And f*** it, it's Kendrick's best album.

An argument could be made for it, TPAB or (yes) DAMN... but in my opinion this is just such a perfect success at what it intends in the same way as MBDTF

It starts off with, of course, the prayer.

Then it immediately starts with a description of Sherane.

It is not remarked upon as often as I would imagine that the album, infused with biblical themes and connections, literally starts with track one as Genesis 2, the introduction of a modern Adam and Eve story (Sherane tempting Kendrick)

The original sin of the Good Kid in the MAAD City in the story of this album is not his attraction to gangsterism, as many take it to be: it's his lust and willingness to eat the forbidden fruit (alongside J. Cole) that ultimately gets him in trouble, threatens to cast him out from the edenic possibilities in his future (that he eventually makes real, in the form of this album and everything that followed)

b**** don't kill my vibe immediately follows:
genius claims this song "doesn't advance the narrative of the album" but is rather an interjection of modern-day kendrick's perspective

and this is true, but also not entirely accurate, or rather, the song actually does thematically mirror the narrative and its ultimate gestalt and "moral"

because of course, the b**** who is killing the vibe in the narrative of the story is sherane

kendrick, in the future, realizes how the temptation of the fruit of good and evil nearly f***ed him up in the story, and also how the rap game now is controlled by similar forces

this is actually a time-shifting narrative device as creative as that on DAMN., and better for its subtleness

the song is also a perfect contrast with Backseat Freestyle Kendrick, who we see is a very talented and brash young man that -- this is important -- equates the worldly temptations of money and power (the devil can offer you everything in the desert) with having b****es: wifey, girlfriend, mistress

a whole harem of eves...

he doesn't realize the corruptive influence of a woman (let me pause the misogyny, it could be any interlocutor, but sticking with the Edenic metaphor) herself under the sway of the serpent

Putting the p**** on the pedestal means separating her from the denigrating influence of -- i'm just gonna say it -- SATAN (the chief commander of worldliness and environs underground)

Art of Peer Pressure is an intensely perfect storytelling song

it's basically the platonic ideal of a tale of dumb young men up to no good

They are entirely ensconced in a worldly, ungodly frame of mind

Kendrick smoking angel dust is a perverse inversion of holiness -- lucifer was a fallen angel

He did it unknowingly of course, which is our one sign

And K. Dot still needs to f*** on Sherane... still committed to his own spiritual and empirical destruction

money trees is just such a perfectly constructed and executed track that i dont even want to over-intellectualize it

sufficient to say: "Let your way of life be without loving money, being satisfied with what you have. For He Himself has said, "By no means shall I desert you, nor in any way shall I forsake you..." (Mammon over the LORD)

damn, Jay Rock's verse is one of the greatest of all time

Poetic Justice totally complicates what I have just said in a masterful way

To this point I have posited women -- the ur-woman -- as a temptress who is to blame for the Fall of man

But of course, things are more complicated than that

Love, sexual desire, these things can be channeled healthily -- this is Kendrick's Song of Solomon (naturally Drake has to be involved -- his verse is excellent)

What is the poetic justice, though? The entire album turns on this...

At the end of the song, Kendrick gets rousted from his car by two angry gangbangers -- is this the poetic justice for his romanticism/infatuation/lust (one and the same?)

Good Kid expertly describes the world after the fall, a depraved and (seemingly eternally) modern-Sodom-and-Gomorrah dystopia of violence from informal and formal authorities

The people have completely forgotten God: the worldly leaders they have chosen to fill that hole, whether agents of the state or non-state actors, only contribute to the degenerating conditions post-Fall

m.A.A.d city (one of the greatest rap songs of all time) only compounds this realization, it also defies over-intellectualization

"Aw man, goddamn, all hell broke loose
You killed my cousin back in '94, f*** yo' truce" is a perfect couplet, an entire novel -- an entire life, an entire community of lives -- encapsulated in seventeen words

Kendrick asks how we would perceive him if, like Cain, he killed someone

This is also an important question to answer

Cain, of course, was forced to wander the world afterwards

The inability to determine if dot is Cain or just innocent Kendrick is everything: a fallen world of interchangeable sinners who are probably going to sin again, the specific content of the sins blending together in memory

Swimming Pools is another perfect song, ironically was great at parties

But of course: "You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons too; you cannot have a part in both the Lord’s table and the table of demons."

Alcohol's root word is, of course, Ghawl Al-Ghwal, which means ghoul -- the demonic nature is plain on its face

And of course, the serpent continues his dominion over kendrick -- he is overriding kendrick's conscience,

"Aw man… where is she takin' me?"

It's no coincidence that after this song which really establishes how the trauma from the continual violence of their circumstances is drowned in drink that the most violent part of the story happens

"In God I trust, but just when I thought I had enough"

Of course, you know what happens. Even after shooting, the mood is flippant until Dave is discovered to have been killed.

Dave is Abel (these b**** ass n****s killed my brother) but of course, by helping him to participate in this idiotic (yet feeling necessary) exercise, he killed his own brother in part too

Sing About Me, I'm Dying of Thirst is basically the best rap song of the 2010s -- a song like this could not be executed better (props on cole for trying that one time tho)

the rich and tortured inner lives of fallen sinners, empathetically explored in a way no other rapper in recent memory has been able to

"In the parking lot, Gonzales Park, I'm followed
By a married man, and father of three
My titties bounce on the cadence of his tinklin' keys
Matter of fact, he my favorite 'cause he tip me with E's
He got a cousin named David and I seen him last week"

Is basically perfectly written

We have all the themes of the album here: the fallen woman, temptress, herself a victim and subject of the serpent's influence, enabling a married man to violate the sacrament of matrimony

And of course we have the dead Dave, the world so fallen that even our innocent Abel figure is a john who engages in what Kim Foxx would call "mutual combat"

"If it's today, I hope I hear a
Cry out from Heaven so loud it can water down a demon
With the Holy Ghost 'til it drown in the blood of Jesus
I wrote some raps that made sure that my lifeline reekin'
The scent of a reaper, ensurin' that my allegiance
With the other side may come soon, and if I'm doomed"

The other side is not just death -- it's Satan's dominion, it's hell, it's Falling and being so far gone that you can never reenter God's good graces

Making art is all he can do to try and claw his way out of the pervasive influence of the serpent on everything that surrounds him

He's dying of a spiritual thirst; even though he knows "Hell is hot, fire is proven/To burn for eternity," no alternative method has been presented

Then we have Maya Angelou ex machina, which is the one moment on the album that could almost be “Too Much” like the tupac interview, and arguably wraps things up a little too neatly, but works anyway

It’s actually incredibly emotional when she leads them in prayer, them repeating her words dutifully

She instructs them to “remember this day, the start of a new life – your REAL life”

The Edenic potentialities of the future are reconstructed – nay, they are inchoate and burgeoning for the very first time ever, which is to say, now they are actually possible

Real is a great mission statement: he admits that he loves the worldly temptations offered by the serpent “so much, I don’t love anything else/but what love got to do with it when I don’t love myself?”

Ultimately, he hates the fake mammon-worshipper trappings of his milieu – he says that it doesn’t make him real (which is to say, one with God)

But what makes this song great is: the voicemails
They’re by turns funny and sad throughout, but they are perfect here

Dad reminds him that “any n*gga can kill a man, that don't make you a real n*gga” – rather, it marks him like Cain. Protect your family, don’t kill them.

Mom tells him that Top Dawg wants him and Dave Free to come to the studio – the Edenic possibilities

The pause between “If I don’t hear from you by tomorrow…” and “I hope you come back and learn from your mistakes” is heartbreaking, and her message is truly heartfelt. Spread the message to the Comptonites of Color: Kendrick is Moses coming down Mt. Sinai with the ten commandments, and the story of genesis (which Moses wrote) to boot – that would be this album

Compton, the final song, considered the end credits generally, is an interesting case

What is the significance of this celebration of Kendrick’s association with the moloch-chic music industry craven and unholy? Of course, we know from B**** Don’t Kill My Vibe that he understands perfectly the stakes

It’s really in the title: this is Compton. For all its flaws, and all the corporate exploitation of its violence for commercial profit, it’s home

I’ve always thought he was really spitting on this song

He reminds us, ultimately, that we still live in a fallen world populated by sinners – and we must love the sinner, but hate the sin

Of course, it all ends with Kendrick telling his mom he’ll be back with the van in fifteen minutes

He spends a while in the desert like Moses, but he makes it to the promised land in the end (unlike Moses)

The guiding principle of Kendrick’s oeuvre, however, is that most times, people don’t make it to the promised land. They die like Ducky might have; they expire up under a cop’s knee; they die in “mutual combat”; they die of AIDS; the judge make time; they never are born, like Kendrick in the DAMN. Hypothetical or millions of babies over the last few decades (sorry, it’s true)

This album has a feel-good narrative, but it is powerful because it is ultimately truly biblical:

Good kid, m.A.A.d city reminds us we must never forget that we are sinners in the hands of, if not an angry god, at least miffed considering that he sets standards we consistently fail to meet

It did take a good kid to escape the fate the m.A.A.d city, the modern Sodom or Gomorrah, had planned for him. Most are not so lucky.

absolutely.

Is op the guy who wrote a 90 page dissertation on DAMN.

Classic album. Kendrick is the greatest rapper of all time.

Great write up @op

WOAH OP DO YOU REALLY THINK I’M GOING TO READ

*All That S****

By You

Kendrick Lamar is the greatest rapper of all time

been known

section 80 close second

Lmfao
Just in turn put my avi again on the white kids face (to represent me) and it’s perfect

Lol props to that person tho

your a***ysis is great fam

I wasn’t even gonna write anything but when I realized the album starts out with the Eve figure like Genesis/the Bible it kinda all came out

real

but does his dad want dominoes as in pizza or dominoes to play bones

1 The hand of the LORD was upon me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the LORD and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones.
2 He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry.
3 He asked me, "Son of man, can these bones live?" I said, "O Sovereign LORD, you alone know."
4 Then he said to me, "Prophesy to these bones and say to them, 'Dry bones, hear the word of the LORD!
5 This is what the Sovereign LORD says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life.
6 I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the LORD.

this doesnt answer my question

Yb better

I gotchu

Great write up OP

Good read

Yeah, the storytelling is unreal. There's a lot of aspects to the album as a whole that put it as #1...execution, timing, length, timing in his life etc etc...it's quite honestly the best rap album ever.

y’all need to bring the blog era back man, it’s time