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. It's a pipsqueak's first pass at a chest-puff. Framed this way, his "damn, I got bitches" chant gets turned inside out: This isn't an alpha male's boast. 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. For example, when "Backseat Freestyle" 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 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. 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.Īll this weighty material might make good kid, m.A.A.d city sound like a bit of a drag. 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. 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. 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. 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. The handwriting for both covers was scrawled by TDE member Schoolboy Q, who also did many of the album’s adlibs and wrote on the classic cover for TPAB.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. The album cover for the deluxe features his mother’s van that was referenced in the album sitting in the driveway of Lamar’s childhood home. “That photo says so much about my life and about how I was raised in Compton and the things I’ve seen" Although the black strips highlighted that the story was told through Lamar’s eyes, Clark stated they were a legal decision pushed by Interscope to obscure identities. Above where his uncle shows a C for Crips, a photograph of Kendrick and his father hangs. Speaking on the bottle, Top Dawg President Punch said “growing up as a kid… it was always around my household, and the households of a lot of people I know”. On the table, a 40oz bottle lies next to a baby bottle, hinting to the issues in ‘Swimming’. In the original album cover, Kendrick’s uncles are to his left, and his grandfather to his right. “… he doesn’t care what people will think and his art speaks for itself, and I appreciate that audacity.” - Don Clark for EyeonDesign The cover didn’t use original polaroids - Clark took 4圆 portraits given to him by Lamar, and distressed the photographs until they had the distinct texture. In fact, Lamar had planned the cover (as well as much of the album’s content) years prior, stating to Complex "everything was premeditated". However, speaking to EyeonDesign, he explained Kendrick already knew “exactly what he wanted”. The M.A.A.d acronym stood for “My Angry Adolescence Divided” and “My Angels on Angel Dust” (the latter referring to his “first blunt” laced with PCP).ĭesigner Don Clark initially wasn’t a fan of the concept - he fought against the photo of the minivan as he felt it wasn’t worthy of a cover, and didn’t think the graffiti font worked. The title came from a nickname he had given himself - Good Kid in a Mad City. When Kendrick Lamar burst onto the scene with his major-label debut, listeners were greeted with two striking covers.
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