Good Kid Maad City Album Overview

Oct 22, 2012 - The West Coast rapper's major-label debut studio album, 'good kid, M.A.A.D. City' (Top Dawg Entertainment/ Aftermath/Interscope), breathes. Browse News Releases Overview. Multimedia Gallery. All Multimedia. Kendrick Lamar's Major Label Debut Album good kid, m.A.A.d. City Set For October 22nd Release. Kendrick Lamar's Major.

Oct 19, 2012 - But like the cover art – which shows baby Lamar on the knees of his gangster uncle in Compton – 'Good Kid, MAAd City' is a record more about. Find album reviews, stream songs, credits and award information for Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City - Kendrick Lamar on AllMusic - 2012 - Hip-hop debuts don't come much more 'highly Find album reviews, stream songs, credits and award information for Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City - Kendrick Lamar on AllMusic - 2012 - Hip-hop debuts don't come much more.

. หมวดหมู่. เพลง. ศิลปิน. Kendrick Lamar. YouTube ได้รับอนุญาตจาก. UMG (ในนามของ Aftermath); UMPI, CMRRA, Warner Chappell, ASCAP, PEDL, UBEM, UMPG Publishing และสมาคมจัดเก็บค่าลิขสิทธิ์เพลง 8 แห่ง.

เพลง. ศิลปิน.

Kendrick Lamar. YouTube ได้รับอนุญาตจาก. UMG (ในนามของ Aftermath); PEDL, Sony ATV Publishing, UBEM, EMI Music Publishing, CMRRA, AMRA, SOLAR Music Rights Management, ASCAP, Warner Chappell, Kobalt Music Publishing, SourceAudio Holdings (music publishing) และสมาคมจัดเก็บค่าลิขสิทธิ์เพลง 13 แห่ง. แสดงเพิ่มเติม แสดงน้อยลง.

You're 17. Your years in school are coming to an end. No matter who you are, where you're from, or what else you do, this will be the time you'll remember more than any other for the rest of your life, so make it count. When you're twice the age you are now you'll catch yourself driving along the same streets you did back then and have flashbacks to those hazy nights long ago. The songs you heard then will reverberate in your mind until you die. If you're lucky, if you are 17 right at this moment, the songs you hear now, the songs by Kendrick Lamar, will be the soundtrack of your life. Consider yourself blessed, because he wrote them about you every bit as much as he wrote them about himself. It doesn't matter if you grew up on Rosecrans in Compton, California, streets echoing with gunblasts and plagued with gangs and crime and drugs and pressures that no teenager should have to deal with at that stage in life, or if you grew up on some shady cul de sac in a neighborhood where the only sudden sounds are of the automatic sprinklers turning on at daybreak to water the vast exapanses of green lawns and flower beds, the feeling of being 17 is exactly the same. For good kids in mad cities, or bad kids in good cities or anywhere in between. You're 17. It's summer. Enjoy it while it lasts. You won't be free forever.

Parents fear 17. They were that age once themselves and know all too well its dangers. Every decision is now a major life-altering one and is firmly in the hands of someone not yet mature enough to handle it, yet too mature to be told what to do anymore. Kendrick's mom knows this fact, just as your mom does. The fear is in her voice, still stern with parental authority, yet that authority holds no sway any longer. It's mixed with pleading, annoyance and concern, for she knows that her boy Kendrick, for better or worse, is on his own from now on and the decisions that will determine his fate are his and his alone to make. Who to see - Sherane, the mature beyond her years seductress he met over summer vacation with a stripper's figure that's every bit as willing. Where to go – out with the homies. What to do - sex with his girl, drink, smoke weed, gang bangin, home invasion?

Every night, more decisions. Most won't be life or death, but any one of them could be. But which ones? Which nights? It's always the ones you don't see coming. They say that everyone has one great story within them, their own, but most never commit that story to paper or to tape, and those who do, well, it's clumsy, overwrought and meandering and basically of absolutely no interest to anyone else. But if you're gifted, as Kendrick Lamar unquestionably is, the results are gripping and you are sucked in. The key is to make you care about his fate, his choices and the world he encounters, to make it seem so real to the listener that it's no longer simply an album but a life experience that you take along with him every time you press play. Therein lies the record's genius. The uncanny accuracy of the feeling of youth. 'Sing About Me, I'm Dying Of Thirst' is an epic. At ten minutes it's too long for a single, but it's the the heart of the album, an ever changing landscape of places, thoughts and people. Over a masterful Grant Green hook, different perspectives of growing up in that mad city are offered. The brother of the slain, admitting he's too deep into the gang culture to escape the 'murderous rhythms' he rides, accepting his fate, but insisting Kendrick doesn't have to fall into it himself. 'If I die before your album drop'.

He does, of course. He has to. But then we have a girl whose sister died as well, a prostitute, and her sister is heading down that same road herself, defiant that she will survive, even though we know all too well that she won't and we listen as she fades into memory. She made her choice, or had her choice forced upon her, by those same streets she now walks. The guilt, the fears, the choices that Kendrick has to make weigh him down as the song abruptly shifts into an entirely new one, but the same one, representing act three. It's at once transcendant, the groove hitting hard in its second half, and relevatory, as Kendrick takes in everything he has seen around him on his ultimate journey, comes to grips with the conflicts surrounding him and finds his way in search of the light at the end of the tunnel, redemption with a higher power. 'Hop in that water and pray that it works'. The hood-rats are saved, hopefully forever, but probably just temporarily, talked out of their anger and confusion over the killing of their brother and friend, baptized on the streets by a sort of stoic elderly female saint. They listen to her pleas for restraint and surrender their hatred, recite her prayers of devotion, so that their souls may be set free. But for Kendrick the path out requires yet another deviation. 'Real' is the second longest track on the album, immediately following the longest, and this choice is uncanny. The climax and resolution of the story can't be shortchanged, and while the tension in 'Real' is muted, it is Kendrick coming to grips with his decisions.

Making choices for himself, not for the approval or respect of his peers for once, but for his own good. It's the calm after the storm. The true maturation of Kendrick Lamar, the boy truly becoming a man. His father, who earlier provided comic relief in the skits when he was drunk and crying out about his dominoes in the background, proves to be responsible and tries, bluntly, awkwardly, but honestly, to pass along some parental wisdom to his son in the wake of the violence before the reassuring voice of his mother comes back in to give him her blessing and her forgiveness.

Then, not telegraphing it, nor even drawing attention to it, she tells Kendrick that a producer called about his music and she wishes him well, knowing he's got to pursue that dream but assuring her son that they'll always be there for him. The way out suddenly becomes real for Kendrick. The album closes with 'Compton', a euphoric and unapologetic celebration of the hard streets he came out of and survived. Though notable for Dr. Dre's guesting on the track, it's not done for the big name impact most guest spots hope for, but to reaffirm that there is a way out after all. The story is real.

Dre himself got out years ago and moved on to something previously undreamed of in the streets of Compton and now Kendrick's determination got him out as well. The beats and rhymes roll effortlessly as together they look out at the often brutal landscape they both emerged from decades apart and see the hope for the future. The track oozes success, but takes it in stride, even the boast 'look who's responsible for taking Compton international', is just the truth, well earned. The lesson though is eternal. How do you beat harsh circumstances?

By rising above them. How do you stay at the top once you're out? By never forgetting where you came from and giving back so that others can beat them too. Spend a weekend on Rosecrans he emplores you. You just have, thanks to him, and you got out, same as him, and in the end there's no mistaking that the kid that began this tale is now a man. And to bring it around full circle, to show that no matter the starting point, no matter the depths of hurt and despair you traverse along the way, there's always a way out, the record closes with the younger Kendrick grabbing his Mom's keys and saying he just needs the van for fifteen minutes. That he doesn't open the album with that, but rather closes it by going back to that first decision, the one which set everything into motion, only confirms what genius will emerge as it unfolds and makes you want to go back and relive it again and again.

At one point Kendrick asks, 'If I told you that a flower bloomed in a dark room, would you trust it?' , his way of asking for your faith in him and his dreams. If I told you the greatest album of not just 2012 but the last twenty years came from the kid who broke off that rhyme, who asked for that faith, who offered you that dream, would you trust it? As unlikely as it seems, would you believe it?