Kendrick Lamar Discography
Click on the pictures for download links, all legal of course, I wrote a little bit to detail Kendrick's journey and my own journey as a fan of him, don't take it too seriously or as gospel and feel free to point out errors in grammar or facts. Let me know if the links are dead. Enjoy.2003-Y.H.N.I.C.
Very early Kendrick back when he was 16 and wanted to rap like Jay-Z and was wearing very ill-fitting clothes, it's cool to listen to and appreciate his growth as an artist overall. You can hear that all the technical elements are in place but he still hadn't found HIS voice. He was called K-Dot at this point and kept it that way until 2009.
2005-Training Day
Ok now he's 18 and he still raps like he wants to be Jay-Z with a little lean toward Wayne who was kind of starting to takeover (the Carter II came out in December of this year). Again the technical elements are all in place. Note I wouldn't really advocate listening to any of his super early stuff unless you're bored and really intrigued by his development. Jay Rock was the real star of TDE up until about 2009.
2007-No Sleep 'Til NYC
Jay Rock and K.Dot jacking for classic old NYC beats and the voice is slowly coming into place. I love the hunger of artists on early tapes though. Also Ab-Soul is in the mix now! Rock still the standout guy on TDE at this point.
2009-C4
It's late 2009, Jay Rock has done a song with Lil' Wayne and Kendrick does a tribute mixtape for Lil' Wayne over mostly Carter III beats (most influential MC of this decade IMO but that's another discussion for another day). This is a big line in the sand for Kendrick as this was his last release under the moniker of K-Dot. Bitch I'm In The Club very funny to listen to in retrospect and even funnier when it's followed by West Coast Wu-Tang where you can start to hear HIS voice ('I'm nice enough to throw a spear at Nas,a jab at Jay', Hmmmmm).
2009-The Kendrick Lamar EP
K-Dot is dead and now he's called Kendrick Lamar and he doesn't really care about rapping like anyone but himself, like he says on Wanna Be Heard 'I used want to rap like Jay-Z, until I finally realised that Jay wasn't me.' (Please note the Good Kid reference on said song). I Am is a brilliant 2 minute freestyle and one of my favourite Kendrick songs of all time too, he still does it at concerts I believe ('See my plan be to win ya hearts before I a Grammy'). This is the best point to start listening to Kendrick I believe, although the influences (Jay-Z, Kurupt, Wayne etc.) are still apparent this is point where I felt like Kendrick had finally found his voice and although the ideas and concepts seem pretty dated now, I look back at this tape with a lot of fondness.
2010-Overly Dedicated EP
Ok it's 2010 and Kendrick has a J.Cole cosign (the best thing J.Cole has ever done IMO) and Dr.Dre name checked him on radio and I listen The Heart Pt. 1 which piques my interest as 'real' hip-hop head (I was 17). So I download this tape and his voice takes me a while to get used to but I feck with a few joints and persist with this Kendrick Lamar dude and go listen back to his self-titled EP (17 year-old me wasn't so bad huh). It was probably his best tape at the time with songs like the The Heart Pt.2, Ignorance is Bliss, Heaven&Hell, Average Joe and Cut You Off which still sound pretty good to me. Definitely a solidification to his EP above.
2011- Section.80
After Overly Dedicated Kendrick dropped Vanity Slaves pt. 2 ft. Gucci Mane (Free Guwop) and HiiiPower produced by J.Cole in the leadup to Section.80 and at this point I had completely bought into Kendrick as an artist. Section.80 for me is realisation of Kendrick as the artist that we know and love today, there is still a bit of shyness in his voice but there's now a warmth and strength in delivery and his storytelling and song structure is so much tighter and well defined. Pretty great all the way through IMO with the exception of No Make Up, personally Ronald Reagan Era, Poe Man's Dreams, Keisha's Song and Kush&Corinthians are the standouts. This was the point where I feel his influences (throw a dash of Andre 3000 in the mix now) and his identity as an individual finally merged into one. In retrospect this is very much a hint at the direction he would adapt for To Pimp A Butterfly (Ab Soul's Outro basically). This is the proper debut album IMO.
2012-good kid, m.A.A.d city
Ok so by now Kendrick has signed to Aftermath with Dr.Dre, he's been crowned the new king of the west coast, he's made Cartoons&Cereal, he's gone on tour with Drake and did a pretty great verse on Drake's album and now (late as usual) everyone wants a part of Kendrick. I'm not going to lie, as he dropped bits and bobs from this album I was shitting it because it didn't really make sense but then the album came out and I was blown away. It's not the first narrative concept rap album and it isn't the best but for me this was the first rap album that just blew me away in concept, ambition and execution. The André 3000 influence is very heavy in this with the voices and Sherane is very similar in ambience to The Life of Benjamin André. Could have done without Poetic Justice and Compton but Money Trees and Sing About Me are top 5 Kendrick songs. Also Country Building Blues and Collect Calls are great bonus tracks. In retrospect this is a bit of an outlier in his discography, there were definitely some compromises made to appease label heads IMO, I wonder what the OG version sounded like.
2015-To Pimp A Butterfly
After his mainstream breakout with good Kid, m.A.A.d city, Kendrick tours the world and playfully baits out his peers and the city of New York with his verse on Control. Now there are several ways Kendrick could have followed GKMC but instead of following with more of the same he decides he wants to dismantle its appeal. The Jazz and Funk influences are heavy now and this time there are no compromises. It becomes rapidly clear on this album that the fame and adulation that Kendrick has pursued for so long is nothing like he anticipated. He details his personal struggles with temptation, survivor's guilt, depression and his own identity before detailing key trips to Compton and South Africa that not help him not only to direct his concept for this album but also help him find his purpose in life. This is Section.80's big brother that finally left the hood, thinking they had some answers, only to find out that really the life he thought he wanted only brought him another set of questions that needed answering. It's an album almost completely in the vain of Ab-Soul's Outro from Section.80, I quote:
See I've spent twenty three years on the earth searching for answers
'Til one day I realized I had to come up with my own
I'm not on the outside looking in,
I'm not on the inside looking out,
I'm in the dead fecking center, looking around
It's my personal favourite Kendrick album. Alright, U, Momma, Hood Politics and How Much A Dollar Cost are standouts. The difference in his delivery on this versus his earlier stuff is startling. The shy kid who struggled with a stammer has now grown into the voice of a generation.
2016-Untitled, Unmastered
Since the release of To Pimp A Butterfly Kendrick has done a load of incredible live performances of Untitled songs (1, 2) which were TPAB demo's and have now been released officially for the paying public. Levitate, levitate, levitate, levitate.
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