Kendrick Lamar revealed the cover art for his highly anticipated debut, good kid, m.A.A.d city recently. The creative cover art featuring a childhood photo of Kendrick Lamar, with the deluxe edition featuring an old van in a suburban neighborhood.
It's a Tuesday evening in early October and just dozed off in the back of a black mini coach. He's got a black Top Dawg Entertainment hooded sweatshirt pulled low over his eyes as the inexplicable in-car entertainment, a live recording of the Blue Man Group, dances across a screen at the front of the cab. Midtown Manhattan is gridlock.
In the rearview is 30 Rockefeller Plaza, where Lamar just marked his first network TV appearance, taping a performance of his single 'Swimming Pools (Drank)' for 'Late Night With Jimmy Fallon.' Ahead is a meet-and-greet at the Soho Apple Store, where he'll participate in an onstage Q&A with AllHipHop.com founder Chuck Creekmur and do another performance of 'Swimming Pools' to promote pre-orders of his highly anticipated TDE/Aftermath/Interscope debut, 'good kid, m.A.A.d city,' which went live the night before and immediately shot the project to the top of iTunes' hip-hop/rap chart.
In between: van chatter, the Blue Man Group or a few minutes to steal a few Z's. Can you blame him for choosing door No.
3?With the album's release just weeks away, Lamar is in the middle of a relentless run that began in earnest with the first of a 30-date self-titled tour, sponsored by BET Music Matters and TDE, in early September. Last night, he was in Baton Rouge, La., picking up a sold-out spot date at Varsity Theatre that was tacked onto the New Orleans stop of the Music Matters tour the previous night. Before New Orleans, Lamar was in Atlanta taping a rack of segments for the BET Hip-Hop Awards, including a performance of 'Swimming Pools' and 'The Recipe' (the Dr. Dre-assisted single that will appear on the deluxe edition of 'good kid, m.A.A.d city'), presenting the I Am Hip-Hop Award to legendary MC Rakim; appearing in the West Coast cipher alongside the likes of E-40, DJ Quik, Kurupt and Snoop Lion; and collecting an award for lyricist of the year. Tomorrow, he'll push back his flight home in order to crash in a magazine photo shoot, a radio station appearance and a stop by BET's '106 & Park.'
On Saturday, he'll drive himself to Fresno, Calif., where he'll perform in the Big Fresno Fair. Two weeks ago, he had been scheduled to have the week off.' I don't look at no dates,' Lamar says, explaining how he manages to stay afloat. 'I just go to the crowd and do shows. I don't look at days of the week or none of that - that's how I get another 12 months out of myself.
If I sit down and think about it now, I'll go crazy.' The current schedule shuffle, stack, reshuffle, re-stack and reshuffle all over again is just a snapshot of how things have been going for the 25-year-old Compton, Calif.-bred MC since he released the 'Kendrick Lamar' EP, the first project recorded under his birth name, on Dec. 31, 2009 - and arguably even well before that.It's been nearly eight years since Lamar first hooked up with Anthony 'Top Dawg' Tiffith as the second artist to join the latter's then-fledgling TDE. Since then, Lamar has evolved from local teenage standout (he came to TDE through high school friend/longtime manager/sometime producer Dave Free, who sought him out after catching wind of his talents while attending a school across town) to one of the most celebrated upstart MCs to emerge in the past 10 years. Embraced by both the press and his peers for his technical prowess and thoughtful subject matter, Lamar has been hailed as both the New West Coast King and hip-hop's savior.When TDE signed a somewhat opaque joint venture with Interscope in March that included a companion solo deal directly aligning Lamar with Dr.
Dre's Aftermath Entertainment - positioning Lamar's album as the first solo rap debut on the storied label since the Game's 'The Documentary' bowed atop the Billboard 200 in 2005 with 580,000 copies sold, according to Nielsen SoundScan - the stage was set for 'good kid, m.A.A.d city' to be one of the most-anticipated albums by a rap rookie in years. After all, it's not every day that Dr. Dre, who ushered in the careers of Snoop, Eminem, 50 Cent, and the Game, co-signs a potential new star.Not that Lamar is fazed.' It's cool for them to put me in big shoes,' he says, 'because I have high expectations for myself. Anyone else's expectations? My team's expectations?
We're already at that. We're at this point where we feel like we're elite members of the game, so it's really just about everyone else catching up.' But as Tiffith notes, there's more riding on 'good kid, m.A.A.d city' than Lamar's, or even Dre's, rep.' We've done a lot, but we haven't sold any records,' says Tiffith, who started TDE in 1997, when he sunk what he estimates to be about $100,000 into a home studio in Carson, Calif. only to watch it lay dormant for seven years while he 'finished doing whatever I was doing' before turning his attention to music full time.' This is our real first release,' he adds.
'This is going to set the tone for TDE.' SOMETHING TO PROVEWhile Tiffith's characterization of the label's success to date isn't quite accurate - TDE has moved more than 150,000 units, according to SoundScan, starting with Lamar's 2010 project 'Overly Dedicated' (12,000) and his 2011 follow-up, 'Section.80' (78,000) - his assessment is certainly on point. This time last year, TDE was an independent success story, a label with a core roster in Lamar, Schoolboy Q, Jay Rock and Ab-Soul (collectively known as Black Hippy) - of young, viable talent with growing power at retail and on the road. The label's Internet footprint - shaped in no small part by Free, a former computer technician who made securing online support for Lamar and TDE a cornerstone of his strategy - was formidable, and even without radio support, each subsequent release tracked higher and higher sales.By aligning with Interscope, however, the terms of the game immediately changed. No longer was TDE the indie label that could - suddenly it was an investment with questions to answer and something to prove. Still, Tiffith thinks that even with increased expectations, the deal was the right move.' As long as you control your touring, publishing and your merch, you're good,' he says.
'Kendrick might sell a million records, somebody else on the label might not. So if you can get a big-ass check to set the future up for everybody else, you might want to get that, because you never know what's going to happen. Today, most rappers and artists make their money on the road because records don't sell the way they used to.' In March, Warner/Chappell secured a partnership with Dr. Dre for Lamar's publishing that Tiffith characterizes as 'one of the biggest publishing deals in the past five to six years, especially for a new artist.' Warner/Chappell chairman/CEO Cameron Strang says, 'Everyone at Warner/Chappell recognizes Kendrick's great talents, and his new album is phenomenal.
Our long and fruitful relationship with Dr. Dre was an instrumental factor in his signing with us.' Even as it eyes Lamar's debut, TDE is setting up solo releases from Ab-Soul and Schoolboy Q (who got a separate solo deal, with Interscope, as part of the TDE/Interscope package) with a possible Black Hippy project in the works.
More broadly, Tiffith talks about restoring Interscope's storied rap legacy ('We've got the talent, we've got the artists') and building an empire on par with Cash Money and Death Row.But before he and TDE can get there, there's 'good kid, m.A.A.d city,' perhaps the most-watched rap debut since J. Cole's 'Cole World: The Sideline Story' last year. Like Cole, who was touted as Jay-Z's protege, Lamar has a heavyweight co-sign in Dr. And like Cole, who didn't have a hit single at radio as he headed into release, Lamar has yet to deliver a traditional hit - 'Swimming Pools' held steady at No. 14 on the Hot R&B / Hip-Hop Songs last week and sits at No. 61 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Yet, also like Cole (and next week's big hip hop debut artist, Meek Mill), Lamar has an online buzz that is thunderous, if hard to gauge. According to the label, preorders for 'good kid, m.A.A.d city' were at 12,000 at press time.' Cole World' surprised many industry watchers when it bowed atop the Billboard 200 with 217,000 copies, according to SoundScan, and in the year since, at least a couple of other rappers known more online than at radio have come close to repeating the trick. In November, Rostrum Records' Mac Miller pulled off a feat of his own when he sold 144,000 first-week copies on his way to becoming the first independent artist to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 since 1995. Last week, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis landed their debut at No.
2 with 78,000 sold, despite little to no airplay. The question is: Can TDE and Lamar do the same?' We're trying to manage our expectations,' Interscope vice chairman Steve Berman says. 'That said, based on the reaction that we're getting, the expectations are growing every day. However this record rolls out, the commitment of Interscope Geffen A&M is to the long-term vision of Kendrick and of TDE.
We're going to be working this project for a long, long time.'
The first sound we hear on good kid, m.A.A.d. City is a prayer: 'Thank you, Lord Jesus, for saving us with your precious blood,' voices murmur, evoking a family dinner gathering. The album's cover art, a grubby Polaroid, provides a visual prompt for the scene: Baby dangles off an uncle's knee in front of a squat kitchen table displaying a 40-ounce and Lamar's baby bottle.
The snapshot is such an unvarnished peek into the rapper's inner life that staring at it for too long feels almost invasive. This autobiographical intensity is the album's calling card.
Listening to it feels like walking directly into Lamar's childhood home and, for the next hour, growing up alongside him.Lamar has subtitled the record 'A Short Film by Kendrick Lamar', and the comparison rings true: You could take the album's outline and build a set for a three-act play. It opens on a 17-year-old Kendrick 'with nothing but pussy stuck on my mental,' driving his mother's van to see a girl named Sherane. As his voice darts and halts in a rhythm that mimics his over-eager commute, Lamar explores the furtiveness of young lust: 'It's deep-rooted, the music of being young and dumb,' he raps. The song is interrupted by the first of several voice mail recordings that delineate the album's structure: Kendrick's mother, rambling into his phone and pleading for him to return her car. These voicemails appear through the record, reinforcing that good kid, m.A.A.d city is partly a love letter to the grounding power of family. In this album's world, family and faith are not abstract concepts: They are the fraying tethers holding Lamar back from the chasm of gang violence that threatens to consume him.All this weighty material might make good kid, m.A.A.d city sound like a bit of a drag. But the miracle of this album is how it ties straightforward rap thrills- dazzling lyrical virtuosity, slick quotables, pulverizing beats, star turns from guest rappers- directly to its narrative.
For example, when leaked last week, its uncharacteristic subject matter ('All my life I want money and power/ Respect my mind or die from lead shower') took some fans by surprise. But on the album, it marks the moment in the narrative when young Kendrick's character first begins rapping, egged on by a friend who plugs in a beat CD. Framed this way, his 'damn, I got bitches' chant gets turned inside out: This isn't an alpha male's boast. It's a pipsqueak's first pass at a chest-puff.
It's also a monster of a radio-ready single, with Kendrick rapping in three voices (in double- and triple-time, no less) over an insane Hit-Boy beat.Lamar grew up in Compton, and ghosts of West Coast gangsta-rap haunt this album's edges, casting shadows on Kendrick's complicated relationship with his hometown. When 'The Art of Peer Pressure' brings Kendrick and his friends to Rosecrans Ave., the music downshifts into menacing G-funk mode as a salute to. Ice Cube’s is invoked to set up “m.A.A.d city” (“Fresh of out school, 'cause I was a high-school grad.' ), which appropriately marks the moment when real violence erupts. Here, Kendrick sounds like a terrified kid: 'I made a promise to see you bleeding,' he raps, his voice pitched at a pleading, near-hysterical sob. In response, the voice of Compton's Most Wanted rapper MC Eiht leers, 'Wake yo' punk ass up,' like a father figure of the Darth Vader variety.Which brings us to the album's most visible benefactor and most unsettled presence: Dr. In recent months, Dre has availed himself of the fresh-career oxygen Kendrick's rise has pumped into his atmosphere, lumbering out of his corporate airlock to stand with Lamar on magazine covers.
But the role he plays in Lamar's story feels muddled and unresolved. On an album that manages to seamlessly work a smirking Drake and a highly recognizable Janet Jackson sample ('Poetic Justice') into the fabric of a larger narrative, it is only Dre's appearance, on the final track, that feels like an uneasy outlier.' Compton' is the victory lap, the coronation. Coming after the stunning 12-minute denouement 'Sing About Me, I'm Dying of Thirst', in which Lamar delivers a verse from a peripheral character that is the album's most dazzling stroke of empathy, it can't help but be a small deflation.
The moment of arrival in any artist's story is always less interesting than their journey, and there's a disconnect in hearing Lamar and Dre stunt over Just Blaze's blaring orchestral-soul beat. Dre's music is part of the landscape that Kendrick grew up in but his actual appearance has a certain Truman Show feel to it.But the true ending of good kid, m.A.A.d. City takes place at the end of the previous song, 'Real', which represents the spiritual victory that the album's story has thrashed its way towards. Finally grasping that 'none of that shit'- money, power, respect, loving your block- 'make me real,' Lamar embraces what does, as his parents put the album's central concerns to bed: 'Any nigga can kill a man,' his father admonishes. 'That don't make you a real nigga. Real is responsibility. Real is taking care of your motherfucking family.'
And his mother: 'If I don't hear from you by tomorrow, I hope you come back and learn from your mistakes. Come back a man.
Tell your story to these black and brown kids in Compton. When you do make it, give back with your words of encouragement. And that's the best way to give back to your city. And I love you, Kendrick.'