Kendrick Lamar

One Liner: One of the top rappers today

Poster Position: 1

Thoughts:  I feel like I've already written quite a bit about Kendrick.  His 2015 album To Pimp a Butterfly was great and made most people's top ten (if not number one) album of the year lists.  Here is my review of it.  The funny thing, as great as I thought it was, I really haven't gone back to it to hear it again, other than "King Kunta."  Luckily for me and my tastes, this is also his most listened to track on Spotify, at 126.4 million.

Sometime you just want to bump a song, right?  And a lot of the rest of this album is just so powerful and bleak, it just makes it hard to want to jam it.  However, "i" is also a pretty fun jam from that album.

He also did that Untitled Unmastered "album" earlier this year, which I also reviewed.  My favorite track, mainly because of the sweet beat, was #7.

That smeary, woozy opening, kicking into a vaguely asian flavored trap beat, it sounds menacing and tough and awesome.  Not sure that I comprehend the lyrics, but I still dig jamming the tune.  There were some good moments on this mixtape, but nothing nearly so good as the best parts of TPAB or his first real album, 2012's good kid, m.A.A.d. city.

The last time Lamar came to ACL, that 2012 album was all the rage.  I swear a good 10% of the flags and signs people were carrying at the festival that year had some play on either "Bitch, Don't Kill My Vibe" or "Swimming Pools (Drank)."  One of the great things about that album is the running story line through the whole album, told through the raps as well as the interludes created as voice mails on young Kendrick's cell phone.  The dad/step-dad/boyfriend wanting his dominoes always gets me grinning.  Not that it is a happy story or anything.  Surprisingly, neither of those two tracks is the most listened to track from that album on Spotify.  Instead, that honor goes to "m.A.A.d. city" at 123.3 million.

YAK YAK YAK YAK YAK!  Tight ass song.  I love the change in beats in the middle of the track and the full on change in feeling right there.  The great thing about Kendrick is that his lyrics sound cool, and if you take some time to listen, he actually says stuff too.  Unlike half the dorks making rap these days.  
Before his debut album, he had two big mixtapes that are also available to stream, 2011's Section.80 and 2010's Overly Dedicated.  The biggest track from either of those two is "A.D.H.D." from Section.80.  77.4 million streams.

And also before all the fame, well, and I guess now during it, he has been part of the Black Hippy collective, which includes Schoolboy Q, Ab-Soul, and Jay Rock.  So they appear on each other's tracks here and there, and then every once in a while do a remix of each others' songs, like the bad ass remix of Schoolboy's "That Part," which drops Kanye's verse ("This ain't Chipotle!") and hands the mic to the Hippy guys for some verses.

That second verse is from Lamar, although its the brutal verse from Q at the end, ripping into the people who filmed Alton Brown's murder, that sticks with that track.

This guy is a badass.  If you watched his Grammy performance this year, then you know what we could be in for here.  A no holds barred, brutally powerful trip through some of the best rap made in the past decade.  I'm looking forward to it.