good kid, m.A.A.d city

Great album. Pacing was excellent and the sketches serving as interludes were so smoothly done.

Not yet at Kendricks best but we're getting there.
Sing About Me, I'm Dying of Thirst is astonishing

I am a sinner. Who's im probably gonna sin again. Lord forgive me. Lord forgive me. Things I don't understand

Fuck he elevated hip hip story telling to the masses. I know he wasn’t the first, he’ll il sure he wasn’t the best at the time.

But as far as the underground as I could go - it’s unlike anything a lot of ppl have ever heard. It just doesn't stick with me the same way "TPAB" does. Some of the tracks are just tooooo long.

quite liked it but Kendrick never really been an artist I come back to. solid and enjoyable but not enough to grab me here for it to be full five stars. very funny dimwit comments from the "everything but rap and country" crowd on here.

I've got this in my library, and I don't listen to it often enough. I will say, I enjoy "To Pimp A Butterfly" more than this, but this album is no slouch.

Mer 3.5. Gillar Kendrick Lamar överlag, men detta var inte det bästa albumet jag hört av honom.

Literally the moment the first song started, I became mesmerized by the beats and Kendrick’s raw rap talent. Admittedly, some of the lyrics early on about women were not my favorite and almost put me off listening to the rest, but then I looked this up and learned that Kendrick is purposely telling a narrative about his complex life as a teenager and is open about the perspectives he held at the time (which he then challenges in a self-reflective way later on). It softened me and helped me experience the album as essentially a movie of his relationship with his life and how he is challenging his own narrative that wasn’t even his, but that he was influenced to have.

Honestly…I’m kind of in awe of his storytelling and vulnerability after listening to the whole thing.

What an artist. There is no doubt that Kendrick is one of a kind and is one of the best out there.

Whilst I can appreciate this is an artwork and a type of concept album of the boy becoming a man and all that, it doesn't take away from the fact that I find modern hiphop production to just not be interesting to listen to. Too much focus on deep basslines and stuttering drumbeats at the expense of anything resembling a melody or something that you can actually groove to.
Kendrick's voice is a little annoying after a whole album, too, and this didn't really have to be over an hour long to get his point across.
Great if you like that sort of thing, but just not my cup of tea.

Something about Kendrick Lamar is that even though he’s not my favorite rapper of all time, he’s probably the best rapper of the last 15 years. He’s human, but talented beyond what most humans are capable of making. He’s kind of like Kanye West in the way he makes music that defines generations and “the times,” while also being pivotal and earth-shaking, in a way that is felt by everyone who interacts with music.

This has been a double-edged sword for some of my enjoyment of Lamar’s work; it’s caught up in the interest of so many other people that it can’t stay personal really. Also, it’s west coast. I respect the west coast, but music that centers California like that can’t ever really penetrate deeper than a basic appreciation for the music. That being said, when the album gets more universal it hits me hard. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The album’s wonderfully sequenced; “Sherane” is a great song because it’s obviously juvenile, but it’s a menacing song. You’re unsettled by it, even as he’s talking about being a kid who wants to be fucking this girl he met. And then it pivots to these two incredibly fun songs that I adore to this day. “Bitch Don’t Kill My Vibe” is still a strange juxtaposition between beautiful and pretty funny, and “Backseat Freestyle,” though a bit too long, is awesome and so entertaining.

Then there’s a pivot that shows the audience who Kendrick Lamar really is. He’s a kid we’ve all met. All kids are good, but many do bad actions; some mean to do it, but some, like the speaker, just do it with their friends. I mean, the song is called “The Art Of Peer Pressure.”

“Money Trees,” the next song, is one of the best songs ever made. It’s probably my favorite hip-hop song ever. The line “Everybody gon’ respect the shooter- but the one in front of the gun lives for ever” is some Wu-Tang shit. Tell that shit to your kids, play that shit for your friends, put it on your playlists. And then the song’s larger themes of poverty are communicated so interestingly; the dollar as an entity that upends someone’s life, the deeply visceral imagery that resonates deeper than any other song here. Every verse is perfect, Jay Rock’s feature is crazy good.

“Poetic Justice” is another one of my favorites off the album, a poppier number with a CRAZY Drake feature that still blows me away, especially after how far Drake’s fallen. “Good kid” and “m.A.A.d. City” are the next two, and they work together to create this pretty devastating breakdown of someone’s life as they turn from innocence to lack thereof, even unwillingly.

Then the final stretch starts, starting with “Swimming Pools,” a song that’s not only great, detailing the dysfunction that alcohol brings to the lives of those who use it, but also the fact that it became such a huge hit even through that, often times AT PARTIES. Damn, that shit still blows me the fuck away. Then you have “Sing About Me, I’m Dying Of Thirst,” handily one of the most crushing songs in Kendrick’s discography, and a 12-minute long masterclass in music. The first half has one of the saddest choruses in modern music, and the second half is driving, desperate, despairing.

And then the last leg of the album, isn’t the best. “Real” is annoying and way too long, and “Compton” is fine but not much more.

It’s a great album. Incredibly pivotal. I love it. Could it be better? Yes. But not that much. Pretty much every song, save for a couple, is mind-blowing one way or another, and it has maybe the best hip hop song ever. Definitely needs to be listened by anyone and everyone.
8.9/10
DOES IT BELONG ON THE LIST: YES
REASON: pivotal, impactful, incredible

It was a bit long for me but I still really enjoyed this one.

Was an excellent breakout record but there is a very special follow-up to this

Man, I adore this album. Section 80 was great and To Pimp A Butterfly is unquestionably brilliant too, but for my money, I'd still put this as my top Kendrick album. "Sing About Me/I'm Dying of Thirst" I'd pick as my personal favourite track, but there's not a single skip here. The bonus disc tracks are brilliant too.

Of course, I’d heard of Kendrick Lamar, but I hadn’t really listened to him yet. Time to give him a chance.
Oh, damn... I didn't have high expectations, but “Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City” is even worse than I had imagined - surely one of the worst albums I've ever heard. I don't even know where to start, because there really aren't any positive aspects at all. A waste of time.

Jamais écouté avant.

Hier, je découvrais les productions luxuriantes et la densité mélodique presque pop de l'album de Lupe Fiasco. Le grand écart avec cet album de Kendrick Lamar (mon deuxième dans la liste) est réalisé par un professionnel : ici, les prod sont minimalistes, sombres, presque froides, et le rap nettement plus agressif (y compris dans le langage) et les ambitions pop pour ainsi dire inexistantes. Et pourtant, j'ai pris autant de plaisir à le découvrir. Concept album extrêmement ambitieux, racontant de manière décousue et partiellement autobiographique la vie à Compton et les tentatives de son personnage pour s'extraire de la violence des gangs et vivre de la musique, good kid m.A.A.d city est à la hauteur de ses ambitions et nous embarque totalement, tant par l'ambiance musicale que par les textes de son auteur, qui utilise les clichés du gangsta rap pour mieux les retourner. Un très bon album, dont on regrettera seulement l'utilisation un peu trop systématique des skits narratifs, qui ne semble pas toujours nécessaire pour comprendre la progression du récit. Après avoir écouté ses deux albums sur la liste, et malgré mes réticences initiales vis-à-vis du hip-hop, je dois bien avouer que Kendrick Lamar m'a bluffé, et je comprends pourquoi il est considéré comme une référence.

Top : Swimming Pools (Drank)
Flop : Real

I’d put this right alongside 𝘛𝘰 𝘗𝘪𝘮𝘱 𝘢 𝘉𝘶𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘧𝘭𝘺. The appeal is a little different: here, Kendrick’s storytelling grabs me as much as the production. He can sound full of himself one moment and deeply unsure the next, and those shifts make the story more convincing. There’s a person behind the rapping, not just someone determined to impress me.

The songs are catchy enough to enjoy individually, but I get much more out of hearing them together. Even the conversations between tracks add something, letting other people interrupt Kendrick’s version of events and giving the story a life beyond his own voice.

Its successor casts a long shadow, but this hardly sounds like a warm-up. I like them equally, for different reasons.

Easy 5 ⭐️ here. Hot take but i think it’s better than TPaB.

I love Kendrick! Not my favourite album of his.

5/5. There is a reason why this is the longest charting rap album, and it’s because it is just that great. It perfectly strikes the balance between extremely engaging storytelling and high quality songwriting with hooks that will always remain in your brain after you’ve heard them. In terms of the narrative of the album it follows Kendrick’s teenage years navigating growing up in Compton and his interactions with the areas gang culture and drug trade.

There really isn’t a weak track on this album whether we’re talking the massive hooks of “Swimming Pools” and “Money Trees” or the amazing storytelling of “Sing About me in dying of thirst.” If you put a gun to my head, I’d maybe say the weakest song is “Poetic Justice” just cause it isn’t as interesting as the rest of the album, but even then I love the beat on it and even as a long-time Drake hater he gives a solid verse. But yeah, Good Kid Maad City is an all-timer album, and it’s only Kendrick’s second-best album.

I didn't really vibe with To Pimp A Butterfly as much as most hip hop heads seem to, so this probably won't be my jam. That said, it is interesting to see how Kendrick polarizes the site's user base like few others do. Many seem to either love him or hate him, yet I felt neither about TPAB. And I don't feel either about this, but simply see a passable rap album. Sometimes it has great storytelling, sometimes it leans into gangster cliches, sometimes it's interesting, sometimes it's boring. I just don't click with Kendrick like many people do, but I don't think it's bad music like many others do. His music, on both this and TPAB, just falls into that space of utter mediocrity for some reason. He's a good lyricist with occasionally good sample choices, but his music just doesn't inspire any feeling in me. I want to like him, but I just can't get into his stuff.

This album is the top ranked album of 2012 globally. Other 2012 albums rated by me:
Blunderbuss(2/5)-4
Django Django(4/5)-3