they die by dawn & other short stories - the bullitts

It’s become more and more clear in the last few months, but with the release of Jay Z’sMagna Carta Holy Grail, it’s obvious: 2013 is a year of innovation for hip hop.  That’s not to say hip hop is otherwise static, as it’s a genre that’s been morphing and sending out offshoots (shout outs to Chicago drill) in its three-decades-and-counting of existence.  But this year is a landmark one.  Chance the Rapper is possibly the first truly post-Kendrickrapper to achieve prominence, less concerned with stringing together multisyllabic rhymes than perfecting the art of sing-rapping.

Kanye West‘s Yeezus was essentially a sonic flip-off towards all of hip hopand Curren$y is teaming up with BitTorrent for a release, but the best example might be Hova’s triumphant return to music.  Under the banner of “#NewRules,” the Brooklyn rapper teamed up with Samsung for the most unconventional major album rollout in recent memory, complete with preview videos, censored lyric sheets, and its very own app – only to be critically panned for its perceived lack of innovation.  It’s not so much that hip hop is being progressive, that’s always been a given.  It’s that being progressive is cool again, Beast Coast revivalists be damned. And although The Bullitts’s debut album They Die By Dawn & Other Short Stories has been in the works for years now, it can’t have timed its release better.

It’s difficult to even pigeonhole the project under a single genre – it draws as much from Sergio Leone as it does from Nas, and singer/songwriter/producer/director/Bullittsmastermind Jeymes Samuel shifts from pulsing dance (“Supercool”) to atmospheric and spacy hip hop (“Close Your Eyes”) to acoustic ballad (“Stay, Runaway”).  He’s even recruited the likes of the painfully unproductive Jay Electronica and actressesRosario Dawson and Lucy Liu to aid him in his daring affair.  In the lead-up to his album, Samuel’s promotion strategy might have even topped Jay Z’s.  He’s put together viral videos, short films, and an entire fictional story revolving around a character called Amelia Sparks entirely released through Twitter.  Oh, and he’s making an almost entirely black-casted Western with the same name as the album starring, among others,Idris Elba and Giancarlo Esposito.  It’s casual.

Thankfully, Samuel’s experimentations between hip hop, opera, R&B, and dance generally serve as less of an identity crisis so much as an artistic triumph. He makes it work. Rarely does it seem as if he’s grasping blindly at concepts, or if his creativity has dug a hole too deep for itself.  He’s blending and mixing and mashing, but it’s calculated.  “World Inside Your Rainbow” is a seven-minute-long record that transitions from a slow-placed crooning ballad to a darting multi-horn interlude complete with reggae-esque behind-the-beat accents.  “Murder Death Kill” has Samuel singing in his layered falsettos over a strumming acoustic guitar, dramatic piano chords, and a nimble bassline, right before Jay Electronica jumps in with a characteristically phenomenal verse.  And as if all of Samuel’s sonic alchemy wasn’t enough, he’s also intercut pieces of dialogue from Lucy Liu into the album, as if spliced from a movie.

Yeezus has garnered huge amounts of critical acclaim for making music that doesn’t quite fit under the label of “hip hop” – Samuel’s brand of cinematic music doesn’t quite fit under any label. However, although Samuel’s experimentations might not sink his album, his lack of continuity is certainly leaking in water.  The addendum to his album title, Other Short Stories, could not be more apt – they may not be actual stories, butThey Die By Dawn’s individually excellent songs dart between themes and genres so aggressively that the album is more of a compilation than a cohesive project.  Virtually every song works on its own as a creative triumph, but Samuel seems so intent on breaking barriers that he’s sacrificing his album’s structure.

It’s rough, and the question is - was the addendum Samuel’s original vision or a titular Band-Aid to justify the album’s lack of solidity?  Samuel’s intentions and artistic justifications aside, the result is messy.  They Die By Dawn is strongest when its songs move together as a unit, such as the opening two numbers (“They Die By Dawn” and “Murder Death Kill”) or its middle (“Stay, Runaway”, “World Inside Your Rainbow”, and “Bouquet of Barbed Wire”). But it’s very easy to imagine Samuel and The Bullitts becoming major players in the hip-hop scene.  We may never get Jay Electronica’s fabled Act II, but his collaborative EP with The Bullitts, Mos Eisley, may yet see the light of day.  He’s got connections, for sure – even beyond the talented ensemble assembled for They Die By Dawn, Samuel happens to be R&B singer Seal’s brother and helped put together the score to The Great Gatsby alongside no other than Jay Z himself.  He also comes off as shockingly genuine for someone with so many famous friends (and on the brink of fame himself).  Anyone can construct a persona and set up a façade, but the enthusiasm Samuel exudes in his studio session videos and interviews and the quirkiness running through his videos are genuinely compelling.

It’s not that hip hop doesn’t have its share of virtuosos (Kanye says hello/fuck you), it’s that it’s dangerously lacking in the “relatability” department.  Samuel, though?   What he’s actually like is irrelevant – what’s important is that he seems like a great guy.  And maybe that aesthetic is exactly what hip hop needs from an artist who’s clearly very talented at making both music and connections.  It’s not without its faults, but They Die By Dawn & Other Short Stories is a fantastic first foray into music for Samuel, and certainly good tidings for the future of hip hop if Samuel chooses to head in that direction.

7/20/13.

As a friend put it, this might be the most egregious song omission from a hip-hop album since Nas’s “Nasty” on Life is Good.  Danny Brown might mesh better with Paul White than SKYWLKR, and that’s really saying something.  Mind-bending.  But it’s hard to let this omission really take away from the strength of Old, which isn’t quite XXX level but still phenomenal.  It’s clear that Brown didn’t step into his latest with the same lofty ambitions as his last project (as he said himself, XXX was made with the intentions of garnering critical acclaim).  This one’s less maniacal, but equally unhinged - particularly in the electronic and dubstep-infused Side B of the record, which is aimed and locked towards live shows.  The first time “Dope Song” or “Dip” is played at a major music festival I think I might cry.

drake - nothing was the same

The first lines of the intro to Drake’s second album, Take Care, floating over ethereal piano and muffled rhythmic taps: “I think I killed everybody in the game last year, man, fuck it I was on though/And I thought I found the girl of my dreams at a strip club, fuck it I was wrong though.”  

This time around, though, we start off as less his confidantes and more witnesses to his greatness – over wailing Whitney and rattling drums, Drake begins Nothing Was the Same high on success (“This is nothing for the radio, but they’ll still play it though/Cause it’s that new Drizzy Drake, that’s just the way it go”) before crashing into reflection (“How much time is this nigga spending on the intro?/Lately I’ve been feeling like Guy Pearce in Memento”).  There’s more nuance on the emotion streaming through “Tuscan Leather” than any track from the last project. Drake’s faults, his worries, his pleads, they’re all buried under boasts about dinners with Tatyana Ali and comparisons to Dwight Howard. 

Drake’s one of the most fascinating hip-hop stars in the past decade, because he shot up the totem pole without any nods to the ones at the top – he’s entirely crossed the bridge that Kanye West built.  Stars like Kanye and Kendrick Lamar built up their foundations around their multi-lateral appeal (read: classic hip-hop), but that wasn’t Drake’s approach at all. His breakout mixtape, So Far Gone, shoved through trends in forming a project that perfected the ideas strewn across Kanye’s minimalistic, heartbroken R&B album 808s & Heartbreak.  Drake’s not famous because he conjures up images of Nas or Jay-Z circa-1995, or even MF DOOM circa-2000.  No, he’s constructed his own aesthetic, one of openly projected pain.  And now, it’s impossible to pick a list of the most culturally prominent hip-hop artists alive without Drake in the top five – Take Care has gone double-platinum, while racking up the acclaim.  He’s officially an event.

But most interestingly, Drake’s been battered with ceaseless ridicule throughout his career – the Facebook page “Drake The Type Of Nigga”, populated with gems like “Drake the type of nigga to eat two gummy bears at a time so they don’t die alone”, has over 170k likes at the time of writing, while there’s an entire Tumblr dedicated to drawing Drake into famous Breaking Bad scenes.  And with the approach of what’s sure to be Drake’s most scrutinized project yet, it’s kicked up a few notches. Take, for example, the uproar over promotional single “Wu-Tang Forever”, a song far from a tribute to the legendary Staten Island crew.  Much to the contrary, it’s hazy, nostalgic drawling, punctuated by a sharp verse in the middle.   The night of its release, Twitter exploded, with even Wu-Tang member Inspectah Deck chiming in to say it “SHOULD NOT wear the title Wutang Forever!”  Drake’s cleverer than that, though – for all his infamous sensitivity, he’s an artist that knows how to manipulate bad press.  It’s no coincidence that the Toronto man released “Wu-Tang Forever” as a free single alongside the pre-order launch for Nothing Was the Same, and it’s certainly no surprise that all of the Clan’s members have already recorded verses for the remix.  Drake’s a much smarter artist than he gets credit for.

And he’s also a much better rapper than he gets credit for, because he’s taking his development as a rapper in leaps and bounds.  Take Care was ridden with holes, perforated with punchlines sending entire songs to screeching halts.  He’d go on a rip and then let a line like “Don’t make me break your Kevin Hart, boy” slip out, letting his emotional oomph fizzle.  Very few such problems here - he’s far smoother and far more confident.  If he wasn’t, would he let Jay-Z take two verses on his song? He’s no Kendrick, but this is an artist that’s no longer just “a good rapper who makes great music”, the shelf that Kanye was filed away on years ago.  It started with the unusually belligerent and extremely strong promotional single “5AM in Toronto” (“Every song sounds like Drake featuring Drake”).  Now?  The first bar of Whitney Houston triple-flip intro “Tuscan Leather”: “Coming off the last record, I’m getting 20 million off the record/Just to off these records, nigga that’s a record.”  He’s slipping gems like “Get hype on tracks and jump in front of a bullet you wasn’t meant for” while drawing lines between 40 and Martin Scorsese.  Just on the first track.

Big difference - Drake is letting himself flow when he raps, something that rarely occurred on Take Care.  Crisp.  And maybe Drake’s frankness and bluntness when it comes to his personal struggles with fame are, to some degree, ridiculous (really, is fame so hard?  I’m sorry, Drake, blot your tears with some Franklins).  But it’s also a discussion that not too many rappers either like to have or are good at having.  Drake’s an artist that’s so unapologetically human that he’s the subject of ridicule.  Don’t get me wrong, any rapper who raps a line like “Next time we fuck, I don’t wanna fuck, I wanna make love” deserves what’s coming to him. But even Drake’s emotionality is sharper and more nuanced.  His take-me-back pleas aren’t as self-crucifying and desperate as they were on Take Care – on “From Time”, he’s stating more than asking, “Who better for you than the boy, huh?”  Rarely does he completely degenerate into drunken, “Marvin Room” form; he’s more melancholy than ever devastated.  Drake’s a maturing artist, and when one’s music revolves around emotion, that’s a big shift to have to accommodate.

That progression is mirrored on the boards – unsurprisingly, longtime-collaborator 40 is almost omnipresent. Drake’s camp is quality across sound borders, whether it’s the deliberate, plinking deep synths of 40 & Hudson Mohawke’s “Connect” or the James Blake clap/drums and atmospheric vocals of Boi-1da’s “Pound Cake”.  Top notch polish, except, that’s Drake’s crucial faltering.  See, Drake’s been running with the musical equivalent of dissociative identity disorder for a while now, to the point that he’s given a few of them names - Drizzy Hendrix, Heartbreak Drake, Champagne Papi.  Up until now, though, it’s just been manifested through versatility.  Nothing Was the Same takes it to a whole new level.

To be far, Nothing Was the Same has a far clearer theme than Take Care, and songs like “Paris Morton Music 2” touch on it beautifully – last time around, Drake was on the verge of international stardom.  Now it’s all too real, and Drake’s newly adopted motto (“no new friends”) is the most apt way to describe his coping strategy.  It’s an excellent theme to build a strong album around - it’s just that it’s painfully infrequent and intercut by (great) songs that probably belong on different albums.  The hazy (break-up) bitterness of “Furthest Thing” segues into the cold defiance of “Started from the Bottom”.  The paradoxical defiance of “Worst Behavior” goes into lovelorn ballad “From Time”.  And “Hold On We’re Going Home”, straight from ‘80s disco electro-pop, comes out of nowhere in an otherwise melancholy album. It’s even worse with songs like “Wu Tang Forever”, where that disconnect manifests itself mid-song – the first verse sees Drake drawling a reflective verse on lost love, while the second’s a lot sharper in its nostalgia (“People like Mazin who was a best friend to me/Start to become a distant memory/Things change in that life and this life started lacking synergy/And fucking with me mentally, I think it’s meant to be”).  It’s two different songs, only held together by a interpolation of the Clan’s “It’s Yourz”. 

But the key here isn’t that these songs are subpar – some are, but most are brilliant.  They just don’t belong here.  Drake’s got multiple different sounds under his belt, capable of sliding from charismatic swagger to hazy, drunken confession in a matter of seconds without slipping an inch.  His voice isn’t anything brilliant, but he knows how to segue from rap to falsetto at the right times, and he’s a compelling enough songwriter (if a little clichéd and soppy) to carry entire R&B songs. But Drake’s crafted two different, contrasting albums and slyly slid them onto the same CD.  One’s a phenomenal rap album, and the other is Take Care on steroids.  But they can’t coexist in the way that it’s ordered and presented on Nothing Was the Same without cutting songs and themes off every four minutes.  I could list Take Care’s shortcomings for days – cringe worthy lines, filler tracks, Lil Wayne stepping within fifty feet of the studio. 

But the one, crucial quality that Drake’s junior doesn’t have is its cohesiveness.  Take Care’s a complete project, elevated by its themes and sounds and atmosphere.  Nothing Was the Same is alternately love-sick, angry, betrayed, and happy that he’s (we’re) going home – and it has blue skies and clouds on the cover. Drake’s a cornered artist, comparisons to the greats closing in on one side and his growing fame on the other.  He responded by making an album brimming with potential but with the fragmentation of Thank Me Later. It’s a problem he’s going to have to address very soon, particularly given that his biggest competitor for hip-hop’s throne (Kendrick) just made the most gripping concept album hip-hop’s seen in a long time with good kid, m.A.A.d city.  Drake’s ambivalence with Nothing Was the Same’s structure couldn’t even restrict itself to sequencing and track selection – drugged-out drawls shift into machine-gun raps and vice-versa, complete with beat switches.  Drake possesses a multi-faceted skill set unparalleled in his genre, and it’s only a matter of harnessing and focusing it at this point.  There’s a reason all eyes turned to Drake in the immediate aftermath of Kendrick’s combative “Control” verse; he doesn’t have to compete on the same rappity-rap plane as much of his rivals.

 It’s like Drake operates in his own little bubble.  Nothing about his music suggests much industry influence.  Sure, he gets his Future Hendrix on in a couple songs, but by and large he and 40 travel in a different lane.  It’s as if the two locked themselves in an isolated room in 2011 with 808s & Heartbreak, Pluto, and James Blake to go make an album.  Entire songs go by without drums, while Houston’s voice soars into territory that most producers wouldn’t touch on “Tuscan Leather”.  And most significantly, all contributors with any sense of “standard” have been eradicated. Most major hip-hop artists operate with better, more polished versions of relatively standard music – Rick Ross isn’t rapping over unique beats, he’s just remarkable in how he approaches them.  Drake just went the way of Kanye.* That’s not necessarily a good or bad thing (I would have loved a “Lord Knows 2.0” here).  But it’s significant in the change in approach that it signifies.  Drake has no interest in running with any producers that don’t match his vision, whether it’s a good one or not – and the few artists on Nothing Was the Same that aren’t directly from the OVO camp have co-production from 40 all over.  Drake and 40 (they really are inseparable as a duo at this stage) are taking a step forward into being curators now, transcending mere stardom into iconic status.

It’s easy to forget in the wake of a debut like good kid, m.A.A.d city just how hard it is to craft a polished album.  Drake’s one foot in, one foot out now.  Half of him’s halfway into absolute stardom, knocking on the door marked “legendary”, but that’s not happening until he makes a career-defining project.  Aubrey Graham gave it his all; Nothing Was the Same isn’t lacking for effort. But maybe that’s his problem – overthinking.  In Drake’s drive to prove that he hasn’t failed to cement his place at the top, to show that Kendrick hasn’t snatched the crown yet, he stuffed everything good he made into a CD and tried to wave a hand and pass it over as a magnus opus.  That’s not enough in one of the most intensely competitive hip-hop seasons in years – forget Kendrick, Drake’s in danger of being overshadowed by Pusha T or Danny Brown’s inevitable acclaim. 

Drake might have his solution, already, though.  On “Too Much”, between Sampha’s croons, Drake’s insecurity is mounted in a glass case for inspection – he’s telling his girl, “back then they didn’t want me, I’m blessed now.”  His boasts here don’t come off as notches on his belt.  They’re hesitating, seeking for validation, not approval.  His girl’s response?  “Take a deep breath, you’re too worried about being the best out.”  She might be right.

Not only is this from one of the best albums of last year, right near the start of The Alchemist’s really absurd run, Vince also flashes part of the brilliance that he’s been exhibiting lately for one of the first times.  Sure, he was cool on “Taxi” and Odd Future joints - but this is the only verse from him in 2012 that really comes close to touching Stolen Youth and “Hive”.  

When Curren$y stops making good music, I won’t know what to do with my life.

why we should listen to demos

The last week brought us new material from Kendrick Lamar, Kanye West, and Nas - —but not in the form of new, official singles, mixtapes, or albums.  Instead, the constantly churning depths of the Internet have spat out three of their demo tapes, dating back to 2003, 2001, and 1991 respectively, from far before they reached the levels of fame they’ve now achieved.

Naturally, none of these efforts are exactly the epitome of musical transcendence—.  They’re rough (the sound quality of Nas’ 1991 demo tape is almost unbearable at times), cringeworthy (imagine the uproar ‘Ye might cause if he released a song called “Never Letting Go (The Stalker Song)” given Rick Ross’ “UOENO” scandal), and, frankly, quite average at times.  But no one downloading these tapes should expect these tapes to be on par with these artists’ more developed masterpieces.

Instead, these hip hop artifacts provide valuable insight into what musical progression really means.  Today’s hip hop industry has been split open by the advent of social media and the proliferation of technology.  I could feasibly walk out of a Best Buy with a condenser USB mic, Pro Tools, and everything else I need to record my own abysmal but professional-sounding debut mixtape.  And once it’s done, I don’t have to stand on street corners and peddle my work, because I can then proliferate my tape with a little social media savvy to the entire Internet community through Datpiff, Facebook, Twitter, and Internet forums.  As a result, hip hop heads are being simultaneously exposed to a previously unimaginable amount of talent and an equally unimaginable amount of futility.  Anyone has a chance at success, but at the cost of industry saturation.  Things have changed.

So what’s most compelling about these three demo tapes is their ability to throw us years back in time to when today’s stars were trying to give away their demos on the streets.  We’re being transported back to when Nas was a skinny 19-year-old on the streets of Queensbridge, praying he’d make it as an emcee.  We’re listening to music from when Kanye was just the guy who gave Hova a couple hot beats on The Blueprint and no one believed he’d succeed anywhere but behind the boards.  We’re being taken back to when Kendrick Lamar was just a kid in Compton, christening himself the YNIC before he had his high school diploma.  These tapes represent rare opportunities to take our heroes down a notch or two to our level, because there’s something inherently humanizing and endearing about mediocrity.

Yet, that’s not the real reason that we should be listening to these tapes, because they’re certainly not about ridiculing our legends.  The real takeaway from Nas’ tape shouldn’t be your perceived right to look at Nas and think, “He used to be pretty average.”  No, it’s not about projecting “old them” onto “new them.”  It’s about using the “old them” to contextualize the “new them.”  You know where they came from, and that gives you a unique insight into just about how much work they had to do to get where they did.

Kendrick wasn’t born churning out smooth jazz/hip hop hybrids like “Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst,” much like Kanye wasn’t born a troubled experimental hip hop artist and Nas wasn’t born painting arguably the best images of New York.  They came from somewhere a lot lower, a place that we’ve been granted a privileged glimpse into.  These tapes aren’t about gaining a sense of misguided arrogance.   They’re about gaining a new, deeper sense of appreciation for the music we’ve come to love so much over the years.

4/27/13.

good kid, m.A.A.d city - kendrick lamar

good kid, m.A.A.d city opens with a prayer over a haunting synth, layered vocal samples and a short bassline, and Kendrick Lamar doesn’t say his first word on the album for over a minute.  In some ways, it’s much like his opening tracks on his past two albums, but “Sherane a.k.a. Master Splinter’s Daughter” is decidedly different.  Whereas before Kendrick had opted for quick jazzy chord progressions and a panicked, almost angry flow on “The Heart Pt. 2” and “Fuck Your Ethnicity,” the emotionless delivery that Kendrick adopts on “Sherane” is striking.  Here, he’s weaving a mesmerizing story of helpless seduction, rather than a Lupe-esque preaching session.  In that aspect, good kid, m.A.A.d city is most likely the most decidedly polished project that the Compton-hailing rapper has ever released.  #Section.80 might have the piano swirls and brash horns, but good kid, m.A.A.d city is a stunningly compelling concept album that rivals the likes of the genre’s best.

The story that Kendrick tells throughout good kid, m.A.A.d city is, quite literally, the story of a good kid in a mad city, driven to crime through the pressures of his friends and the violence that surrounds him.  At times, the narrative seems to lose steam, such as with radio-player “Swimming Pools (Drank),” but for the most part it’s a fast-paced story that keeps the album moving.  The skits that close most of the songs are excellent: minimally written and well-acted.

Kendrick Lamar has always been regarded as one of the foremost upcoming lyricists in hip-hop, and with the added personal dimension that the story behind good kid, m.A.A.d city brings to the table, he may just be one of the most singularly talented rappers alive.  He never displays the level of rawness that labelmate Ab-Soul does on songs like his “The Book of Soul,” but Kendrick’s usage of cadence and versatility within his delivery is something that few can match - Kendrick has a masterful sense of emphasis, even when he’s being simple, like in the third verse of “The Art of Peer Pressure” when he raps, “We made a right, then made a left then made a right, then made a left, we was just circling life.“

Halle Berry, or hallelujah - pick your poison tell me what you do, everybody gon’ respect the shooter, but the one in front of the gun lives forever.

But it’s been evident for years that what Kendrick lacked in pure emotional substance, he more than made up through pure technical talent.  good kid, m.A.A.d city, however, deals with far more powerful subjects: gang violence, corruption, drugs, alcohol, money.  The production on good kid, m.A.A.d city falters compared to the excellent in-house production on #Section.80, but with a rapper as purely talented as Kendrick, the best production is often the type exhibited on “Sing About Me”: jazzy, driven by piano chords with a backing drum track.  At times, Kendrick sounds legitimately exhausted: his normally hyperactive delivery lagging behind the beat, his voice scratchy and out of breath.  It’s a talent that rappers like Game have been trying to develop properly for years.  There’s room for improvement, but Kendrick’s finally taken that step from rapping about personal experience to broader, more hard-hitting subjects.

But, although Kendrick has taken huge strides artistically, good kid, m.A.A.d city is (unsurprisingly) not perfect.  Despite the impressive producer list that was behind the boards for Kendrick’s debut (including Hit-Boy, Pharrell, Scoop DeVille, and Just Blaze, among others), it’s lacking compared to both these producers’ previous works and to Kendrick’s previous album.  Throughout Hit-Boy’s contribution (“Backseat Freestyle”), there’s a sense that the beat never drops: it never has the frantic urgency of Kanye West and Jay-Z’s “Niggas in Paris,” or the buzz of A$AP Rocky’s “Goldie.”  Pharrell-produced “good kid” is a significant departure from Pharrell’s synth-heavy instrumentals, and Just Blaze’s “Compton” never comes close to the grandiosity of Drake and Rick Ross’s “Lord Knows.”  But what might be good kid, m.A.A.d city’s most striking flaw is Kendrick’s surprising reliance on gimmicky voice filters, given his absurd talent at rapping.  When utilized well, it’s impressive (as in pre-album release “Cartoon & Cereal”), but when Kendrick starts rapping in a high-pitched, agitated voice that he declares as his conscience speaking in “Swimming Pools (Drank),” it might be too much.

good kid, m.A.A.d city is one of the most impressive city-themed albums in recent memory.  It’s a hauntingly helpless, ever-so-slightly hopeful depiction of life in one of the most notorious cities in America: Compton, CA.  Kendrick’s remarkable versatility is on full display, as he goes from pronouncing “I pray my dick get big as the Eiffel Tower, so I can fuck the world for 72 hours” on “Backseat Freestyle” to brooding on the effects of the culture around him on “The Art of Peer Pressure,” when he raps “Rush a nigga quick and then we laugh about it - that’s ironic ‘cause I’ve never been violent, until I’m with the homies.”  good kid, m.A.A.d city certainly stands out for its musical excellence, but that’s not all.

It exemplifies the third step in the natural progression of hip-hop: from a chronicling of the greatness of life on the streets (Jay-Z’s “Reasonable Doubt,” for example), to a move toward the 9-5 working man (Kanye West’s “College Dropout”), to now good kid, m.A.A.d city: a musically underground but mainstream-backed, emotionally volatile portrayal of the terrors of the streets.  It’s not as lyrically groundbreaking as Nas’s Illmatic or poignant as Blu & Exile’sBelow the Heavens, or as influential as 50 Cent’s Get Rich or Die Tryin’.  But it comes at an important time in hip-hop and American culture, when a rapper like Kendrick Lamar is being thrust into a mainstream dominated by the “fuck bitches get money” attitude of Big Sean and Meek Mill.  As cliché as it is, Kendrick Lamar may just represent the future of hip-hop.  Act and listen accordingly.

10/21/12.

“I made more millionaires than the lotto did

Dame made millions, BIG made millions

Ye made millions, Just made millions

Lyor made millions, Cam made millions

Beans would tell you if he wasn’t in his feelings”

Review coming next week.