Kendrick Lamar 'good kid m.A.A.d city'

B+

                The hype surrounding Kendrick Lamar’s latest release was beginning to get serious. I couldn’t take two steps out of my door without someone asking if I’d heard ‘good kid, m.A.A.d city’. At some point it became apparent that if I was going to continue living my life, I’d have to give Kendrick Lamar a shot. ‘Good kid, m.A.A.d city’ was produced by heavy weights like Dr.Dre and Pharell Williams, which promised at least a decent listen. What I got was more than just a decent listen from Kendrick Lamar in, what I hope, will be an indication of albums to come.
                Content wise, Kendrick Lamar isn’t doing anything special. Many of the tracks stick closely to familiar themes within the genre. Sex, money, and alcohol. Lamar’s strength, however, lays in his narrative structure on tracks like ‘The Art  of Peer Pressure’ ,‘Poetic Justice’ and ‘good kid’. Lamar finds an interesting balance between the irrelevant and the irreverent, aided greatly by the production of each track. The album gets deeper and more substantive throughout the listen and eventually gives merit to the amount of attention he has been receiving with this new release.
                The strongest tracks (good kid, Swimming Pools, Bitch don’t kill my vibe, Compton) draw their success from the varied and layered nature of their beats. No two tracks are alike but glide purposefully from verse to chorus, swimming in between stuttering drum beats and varied speeds of delivery. ‘Compton’, for example, recalls Kanye’s College Drop Out --paying homage to the heavily trumpeted and smooth hooks of Kanye’s yesteryear. The tracks aren’t weighed down by their own garishness and, instead, feel light and accessible.
                ‘The Recipe’ ft. Dr. Dre is another success for the album. It samples ‘Meet the frownies’ by Twin Sister which nicely buoys the fast paced verses and Dre’s masterful delivery.
                The nice thing about the album is that it isn’t carried by guest appearances. While it does have some pretty heavy hitters sprinkled throughout the album (Mary J. Blige, Dr.Dre, Drake) this is clearly a Kendrick Lamar release. There is often a tendency for the artist to get lost among features, but Kendrick was smart to avoid this.
                The album ends with one of the strongest tracks on the album, ‘Now or Never’ ft. Mary J. Blige, which is a smooth and up tempo collaboration between two talented performers. ‘Good kid, m.A.A.d city’ was released October 22^nd on Interscope Records and is available on itunes and Amazon.