Welcome to Defector Music Club, where a number of our writers get together to dish about an album. Today, Tom Ley, Patrick Redford, Luis Paez-Pumar, and Israel Daramola explore Kendrick Lamar's second album and major label debut, good kid, m.A.A.d city.
Israel Daramola: Kendrick Lamar just won a bunch of Grammys and is about to play in the freakin' Super Bowl halftime show—as a headliner!—after ostensibly taking over rap over the past year. And it all started here, more or less, on his major label debut good kid, m.A.A.d city, a totemic record out the gate that people wanted to give instant-classic status. But before we get into all of that, let's start with our personal relationships to this album back when it was first released in 2012.
At the time, I was a very, VERY casual freelance writer and was probably absorbing so much music to distract me from heartbreak and depression all throughout 2012. So I was listening to everything, and everything seemed amazing: Juicy J was having an inexplicable resurgence, Wiz and Curren$y were at the top of their games, The Weeknd was finishing the trilogy, Frank Ocean was dropping Channel Orange. At the time I remember hearing GKMC the night it dropped and being convinced I had just heard the best rap album that I was going to hear that decade, and maybe the best one period. A surefire, unquestionable instant classic. Funny thing, though: Just as quickly as I decided on its greatness, I changed my mind about the record and decided that actually it was just fine—great in spots, but not consistently.
Patrick Redford: This album was unfortunately so micro-targeted to my 2012 self's taste that it ushered in a profound era of washedness in my rap listening that persists to this day. By which I mean: I was a voracious Cocaine Blunts reader, I was as plugged in to the cutting edge of rap as I had ever been before and ever will be, and I loved Section.80, so when GKMC dropped, it basically scratched every itch I'd ever had; it was, I thought at the time and do not really think anymore, about as good as an album could possibly be. There was no point in chasing the dragon any longer, and it took until Whole Lotta Red for me to be shaken out of it.
I spent most of the summer of 2012 listening obsessively with a friend, each of us sharing an earbud split out of an iPod classic as we boarded a decrepit bus at 6:00 every morning in the Argentinian winter and rode to an equally decrepit geology camp field site. I was bored out of my mind and firmly over being a man in STEM, and so I spent the summer (or winter, if you're a hemispheric determinist) instead diagramming GKMC, piecing together the narrative, obsessively revisiting the bonus tracks, and generally playing it until I knew every word and totally wore it out. My obsession was so thorough that I have only since revisited the album twice, and have probably liked it less each time, as his next two records got the balance between concept album and Good Album more finely tuned, and especially as Kendrick has now more or less cashed out. Listening back, seven months after "Not Like Us," GKMC sounds so different, though I would argue that you can see the seeds of Kendrick getting the Super Bowl halftime show after penning his biggest song ever and making his first truly straightforward record, even here in his most cohesive, beloved project.
Luis Paez-Pumar: I remember exactly when I first listened to the album. During CMJ 2012, I was a freelancer for the titular website (RIP, where the P is either peace or piss, not sure these days), and was out covering some show or another at Pianos in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. I was already a Kendrick fan, having been clued in the year before with Section.80, and having seen him twice in that era, including at Northwestern's spring music festival (he "opened" for Steve Aoki). So when a friend texted me that a totally legal file of the album had popped up on the internet, I forsook my freelance responsibilities—I was paid in a CMJ festival badge and exposure, meaning not at all, so fuck 'em—ran home, and downloaded the album.
I was fucking blown away. Having context for Kendrick's music already, I took good kid, m.A.A.d city in stride, noting all the ways that he had ditched most of his more annoying tendencies from Section.80 and streamlined it into one cohesive piece. Well, as cohesive as a 70-minute album could be, anyway. I played the album over and over for months, finding new lines or beats that drove me bonkers in the best possible ways. I immediately zeroed in on two songs: "Money Trees" because of that Jay Rock verse, which I'm sure we'll get to, and "Sing About Me, I'm Dying of Thirst," because I'm a sucker for a long song. (See also: Kendrick's "Cartoon and Cereal" with Gunplay, an insane song to look back on now.) I don't think about the latter much these days, but "Money Trees" still (to borrow Patrick's phrasing) scratches a very specific itch, even to this day.
Tom Ley: This is one of those albums that I've always held a candle for simply because of what was going on in my life the year it came out. I had just moved to New York in 2012, and this was what I listened to every day during my commute to and from work. This album also provided the soundtrack to what is one of the most important nights of my life: I went to a friend's Halloween party that eventually moved to a bar, and ended up sitting next to a girl who I thought was cool but was nervous about talking to. "Bitch, Don't Kill My Vibe" started playing in the bar at a ridiculously loud volume, and when I noticed her mouthing along to it I saw an opening. We chatted about the album a bit (she was a huge Black Hippy fan), and quickly became friends. I'm married to her now, so that’s nice!
Anyway, I really did not like this album very much when I re-listened to it this morning, probably for the first time since 2014 or so. Oh to be young again!
Luis: Tom! I also had this same reaction when I re-listened to the album for this project. There's still like 60 percent of an all-timer album in here, but man, there's a lot of garbage and so many mini-skits! I hate skits!!! What did you find worse this time around?
Tom: I guess this time around I just found the concept-album aspect to be way less engrossing than I did when I was younger, and the songs themselves fell flat. I had totally forgotten that Drake guests on "Poetic Justice," and that it is a terrible song. I almost wanted to bail at that point, but I stuck it out and eventually got back into it a bit. The three-song run of "m.A.A.d city," "Swimming Pools (Drank)," and "Sing About Me, I'm Dying of Thirst," are where the album is at its best, and where Kendrick's ability to pull you from image to image and scene to scene really works, but it's not good that you have to wait until the eighth song to get there. I was shocked by how little time I had for songs that were previous standouts to me, "Backseat Freestyle" included.
Israel: I also do not enjoy "Poetic Justice," but not just because of the Drake feature. I have never really been a fan of any of Kendrick's "love" songs, or songs nominally targeted at women, mostly because it is where he most lets out his inner Wale and does that thing of confusing a good sample with a good song. The skits get harder to sit through with each successive listen, which played a big role in what made me change my mind about it early. It's not that they aren't funny or interesting, they just feel gimmicky. A lot of this album feels gimmicky, in fact. It's a little like the Brady Corbet thing happening right now around The Brutalist. I can respect the ambition and the longing to be in a pantheon, but I do think that self-consciousness hurts you in the long run.
Speaking of those skits, I actually had forgotten the extent to which so much of this album is about the pain and the trauma of being a young black man in Compton, and how that ultimately resolves itself in "give your lives over to Jesus Christ, our lord and savior." Which now raises a real question: Is Kendrick Lamar the original TradCath influencer?
Patrick: Yes, exactly Iz. The scaffolding he erects is extremely ornate, which is not the same as good. His cinematic writing style is totally engrossing, and all the time he spends detailing the fine-textured psychological stresses and pressures of growing up in Compton forms the heart of this album, but to have all the tension resolve in a conversion (reconversion?) is more a deflation than a resolution. The narrative form is more laudable, ultimately, than the narrative substance.
I think the aspect of GKMC's storytelling that is actually most impressive upon re-listen is its self-awareness and its occasional subversion of big-time Classic Rap Shit to advance its thesis. I am thinking specifically of "Backseat Freestyle," a totally ridiculous song that is totally aware of its ridiculousness. In the canon of the album, this is pre-tweaking Kendrick in full strut, braggadocious and untouchable. There's a straightforward reading of the song that’s like, Oh boy that's funny and it works on that level, but the form of the song—the "freestyle" structure, the concussive Hit Boy beat, the obviously half-ironic, double over-the-top horny lyrics—is itself actually advancing something far more interesting. Kendrick is saying, essentially, I could make this sort of rap song easily and I could do a better job than most people, but instead of giving you that sugar-water version straight up, I am going to both epitomize and subvert the form at the same time.
Luis: I had forgotten about "Poetic Justice," mostly because the Drake-Kendrick collab I think about from this era is "Fuckin' Problems," which I was somehow convinced was on this album but is actually on A$AP Rocky's LONG.LIVE.A$AP the following year. And to Israel's point, that song is also terrible and Kendrick's verse is awful; he really can't be normal about women.
One thing I found myself doing on this re-listen is figuring out how to pull a 40-minute banger out of this overwrought leviathan, and I have to disagree with Tom on one thing: I fucking hate "Swimming Pools (Drank)" so much. It feels like an after-school special. Otherwise, though, there's definitely enough here to make the album worth going back to, and I'll always have a soft spot for "Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe."
It's interesting to think about how Kendrick sort of came out fully formed as an auteur. Every one of his albums tries to be About Something in a way that is perhaps too grandiose, but I can't knock him too much for the attempts, even if they've never fully worked in one project. It's crazy to think about how such an Album Rapper lives in my head more for his singles and one-offs, up to and including "Not Like Us," than for any individual album.
Israel: Let's not complain about this album the whole time. Let's talk about what still works about it, starting with "Money Trees" and "Backseat Freestyle." I have tried to think very seriously about why Kendrick has blown up to the level he has despite his supposed status as this authentic rap auteur in a pop-star age, and I think what it mostly boils down to is how hilarious he is. I mean, he's certainly more funny and laidback than someone like Lupe Fiasco, who is probably his closest point of comparison.
The way he raps "MARTIN HAD A DREEEAM" is just silly and infectious. Even on a song like "The Art of Peer Pressure," which is this kinda contemplative exegesis on the way things can spiral, is rendered so vividly that it becomes humorous in how relatable it is. I have been in a car full of guys bumping Young Jeezy and ready to go wild as a result, too. I think in telling a story about young people growing up in dire circumstances, he excels when he taps into that youthful abandon more than when he tries to bring a more wizened, clinical approach.
Luis: Jay fucking Rock. I probably wasted too much of my life listening to his solo stuff in hopes that he would match the high of his verse on "Money Trees." He never did, but to be fair to him, not many rappers have. I have every line of that verse imprinted in my brain, but I think about "steal your watch and tell you what time it is" like once a week, 13 years later. He completely shows Kendrick up there, which was hard to do, but in a way they work together well; Kendrick is rapping a bit silly on the song and then Jay Rock throws his entire heart into 16 bars.
Tom: To your point, Israel, one thing I really appreciate about this album is Kendrick's ability to convey that specifically teenaged experience of anxiety and desire and freedom all bundling together to make it feel like every moment exists on a knife's edge. This album really understands what it feels like to be a teenager hanging out late at night with your friends, when you get in the car with the understanding that you could be headed towards the best or worst night of your life. The backdrop of gang violence and poverty makes for a very specific depiction, but I do feel like there's a level of relatability to be found here for anyone who has ever been unleashed into the night with nothing but a car and and the underdeveloped frontal lobes of their friends to guide them.
Luis: I think the reason I still put this album over, say, To Pimp A Butterfly is the humor. It's a funny album! Kendrick is very good at telling stories, and even when some of the lines make me cringe—"I pray my dick get big as the Eiffel Tower/So I can fuck the world for 72 hours"—I still chuckle and sing along. (This is another reason I hate "Swimming Pools (Drank)," which is that it takes itself entirely too seriously, even if it does touch on serious topics. I don't know, I'll stop complaining about it.) Teenagers, and teenage boys specifically, say some dumb shit that still cracks everyone up, and there's a lot of that here; is the Eiffel Tower line really all that different from a Yo Mama joke, in the grand scheme of things? For better or worse, nights when nothing happens and everyone talks bullshit are where those bonds become strong, and I think the album captures that so well, even though Kendrick is trying to say something about growing up in the way and in the city he did.
Patrick: Question: Is Kendrick the best technical rapper of his cohort? For as annoying as "Swimming Pools (Drank)" is, and I do agree that it's annoying, I do think it totally accomplishes what it's trying to do, and I do think it is worth appreciating that the big single, or at least A Big Single from this album, has a long interlude where Kendrick pitches his voice up and raps as his conscience. Again, maybe that's more formally successful than anything, but I am not above being wowed by his raw skill. His rap voice can be mildly too whiny for my taste sometimes, but I don't think anybody whom Andrew Noz was blogging about between 2010 and 2014 is better at modulating their voice, switching flows, and using the mechanics of their rapping to make a song more fully realized. That skill, taken alongside the storytelling ability, is why I find GKMC more impressive than great, even if I still think it's pretty great.
Tom: Yeah, I think that's probably a fair assessment, Patrick. I do think that once the novelty of his ability to manipulate the inflection of his voice wears off, the easier it becomes to be less impressed by him. That's not his fault, really, it's just that anything that feels revelatory is going to become more familiar and staid the more you encounter it. I guess that's why this album doesn't work for me today as much as it did when I was younger; I am at this point extremely familiar with Kendrick's technical abilities—a decade-plus of having them constantly extolled will do that—and without the ability to be blown away by that aspect of the album, there's not much else to grab onto. Don't get me wrong: Kendrick is for sure one of the most gifted rappers I've ever heard, and I understand how hard it is to make compelling narrative rap, but he works in a style that I think is always going to bring diminishing returns as time goes on.
Israel: Probably, Patrick, although I’m sure the J. Cole mafia will try to disagree after they take a break from watching Jayson Tatum Instagram reels to read this. Kendrick is a funny guy in that he is very technically proficient, but like so is Hopsin, and Kendrick has a lot of Hopsin-ass moments that he gets away with by also being a talented hook writer. I'm sure a lot of his detractors and/or rivals (Lupe, Drake) would argue that he gets feted too much for everything he does as though he were the first to do it, which has some truth to it. But Kendrick, to his credit, figured out the recipe to be authentic and pure as a rapper while still having the ability to make pop music, and that is how we got here, like it or not. Personally, I am not an annoying high school kid anymore and I want more from a rapper than technique and ability.
Patrick: I think that's absolutely right, and sort of gets at my theory from earlier: that you can find the seeds of the rest of Kendrick's career in GKMC, which includes both the tonally ambitious and popularly successful stuff he was putting out through whatever you want to call his peak—and for my money, I like DAMN the best by a pretty significant margin—to latter-day Kendrick, who just won the most important rap battle in decades in the most annoying way possible (Exhibit A), then put out a decently listenable but formally limp Drakeo ripoff/tribute hyphy record with Jack Antonoff.
A good deal of GKMC is corny, even in its best moments: "Bitch, Don't Kill My Vibe" is very lonely stoner-coded and everything you guys said about "Poetic Justice" is true. But also the densely packed Concept stuff, done in the form of honest-to-God radio bangers—"Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe" and "Money Trees"—was honed and improved on each of his next two albums ("LOYALTY" is so good). So I am wondering what each of you make of Kendrick's post-GKMC career, and specifically his turn toward super-mega-hyper-popularity 12 years after what a lot of people regard as his best album?
Israel: How would we rank Kendrick's discography so far? I'd also say DAMN is the number one—the closest to taking Kendrick's best attributes and creating a cohesive project out of them. Would I have given it a Pulitzer? I don't know. That's none of my business. Section.80 is probably the emotional second, just because it means a lot to me and it is a grand showcase and also where he takes himself the least serious. GKMC next, then To Pimp A Butterfly, which is a rap album for professors of African studies courses. Then I'd go with GNX, which I think is Kendrick failing to do his version of a Drake record, and finally Mr. Morale, which you would have to be in a cult dedicated to that man to believe is a great record. None of these albums are ever bad, by the way; they all just range in success on how fully they achieve the prestige they're shooting for.
Luis: 1. DAMN. 2. good kid, m.A.A.d city 3. Section.80 4. To Pimp A Butterfly 5. GNX 6. Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers. There is a colossal dropoff after TPAB and Mr. Morale, which to me is actively bad. I will be taking no further questions about this.
Tom: I guess I will go with 1. DAMN 2. Section.80 3. m.A.A.d city 4. To Pimp A Butterfly 5. GNX 6. Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers.
Patrick: Not to be The Ringer, but Kendrick has had a pretty strange career for a guy who is about to play the Super Bowl halftime show. Certainly that sort of trajectory is not impossible on its face, and would not have been all that surprising in 2017 or maybe even 2012, but I don't think anyone could have imagined the sequence of events that will surely culminate in the nation screaming in unison "CERTIFIED PEDOPHILE" at the most popular artist of the last 12 years.
Kendrick is far from unique in that his most popular stuff was made after his best stuff, in both the temporal sense and in the sense that there is a distinct aesthetic break between Mr. Morale and "Not Like Us." But even for that album's indulgences, it was still an album project as such, and a wildly original (even if mostly unsuccessful, at least for this quartet) one at that. There's a lot to enjoy about 2025 Kendrick, and I do love that maybe my favorite rapper of the century is getting to have a victory lap at this scale, but I can't help but be left totally cold by it. There's a cynicism to it that bugs me. But that's probably overly harsh just because I'm judging it against some of my favorite shit of all time, and also all will be forgiven if he does even one second of "Cartoon & Cereal." I will scream the Gunplay verse and they will have to escort me off the premises.
Tom: For as exhausting as the Drake-Kendrick beef has become, and as inert as the Super Bowl halftime show is likely to be, I still have to salute Kendrick's effort from the past year. We got to see him channel all of his artistry in a brand new direction; instead of using his auteurist sensibilities and maniacal attention to detail to make another Important Album, he leveraged all of that to spend a few months telling us all about how much he hates a guy. It was like if Paul Thomas Anderson spent $200 million on a movie about how much his neighbor annoys him. The whole thing will probably end up just feeling more and more silly as time goes on, but man, Kendrick really does hate that guy, and he put a lot of effort into letting us know.
Israel: You know, ever since the NFL gave Jay-Z the keys to the halftime show as a way of getting public opinion back on their side after the Kaepernick stuff, it feels like he's been kinda grasping at straws to find suitable hip-hop acts that are both big enough to justify inclusion and have enough broad appeal that the NFL won't get letters from a million white parents. I mean, the Usher thing last year was fun, but it felt like an attempt to jump on his viral momentum, and giving Dr. Dre a Super Bowl show kinda furthers my theory. I do believe Kendrick's performance on that one played a role in him getting this shot, and then the perfect storm happened to make it the exact right decision.
That said, Kendrick has always gotten this weird pass on everything kinda goofy he does because he's become this critical darling, the critics' favorite rapper, and no one seems to want to press on the contradictions and cynicism inherent in doing a show like this. It's all just mindless "get that bag" celebration, and I think everyone is so thirsty to be rid of Drake that we're not even discussing whether accusing a man of being a pedophile on the national stage without any evidence is a good idea. [Chris Rock voice] Now I'm not saying he should've sued him … but I understand.
Defector's Favorite Jams Right Now
Still House Plants - If I don't make it, I love u
I recognize that I am like 10 months late to this particular party, but I get most of my music recommendations from people's best-of lists, so: Last year's Still House Plants record, If I don't make it, I love u is so good, and is so good in a way that strains the limits of the language of genre. Is it a free jazz record made out of post-punk ingredients? A new possibility for the form of three-person rock-and-roll? An exercise in exactly how much juice can be squeezed out of a guitar, a drum set, and a voice? The synthesis of a trio who sold their guitars, bought turntables, then smashed those turntables with guitars they stole back from whoever they sold them to? A vessel for vocalist Jess Hickie-Kallenbach to explore the outer bounds of how to emote through rasping? Math rock with imaginary numbers?
However you want to categorize If I don't make it, I love u, I think it's a masterpiece. The band is totally disinterested in anything like conventional form, yet for all the experimentation, it's their synergy as a trio that is captivating. The highest compliment I can pay them is that while you can trace plenty of antecedents to distinct aspects of Still House Plants, nothing that I've ever listened to sounds and feels like this.
— Patrick
KP SKYWALKA - 4 Tha Freakas
It is probably irresponsible of me to recommend a 20-year-old D.C. rapper who raps like a combination of RXKNephew and Blueface, and who just dropped an album of sex raps that would make Uncle Luke and Akinyele proud, on a Kendrick Lamar blog. And yet, it's probably my favorite thing to come out this year so far. But even I distrust myself for my affections toward this project: Not just because of its subject matter, but because much like my torrid relationship with NYC rappers making sexy drill, 4 Tha Freakas is indebted to nostalgia and flipping old R&B tracks that feel targeted specifically at me. There are songs where KP raps about hooking up with ladies over ethereal-sounding R&B records that I have listened to during my own dating experiences, and I wonder how much of this album is actually great or if I'm just being algorithmically targeted by it. Ultimately, though, the music is just so much fun, and gleefully NSFW, that I don't think it really matters.
— Israel
Bad Bunny - DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS
At this point, Bad Bunny needs no introduction, and probably there's no need to highlight him in one of these blurbs. The Puerto Rican singer-rapper-superstar-wrestler (really!) released his sixth solo album, DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS (I Should Have Taken More Photos), in January, and it would have been safe to expect what Bad Bunny often delivers. And yet FOToS is a heartfelt curveball, a record all about his native Puerto Rico and a contemplative look at the island's status within United States colonialism. To that end, no song better serves as a mission statement than the low-key (musically), high-key (contextually) love letter–slash–warning that is "LO QUE LE PASÓ A HAWAii".
In the song, Bad Bunny strips away grandiose production to turn in a naturalistic performance full of heartbreak and sudden stoppages, bemoaning how Puerto Rico's natural beauty has been turned against it by tourism and the aforementioned colonialism. Over guitars and güiros, a percussion instrument used widely in Caribbean music, Bad Bunny almost drops his Bad Bunny persona and instead speaks as Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, directly to the island he has always represented internally and on the world stage. The verses are full of clever and frankly heart-rending word play—"The foam of her shores looks like champagne/It's alcohol for her wounds, for dancing away the sadness/It's alcohol for her wounds, 'cause there's so much to heal"—but it's the chorus that has stuck with me most.
In it, Bad Bunny says "they" (and it's never in doubt who he means by "they," those who would come to the island and exploit it for their own benefits and luxury) want to take away the rivers and the beaches, and the neighborhoods, too. He worries for his grandma, and really all of the grandmas in Puerto Rico, sounding almost depressed with the acceptance that the imperialist machine cares for no man, woman, or child. As a fellow Latin American from a nation in the antagonistic crosshairs of the United States, I'll be thinking about this one for some time; in less than four minutes, Bad Bunny managed to capture all of the quiet rage that lives underneath the surface of our homelands toward the empire so committed to rampage over an entire hemisphere.
But this isn't a lamentation, not really, and it's not defeated. The next line is the true thesis, as he sings "No, no suelte' la bandera ni olvide' el lelolai/Que no quiero que hagan contigo lo que le pasó a Hawái" ("No, don't let go of the flag nor forget the lelolai/'Cause I don't want them to do to you what happened to Hawaii"). Hawaii, another victim of the United States culturally and economically, serves as a red flag, but Bad Bunny wants to fight and not grieve, at least not in full, not yet. It's quite stirring to see him lay this all out so plainly and emotionally, and in an album that serves to celebrate everything he loves about Puerto Rico, a song like "LO QUE LE PASÓ A HAWAii" is a necessary interjection, a downer of a track that still manages to have hope that the inextricable wheels of demise can be jammed with a song, or a protest, or simply with a community.
— Luis
