Dual Review - Good Kid, M.A.A.D City/To Pimp A Butterfly by Kendrick Lamar

Ladies, Gentlemen and Music Nerds, I hope everyone’s having a good day!  Today I’m here with the rapidly up and coming Hip Hop Rap sensation, Kendrick Lamar and his two HUGE releases Good Kid, M.A.A.D City (2013) and To Pimp A Butterfly (2015).  Yet another Dr. Dre prodigal success story, Kendrick Motherfucking Lamar is the very definition of “Coming Up” in the Hip Hop game.  Kendrick doesn’t put an insane amount of thought into what he does and what he raps about, he has a story to tell and he just tells it.  You can tell the authenticity of all of his lyrics just by the way he represents himself and the way he talks about all of the things he does.

Good Kid, M.A.A.D City and To Pimp A Butterfly were two completely different albums in so many ways.  First off,  let me start off by saying I loved both albums, they’re my favorite Hip Hop albums off the time right now and Good Kid made my top 10 albums of all time and To Pimp A Butterfly is on its way.  But what I loved so much about Good Kid was that it tells such a deep story, it tells the story of his brother who was shot in an act of gang violence after he met a girl named Sherane at a party who he eventually hooked up with.  This all took place in his sophomore year of high school, and it depicts all of kendrick’s childhood dreams of money, sex, and overall just blowing up in Compton USA.  Good Kid overall has a great story line that is just so easy and entertaining to follow. Featuring some huge names like Jay Rock, Drake, and more.  In the track "Sing About Me, Dying Of Thirst" Kendrick furthers the story by actually talking more about his brother who was shot and just all of these great lyrics and beats add to the emotional impact of the album.  He shows how many different sides of himself were conflicting at this time between (again) sex, money, drugs, alcohol, his mother, his father, his friends, and more im sure he just spins a tale of how he really came up and came to be the guy that he is today. 

Now, To Pimp A Butterfly (as far as I can tell) isn’t anything like Good Kid in the way of the story line.  To be honest I kind of like that the two aren’t the same,  To Pimp A Butterfly is just such a genius work in itself and it highlights my previous point that Kendrick doesn’t exactly follow any sort of standards that there are in the hip hop industry,  he literally just thinks of how he wants it and does it and makes it work. This is best highlighted in the tracks “Institutionalized” and “For Free?-Interlude”.  Kendrick makes all of his influences so prevalent on this album especially on the more jazzy songs like “King Kunta” and even “These Walls”.  Ill admit, at first this style of music was so foreign to me and I honestly didn’t know how to feel about it but once you accept that this is how Kendrick is and how he raps then it only gets better from there.

This review was one that I was extremely excited about doing for the longest time, my ending rank for these albums are, Good Kid, M.A.A.D City – 10/10 and To Pimp A Butterfly- 9/10