“Some people of mine knew Kendrick. They contacted me and said that he wanted to do a song with me. I said, ‘Cool,’ and told them to slide him my number,” Eiht tells me. “He hit me like two weeks later.” From there, Eiht and Kendrick met at the studio, where the younger rapper laid out the concept of “m.A.A.d city.” Kendrick wanted to pay homage to the old days of Compton and the golden age of gangsta rap: “We sat down, he played me the song and let me hear the hook. I came up with my verse and everything went like clockwork. He could’ve gotten anybody from Compton to be on the song, but because of the type of music I had put out, which always referenced Compton and the streets, that was the type of flavor he wanted on it. He was trying to bring an authentic cat who used to do rap back in the days, who came from that era. It was basically a studio conversation and him telling me that he wanted me to do what I was known for.”
Kendrick wasn’t like some other rappers with whom Eiht had collaborated. He was about the work and that was it. “He’s a real laid-back kid, humble, wasn’t too demanding for somebody who was making his first major project,” Eiht says. “Usually, cats don’t really have a direction of what they wanna do. They just have me come in the studio and be like, ‘Hey, Eiht, bust a verse.’ And usually I ask dudes, ‘What’s the concept? What’s the direction?’ and they say, ‘Hey, just do what you do.’ He had the time to sit down with me and explain, so that shows the great respect he has for the craft of hip-hop. He’s not one of them guys with fifty million people in the studio with drank and smoke and all that type of shit. Everything was basically just work. Some people need the props or whatever, the ambience of the stereotypical hip-hop scene, but true artists bypass a lot of that. When you’re somebody like Kendrick, who’s really articulate about what you want to produce and put out to the people, you have to be serious-minded.”
For good kid, m.A.A.d city, Kendrick tapped deeply into a tumultuous past that he’d moved beyond. And where other musicians might only present the best of themselves, he told his entire truth, imploring kids in Compton to dream beyond the city. On “m.A.A.d city,” we learn that he had a real job for only a month; he was a security guard, but got fired after he staged a robbery there three weeks into the gig. Sure, he was a burgeoning star with a record deal and big affirmations, but Kendrick was still part of the community and felt the same pain that they did. On “Money Trees,” he remembered leaner times, of putting hot sauce on cheap ramen noodles, and rapping in cyphers even when cash wasn’t in the picture. He honored his uncle Tony, who saw big things for his nephew’s career but was shot twice in the head at a local Louis Burgers before his prediction came true: “He said one day I’ll be on tour, ya bish… / A Louis belt will never ease that pain.” We learn near the end of “Poetic Justice,” a sultry R&B-focused cut that samples pop icon Janet Jackson’s song “Any Time, Any Place”—and is named after a film in which she and Tupac starred—that Kendrick was jumped before he ever got a chance to link with Sherane. “I’mma tell you where I’m from,” declared one of the men who interrogated Kendrick in his mom’s van. “You gon’ tell me where you from, okay? / Or where your grandma stay, where yo’ mama stay, or where yo’ daddy stay.” In most cities throughout the U.S., these kinds of questions will never come up; but in Compton, where claiming the wrong neighborhood will get you beat up or killed, they’re incredibly common. The attack on Kendrick led to a shootout and the subsequent death of one of his friends.
The incident and its aftermath is laid out masterfully on “Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst,” good kid’s centerpiece and one of Kendrick’s most powerful songs ever. On this two-part, twelve-minute epic, the rapper unpacks the anger of watching one of his friends die in front of him, and how a chance run-in with an older woman changed his life forever. The
