next up, all we need is Kendrick or a literary genius to fully explain Sherene, the van and the storyline of the album.

Do these things really need MORE explaining? Do rap listeners really need Cliffs Notes for everything?

"I really love what Kendrick's going for, but if only he made some effort to explain the album's storyline, because I am totally lost!" - the dumbest human being ever, who I refuse to believe exists

Rap Genius is still working at furiously decoding The Who's Tommy

what is this "spinball lizard"

"How can there be a Sgt. Pepper without a Col. Salt?"

xxp that dumb person doesnt exist, it was just a tossed off magaziney closing zing chill out

tbh I think Kendrick Lamar thinks this person exists. He strikes me as a super smart dude who doesn't think much of his audience, the way he walks them through every self-explanatory plot point

whatever man

concepts are for suckers