Released October 22, 2012, good kid, m.A.A.d city wasn’t just a dope album; it was an exquisite masterpiece that far exceeded everyone’s already grand expectations. It didn’t sound like a West Coast rap record, at least not completely; songs like “Sherane a.k.a. Master Splinter’s Daughter,” “The Art of Peer Pressure,” “Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst,” and “Real” had the lush openness of a Southern rap cut, and Kendrick sounded a lot like André 3000. He had the same breathless, conversational flow as the OutKast rapper and peppered his rhymes with the same rich symbolism. In fact, Kendrick played the album track “Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe” for André before the album came out, since TDE’s Punch Henderson wanted him on the song, but André, who was shooting the Hendrix biopic Jimi: All Is By My Side at the time, wasn’t in the headspace for it.
Nonetheless, good kid, m.A.A.d city was a cinematic marvel that unfolded like a Quentin Tarantino movie: subtitled A Short Film by Kendrick Lamar, the listener is dropped into a cliff-hanger right away, on the opening song, “Sherane a.k.a. Master Splinter’s Daughter,” then the album slowly unpacks the details leading to the protagonist’s dilemma. It was a beguiling puzzle in which scenes are out of order but the story still flows. Above all, it was incredibly visual; on “Backseat Freestyle,” you could almost see Kendrick rhyming in the backseat of a friend’s car at the behest of his crew. Set in 2004, he was still K-Dot, and the song—the third single from good kid, m.A.A.d city—was an unbridled lyrical assault akin to his early mixtapes. The album moved methodically with great subtlety and care, not wasting any audio, delving into the fun and trouble that young black kids in Compton can get into. The cover art is also essential to the narrative: the album’s deluxe version—with six bonus tracks, including the “Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe” remix with Jay-Z and “Now or Never” with Mary J. Blige—consists of an old Polaroid photo of his mom’s van parked in front of their house. The regular twelve-track version is covered by an equally nostalgic pic of young Kendrick sitting on his uncle’s lap at a white table. His grandfather is to his left and another uncle is to his far right. It perfectly depicts the dichotomy that characterized Kendrick’s life and music: his eyes are innocent, not knowing that the uncle who’s holding him throws up a gang sign underneath his tiny arm. On the table is Kendrick’s milk bottle near a forty-ounce bottle of beer. “That photo, it says so much about my life and about how I was raised in Compton and the things I’ve seen,” Kendrick said in 2012.
The album began with a song about “Sherane,” a girl Kendrick met at a house party and with whom he wanted to have sex. She lived “down the street from Dominguez High /… borderline Compton or Paramount.” According to the song, her mother was a crack addict and her family had a history of gangbanging. The story begins with seventeen-year-old Kendrick driving down Rosecrans Avenue in his mother’s Caravan, with a fifth of Grey Goose vodka in the trunk and barely enough gas to get to his destination. He finally gets there, when he sees two dudes in black hoodies looking to start trouble. This could be a setup, or maybe Kendrick was simply in the wrong neighborhood at the wrong time. Just as he sees them, his phone rings: It’s his mother, Paula, wondering where the hell Kendrick went with her van. “You told me you was gon’ be back in fifteen minutes!” Paula exclaims, her voice racked with frustration. “I gotta go to the county buildin’, man / These kids ready to eat! / I’m ready to eat, shiit.” Kendrick’s father, Kenny, doesn’t care about any of that; he only wants to know what his son did with his damn dominoes: “This the second time I asked you to bring my fuckin’ dominoes / Keep losin’ my goddamn dominoes, we gon’ have to go in the backyard, and squab, homie!” This exchange, right near the end of the song, quickly shifts the mood, bringing levity to a tense scene. As his parents leave a comedic voicemail, we don’t know if Kendrick made it past the guys, or if they were even worried about him in the first place. And after all that, did he even link with Sherane?
Then there’s “The Art of Peer Pressure,” which delves into the home invasion that almost got him arrested. Here we see Kendrick and his friends rolling down the street, “four deep in a white Toyota / A quarter tank of gas, one pistol and orange soda.” They’re speeding down the 405 at two thirty in the afternoon playing a CD by rapper Young Jeezy. Later, when the sun begins to set, they get to the house they’d been plotting to rob for a couple of months. Kendrick goes through the back window looking for anything—a Nintendo video game system, DVDs, and plasma-screen televisions. Then they dash out of the neighborhood as cops give chase—or so they thought:
We made a right, then made a left, then made a right
Then made a left, we was just circlin’ life…
But they made a right, then made a left
Then made a right, then another right
One lucky night with the homies
This was also the first time that Kendrick ever smoked weed. “Usually I’m drug-free,” he declared, “but, shit, I’m with the homies.” We learn four tracks later, on “m.A.A.d city,” that the blunt was laced with cocaine, which explains why he didn’t do drugs as an adult: “Imagine if your first blunt had you foamin’ at the mouth.”
The album featured Jay Rock, Drake, Anna Wise, Mary J. Blige, and Dr. Dre, but the guest star on “m.A.A.d city” was easily the most surprising. As the beat flips from a dark,
