Good Kid, mAAd City is cinematic and tells a gripping specific narrative. The title on the cover also reads: “a short film by Kendrick Lamar.” This is not an accident. You don’t see nobody else’s eyes, but you see my eyes are innocent, and tryna figure out what is goin’ on.” Speaking on the cover art, Lamar says, “That photo says so much about my life, and about how I was raised in Compton, and the things I’ve seen, just through them innocent eyes. In the background is a picture on the wall featuring Kendrick and his father. There is a baby bottle, a 40-oz bottle and one uncle is flashing a gang sign. The beats and rhymes are not what make this song so great - rather, it is Kendrick’s other-worldly ability to become self-aware enough to harness these emotions and speak on them from such a unique perspective.The Good Kid, mAAd City cover art features a childhood Polaroid of Kendrick with his uncles and grandfather. This long sequence isn’t a track for the radio, but this type of introspective thinking is rare from any artist, never mind one as young as this version of Kendrick. “Dying of Thirst” is a tired and fed-up Lamar looking for meaning - specifically from religion - as to why his world is falling apart around him. He does not mean to offend, but as he concludes, telling these tales is nothing but telling the reality of the world he lives in. From both his and Kendrick’s own perspective, Kendrick raps about the morality of writing such personal songs. As it turns out, Keisha was the sister of this friend who was just killed. 80, that told the story of a young prostitute who was murdered. “Sing About Me” is in reference to”Keisha’s Song,” a track from his debut album, Section. Plenty of songs have been written about these same topics of violence and death, but few have come close to depicting these scenes with such personal, thrilling, movie-like detail as this title track.
also stands for “My Angry Adolescence Divided”), West Coast legend MC Eiht bridges the gap before Kendrick delivers his final verse filled with regret over the life he has found himself in. The song is cut in two halves the first is Kendrick’s cracking voice (either out of fear or perhaps a symbol of puberty) behind a harrowing string instrumental. Kendrick is now fully caught up in the not-so-glamorous part of Compton life, surrounded by gang violence, drugs (m.A.A.d is an acronym for “My Angels on Angels Dust,” referring to a dusted blunt he smoked on “The Art of Peer Pressure”), and police brutality. If GKMC was a superhero movie, this is the part when the bad guy’s plan is set in motion and it looks like the world is about to end. This track also features one of the slickest set of bars on the record “hot-boxing like George Foreman, grilling the masses of the working world.” Combined with masterful storytelling, this is Kendrick flexing his lyrical muscle to tell a tale his listeners won’t soon forget. Kendrick sheds light on the fact that while gangsters are viewed as nothing but mindless criminals, they are not much different from the average teenager following the crowd. The aptly named “The Art of Peer Pressure” depicts a typical scene of Kendrick living his trouble-causing lifestyle in Compton.Īt heart, Kendrick is a caring, sober individual - unless he’s “with the homies.” Kendrick doesn’t have a mean heart and doesn’t like to drink, but here he is, gangbanging and robbing houses, narrowly avoiding a trip to the pen. Part of what makes GKMC such a tremendous body of work is that, while a detailed story of a young man from Compton, it carries themes that almost any adolescent can relate too. Laid over a synthetic trap-flavored instrumental, this track was the most commercially successful on the album, albeit ironically considering the song’s content. While he did compromise a bit with the trendy production, Kendrick brilliantly masked his deeper meaning behind a song that sounds like a club hit. Having grown up around continuous alcohol abuse - his album cover is a baby photo of himself beside a table of 40s - Kendrick finds himself once again at odds with peer pressure and what he knows deep down is the responsible decision. Instead, Kendrick slips in between levels of awareness, battling his conscience while he tries to navigate the untested waters of underage drinking. Taking a further step into the lyrics, this track is no glorification of a party lifestyle. On first listen, without any context as to the type of artist Kendrick is, it almost sounds as if he is holding a bottle of liquor to your mouth and telling you to drink up. Like so many other hit singles, “Swimming Pools (Drank)” is an anthem about drinking and partying.
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