![]() While much of eighties hip-hop depended on a James Brown-style locomotive rattle, the mother lode for G-funk was plangent R. The voices of singers like Nate Dogg and rappers like Warren G blended with each other to make even the harshest lines sound harmonious. Dre helped establish it, in the early nineties-it was smooth music for listening to in cars about what happens when you get out of the car. This keeps him in the tradition of West Coast G-funk, as Dr. Lamar’s music is rarely as rough as his scenarios. (It did particularly well on iTunes.) “Good Kid” fulfills an implicit promise from his earlier work to revive Compton and to update its sound. His follow-up, “Section.80,” from 2011, was widely praised, and slightly easier to find than his previous records. Since “Overly Dedicated,” Lamar’s 2010 mixtape, which was a digital-only release, Lamar has sounded preternaturally well rounded and professional. (California drives with the top down the East Coast shrugs its shoulders.)īy any measure, “Good Kid” is a triumph, which is no shock. But Lamar also emphasizes his nasal high end, giving words a hint of sarcastic resignation, which is a very East Coast quality. Like Butler, Lamar has a low voice, which moves at an even trot. whom he rarely mentions-Ishmael Butler, who was in the nineties trio Digable Planets, using the name Butterfly, and is now in Shabazz Palaces, as Palaceer Lazaro. Lamar sounds a great deal more like a calm, resonant m.c. In fact, he never sounds like Shakur, who was agitated even when pausing, a breathless and fierce enunciator who piled up threats like kindling. Lamar has repeatedly cited California’s martyr, Tupac Shakur, as his favorite rapper, which seems perverse, considering how many m.c.s he can ably mimic. Lamar claims Compton, and uses its legacy, but that doesn’t tell you much about what his album sounds like. This hip-hop is full of all the other hip-hop, which makes it both satisfying and confusing. Unlike earlier hip-hop innovators, they haven’t killed their idols to move forward-they’ve eaten them. ![]() Instead, it is about a generational shift that he and similar artists like Schoolboy Q and Danny Brown embody-their music is omnivorous. But Lamar’s story is not primarily about gangs or gangsta rap. ![]() Dre, has now closed the circle, signing Lamar to his Aftermath label. Compton’s favorite son, the producer and rapper Dr. and solo artists like Snoop Dogg made Compton a kind of shorthand for both gangsta rap and violence. In the late eighties and early nineties, groups like N.W.A. Symbolic, and a little too pat, the photograph was taken in Lamar’s childhood home, in Compton, California, a place that rap made famous, in a way that wouldn’t have been possible for Miami or New York. is a perfect combination of classic and trendy, which he makes clear on the cover of his major-label début, “Good Kid, M.a.a.d City.” It’s a Polaroid of Lamar at age five, on the lap of an uncle who is flashing a gang sign two bottles, one of malt liquor and one of baby formula, sit on a table in front of them. The twenty-five-year-old rapper Kendrick Lamar’s c.v. Lamar’s album is an omnidirectional scan of twenty years’ worth of rap. ![]()
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