![]() ![]() The next song, “Swimming Pools (Drank)” is a meditation about alcohol culture: “some people like the way it feels / some people wanna kill their sorrows / some people wanna fit in with the popular / that was my problem.” A verse is rapped from the point of view of K. The narrator gets a little depressed, and the song ends with a skit where his friends offer him alcohol. “ m.A.A.d city” reflects on the things he has seen and done while living in Compton. Dot can never escape the gangs, and the second verse about how he can never escape the police. “good kid” reflects on the “mass hallucination baby / ill education baby” of growing up in Compton. The next two songs, “good kid” and “m.A.A.d city,” are the centerpieces of the album. They try to make him get out of the car and start a fight. ![]() Dot arrives at her house and is accosted by two people who want to know where he is from. Then, we cut back to the skit from the first song, where K. During the song, he raps about problems they are currently having and how they need better communication. “ Poetic Justice” brings us back to his relationship with his girlfriend and the story line from the beginning. He talks about “dreams of living life like rappers do,” about the home invasion that just happened, his relationship with his girlfriend, freestyling in the back of car, and asks us “pots with cocaine residue, everyday I’m hustling / what else is a thug to do when you eating cheese from the government?” “ Money Trees” is a reflection on what’s happened so far. Dot and friends driving around Compton with “a quarter tank of gas, one pistol, and orange soda.” It ends with a story of robbing a house and being chased by police, and segues into the next song “Money Trees.” ![]() He playfully does classic rap braggadocio, but when the next song, tellingly called “The Art of Peer Pressure,” starts, he wants us to know that even if he’s “smoking on the finest dope / drank until I can’t no more / really I’m a sober soul / but I’m with the homies right now.” Dot’s state of mind as an impressionable 17 year old. If one of the main selling points of this album is its cinematic quality, it shouldn’t be forgotten that Lamar is a truly gifted rapper. He switches in and out of multiple voices and multiple cadences at the drop of hat, works in great wordplay without it being forced, and has interior rhymes all over the place. The next three and half minutes feature Lamar showcasing his technically incredible rapping. Dot’s friends pick him up from home with a “pack of blacks and a beat CD” and ask him to rap. The third track, “Backseat Freestyle,” opens with a skit where K. He meditates that, as a rapper, “I want to keep it alive and not compromise the feeling we love / you’re trying to keep it deprived and only co-sign what radio does.” ![]() Dot returning the car home and spending some time by himself. The next song is a bit of an interlude, with K. All he hears is “the music of being young and dumb, it’s never muted / in fact it’s much louder where I’m from.” He takes his mom’s keys and drives to his girlfriend’s house, where he immediately sees two menacing figures in black hoodies and he says, “I froze as my phone rang.” The beat falls away and a voicemail from his mom is heard, who tells him to bring her car home. Dot, as a 17-year-old just trying to get with girls. It has interweaving story lines, compelling character arcs, a tragic denouement, and, finally, redemption. Good Kid, Mad City is a cinematic story of Kendrick Lamar growing up impoverished in Compton, Calif., and his attempt to get out. Good Kid, Mad City (stylized good kid, m.A.A.d city ) is subtitled “A Short Film by Kendrick Lamar,” and that is not overselling it. ![]()
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