Each track off Lamar’s album is so tear-chokingly personal that there’s almost a voyeuristic quality about this album. This haunting level of vulnerability - particularly the second meaning of “m.A.A.d” – looms over the entirety of good kid, m.A.A.d city. The second meaning, “my Angel’s on Angel dust”, refers to how Lamar’s first (and last) encounter with cannabis was laced with PCP, aka “Angel Dust”. The first meaning treads familiar ground: a fledgling inner city brown kid who’s torn between abiding by a destructive lifestyle or to become a beacon of light for his city. The album’s acronym, “m.A.A.d” has a double meaning: one of them being “my Angry Adolescent divided”, the other being “my Angel’s on Angel dust”. What makes good kid, m.A.A.d city such an amazing album is how lyrically poignant Kendrick is in exhibiting his vulnerability. Unfortunately, unbridled anticipation in addendum to lackluster debuts has been the downfall for many young rappers who have been damned to journey down the road to eventual perdition, aka “the future of their generation”.įortunately for Lamar, GKMC is one of the best rap releases of the 21 st century Dre and had one of the best releases of last year with just an independent release, Lamar’s first major release, good kid, m.A.A.d city(which has been abbreviated GKMC by music bloggers long before the album’s actual release), has a lot of anticipation fueling it. Seeing as how Lamar has recently garnered the backing of Dr. And just like J.Cole, Lamar is backed by another massive rap mogul: Dr.
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In addition to his slew of his mixtapes, Lamar released Section 80, an independent album that was critically acclaimed and was believed to only be rivaled by Kanye West’s and Jay-Z’s collaborative album, Watch the Throne, as the best rap release of 2011.
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Lamar, like many of the 20-something year-old rappers that have been lauded as potentially being the future of their genre, has a healthy discography composed of warmly received mixtapes.
Cole, who’s not only being backed by Jay-Z, but was preordained by everyone’s favorite half-Jewish Mafioso/professional pillow talking crooner/rapping Canuck, Drake, as having a “Nas-type character”, premiered with such a painstakingly average debut album.īut among the influx of up-and-coming rappers that face the seeming disadvantage of possibly being the face of their generation is the 25-year-old Compton native, Kendrick Lamar. The sinking realization that the same rapper who was destined to be the herald of the impending “new wave” of rap may not be that forerunner for his respective generation hits somewhere around the part where then rap's presumed messiah of yesteryear, J.Cole, had the audacity to rattle off such bafflingly awful lines as: “Hey, Cole heatin’ up like left-over lasagna” on his highly anticipated debut album. The initial reception to rappers who are pegged as harbingers of the “new school” is always tumultuously optimistic – until their first major release. By Spectrum Staff Writer - October 22, 2012