On the way, Kendrick runs into the dangers of life on Compton streets, from robbery to losing a friend in a shoot-out. The story revolves around Kendrick borrowing his mom’s shitty old mini-van to drive across town and meet up with a girl named Sherane. GKMC is a story based on Kendrick’s youth, and the subsequent coming of age in a rough city. The album lives up to the hype, however, as Lamar delivers a gem of a record that is new and unique, but also brings to life old images of ’64 Impalas and red and blue bandannas. Dre’s involvement in the production of the album, good kid, m.A.A.d city made it’s release to tremendous anticipation. Snoop Dogg even brought K Dot on stage with the game’s finest to crown him the new king of the west.īecause of this, and Dr. “Keisha’s Song (Her Pain)” pains a picture so raw and real, you can feel it when the protagonist in the story meets their end. A strong and versatile lyricist, Lamar also showed supreme storytelling skills, as well as the ability to capture raw emotions with his rapid change in tone. K Dot’s first album, the independently released Section 80 was a tantalizing display of talent. Dre, after Lamar’s 2010 mixtape, Overly Dedicated. The Game breathed a small breath of air in the lungs with The Documentary in 2005, but it’s been clear since then that there has been a tremendous hole in hip-hop’s left coast that needs filling.Įnter Compton rapper Kendrick Lamar discovered by who else, Dr. No era was more visceral than the West Coast gangsta era, but ultimately it would collapse under it’s own weight with the murders of 2Pac and Notorious B.I.G.įast forward 18-ish years and Doggystyle, The Chronic, and Chronic 2001 are still the pillars of an old, once-proud genre. Rappers like Snoop Doggy Dogg, Dre, Daz Dilinger, Kurupt and the late Nate Dogg all painted a picture of a true gangster life style, while toeing the line between fantasy and reality behind the scenes. 16-bar verses, hooks and melodies, all over soul samples and head-nodding drum beats. Dre’s beats (like, on the song, not the damn headphones) transformed rap from an MC rhyming over beats to a form that transcended itself. No other era had as tight a grip on the industry as when Suge Knight was cutting the finest Cohibas. No era of hip-hop had blurred the line between “gangster” and “rapper” as the early-to-mid nineties West Coast gangsta rap.
Pretty sure most teens-in-trouble stories start with a busted-ass mini-van.