Kendrick Lamar - Good Kid, M.A.A.D City (2012)
I was 18 when this album came out and somehow the hype just completely fuckin' missed me. A friend asked me to get him a download link to this album but I just didn't care enough to check it out, I guess because I was too preoccupied with other music, so I never actually got around to listening to this album until a year later at the age of 19 when my asshole roommates would play the songs off of this album off of their phone speakers, which, no, I don't mean bluetooth shit, I mean directly off of the speakers built into their phones, and they'd completely miss the points of the songs (they thought "Swimming Pools (Drank) (Extended Edition)" was genuinely a pro-drinking song), and I had to endure that shit for a while, but at some point I asked "who is this, anyway?" and lo and behold, the jackass singing through his nose on "Bitch Don't Kill My Vibe" was none other than the "king" Kendrick Lamar I had heard about but had never actually heard. To this day, because of those phone speakers, I don't have the right feelings about "Money Trees (feat. Jay Rock)" because of those jackass roommates insisting that music that heavily relies on sub-bass should be played over a device that renders it inaudible. I'll also have you know that one of them was a Crip and I could fucking beat his ass any fucking day of the week, but that's besides the point.
I like this album, trust me, I do, I think it's great with how many different moods it can get across, and that even if the story is really lacking, it can be fun to listen to, even if these nerdy kids will try to convince you "IT'S LIKE A MOVIE" and try to ruin the fuck out of your enjoyment of the album if you don't hold it up to be some modern classic.. And yeah, I think this album this album is pretty memorable no matter what level of enjoyment I get out of it, but I don't think it's some kind of undisputed, untouchable classic because I don't think this album is perfect by any stretch of the imagination. Just listen to this album in a pair of good headphones, and realize that, yes, the beats are varied and detailed, but some of them haven't aged as well as you'd hope, the hooks can be disappointing, and there's just -too- many fuckin' "make this a meme" lyrics on here, often because Kendrick will repeat the same fucking dumbass line over and over, like that whole "GO PLAY" section in "Backseat Freestyle". It can sound like the fuckin' 9Gag hip-hop album at times when you have a million fucking memes flying at you at once!! It wasn't meant to be a meme-rap album, but damn, the internet made it into one.
Meme fuckery aside.. What is this album doing so incredibly to make it into a classic? You can say "man, when this came out, I was in high school and.." but then it sounds more like you're relating fun memories of listening to it in the car with friends than the actual musical aspects of the album of it. It's a good, fun album, but I am firmly of the opinion that people want to build it up to be some perfect classic because of the hype and the fact that we hadn't had a rapper say "I'M THE BEST" repeatedly in a semi-convincing way in a while, and that's why you have all of these fucking dumbass articles trying to decipher Kendrick's lyrics under a microscope to find meanings behind his words that he never even intended. I don't care if this was the first hip-hop album you ever listened to in full and that's why you have such a high opinion of it, it's just -good- and that should be enough.
Fuck.
7/10
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Feel free to check out the song previews/buy this album using my Amazon Associate link!
