walking upstream…
Kendrick Lamar
photo: raph_ph · cc by 4.0 ↗Kendrick Lamar
sourcesWikipedia · Wikipedia — To Pimp a Butterfly
Kendrick Lamar took the G-funk and gangsta-rap inheritance of his native Compton and bent it toward the interior life, building concept albums — good kid, m.A.A.d city, To Pimp a Butterfly, the Pulitzer Prize-winning DAMN. — that treat a rap record as a moral argument with itself. Discovered as a teenager and later signed to Dr. Dre's Aftermath, he writes with a novelist's structure and a preacher's stakes, threading jazz, funk, and gospel through street reportage. No rapper of his generation carries the West Coast lineage more consciously, or has pushed it further.
the sound in question
2017
HUMBLE.Kendrick Lamar
walk the tributaries ↓
Tupac Shakur1990s · West Coast hip-hop / Conscious hip-hop
Kendrick has named Tupac his single greatest influence — he tells the story of watching Pac and Dre film the 'California Love' video in Compton as a kid — and the inheritance is audible everywhere: the confessional vulnerability sitting next to street rage, the mother-honoring devotion, the sense that a rap album owes its community a reckoning. To Pimp a Butterfly literally ends with Kendrick interviewing Tupac's archival voice, staging himself as the next link in the chain.
listen: upstream & here
1995
Dear MamaTupac Shakur
2015
Mortal ManKendrick Lamar
listen forPlay 'Dear Mama,' then 'Mortal Man.' Beyond the resurrected interview tape at the close, listen for how both rappers address one person directly — a mother, a dead mentor — and let the tenderness carry more weight than any boast; that intimate, second-person moral address is Pac's signature passed down whole.
Dr. Dre1990s · West Coast hip-hop / G-funk / Gangsta rap
Dre is both Kendrick's sonic ancestor and his actual boss: he signed Kendrick to Aftermath and executive-produced good kid, m.A.A.d city. The whole low-riding sound of Kendrick's Compton — sine-wave synth leads, slow funk bounce, bass that rolls rather than knocks — is the G-funk architecture Dre built, which Kendrick alternately inhabits and deliberately warps.
listen: upstream & here
1992
Nuthin' but a "G" ThangDr. Dre
2012
m.A.A.d cityKendrick Lamar
listen forPlay 'Nuthin' but a "G" Thang,' then the back half of 'm.A.A.d city,' where the beat drops into a woozy G-funk cruise. Kendrick raps over Dre's Compton like a man haunted by it — same palette, but the party record has become a panic attack.
Jay-Z1990s–2000s · East Coast hip-hop / Mafioso rap
Kendrick regularly places Jay-Z in his personal pantheon of greatest rappers, and the debt is technical more than sonic: the conversational pocket, the compressed internal rhyme, the way a boast can hide a thesis. When Kendrick goes into pure-rapping mode — no concept, just pen — the standard he is measuring against is the one Jay set in the mid-90s.
listen: upstream & here
1996
Dead Presidents IIJay-Z
2012
Backseat FreestyleKendrick Lamar
listen forPlay 'Dead Presidents II,' then 'Backseat Freestyle.' Listen for the shared trick of sounding relaxed at high difficulty — dense multisyllabic schemes delivered like table talk — and for how both records frame outsized ambition as a window into the rapper's actual hunger.