Album Rating: 3.0

yep, whats your other top 2?

Album Rating: 4.2 | Sound Off

art of peer pressure and idk prolly like ab soul's outro or sumn

Album Rating: 4.5

Kinda think the album should close right at Sing About Me, I'm Dying Of Thirst.

Album Rating: 3.0

^yeah totally, or add Black Boy Fly and close with that



Blessed by Schoolboy Q is probably my favorite song with Kendrick in it, his verse on Game's The City

is also great



Now or Never is also better than most all of the tracks on the regular edition...

cool album

Album Rating: 4.2 | Sound Off

oh shit i forgot sing about me is also incredible



i thought that he should have had poetic justice as a bonus track and replace it with black boy fly, i think that would have been better for the album as a whole, but i understand why he wanted poetic justice on the album.

Album Rating: 5.0 | Sound Off

I will never understand why people think that Backstreet Freestyle is a copout. HE IS TELLING IT FROM THE MINDSET OF A 16 YEAR OLD TRYING TO IMPRESS HIS FRIENDS. Its early on in the album, we are seeing Kendrick grow from where he started to the person he is now. Want to know why Sing About Me is so good? Because on Backstreet he shows you where his mindset was at a young age when he thought gang banging was cool(because the people he hung out with said it was). When Sing About Me comes along near the end of the album, it shows the polar opposite. Its concept works beautifully. Backstreets beat, Kendrick's aggressiveness and youthful exuberance are at an all time high, and it showcases his RAW talent at a YOUNG age where he wasn't lyrical.



Literally, how the fuck else is he supposed to get this point out without making a song that showcases it. And you can't make a lyrical song out of what a 16 year old wants(in the case, money and power, as well as a more prideful dick length). And even if you were going to make a song lyrical from the mindset of a 16, it would be pretentious. Like in Terrence Malick's 'The Thin Red Line' where every foot soldier PVT. was a fucking philosopher. It doesn't make sense.



Lastly, whether or not a concept is repeated or not, it doesn't matter. I've seen thousands of true stories where a guy has been beaten down to the point of no return, but in the end he rises up and, being part of the crowd, we cheer him on to beat the odds. Sometimes it works and sometimes its a terrible movie. Ala, The King's Speech. Fantastic movie, but the plot has been done thousands of times. Something doesn't have to be original to be good, great, amazing, etc. It has to have intangibles.



/end rant. Now I won't comment on this until another year has passed.

Album Rating: 4.2 | Sound Off

backSEAT ya bum

Album Rating: 4.2 | Sound Off

who was saying it was a cop out by the way? (haven't been paying attention to this thread but didn't

see it on the last page)



it serves a lot of purposes; it bangs and it contributes to the album. and if niggas want to complain

about it being simple and lil wayne-y need to peep kendrick's backcatalog



nigga made a whole mixtape dedicated to fuckin weezy, not to mention he basically adopted the wayne

style for a very veryv ery long time. that dude was like his fkn idol lol

Album Rating: 5.0 | Sound Off

you're spot on guzzo



as a man of the amateur critic community you should recognize that people don't like what they don't understand

Album Rating: 5.0 | Sound Off

Backseat* I don't know why I kept saying Backstreet... I guess because it wasn't the focus of my rant. Also, even if people don't call it a copout, they imply it to be when they say it was "made for the radio/bad because Kendrick was lazy." Anyone who listened to C4 would know how much he idolized Lil Wayne as an up and comer. The whole mix tape was Wayne mixes. That's another reason why the song makes sense on a life-story side of things, because it would fit on any of his old tapes



And I think Hil said copout in one of his posts, but I forget.

Album Rating: 4.2 | Sound Off

sho you right my g

hil says all sorts of stuff

Album Rating: 3.0

"HE IS TELLING IT FROM THE MINDSET OF A 16 YEAR OLD TRYING TO IMPRESS HIS FRIENDS."



yeah dude we heard you for the 1000th time, the point is the song still sucks because he is writing

the song like he is a 16 year old and I don't want to hear 16 year old music.



On another note, there is never really a dramatic change in his thought process that you pretend

there is. Making his 16 year old mind state songs never amounted to much more than a bunch of 16

year old mind state songs, Sing About Me ( the only decently mature song on the entire album) would

have been completely fine without them. Virtually all of this album is 16 year oldish, stop

pretending like he made some profound/enlightening KRS-One/2pac/Guruesque message in the end of the

album. He

just tells a few stories about his dead friends and makes one decent track (not as good as you are

pretending) then the album awkwardly ends with him saying hes real and he starts bragging about

being from Compton. No one from Compton brags about being from Compton other than pop rappers and

kids under 16, so this imaginary maturity episode you are talking about doesn't really exist. It

might if he ended this with Black Boy Fly or even Now or NEver, but he knew neither of those would

sell because they are actually real songs and not Samboistic pop music.

Album Rating: 3.0

Backstreet freestyle is a fruedian slip, you know this album sounds like the Backstreet boys.







The reason I don't like this is mostly because so many people have over hyped it and call it a

classic. Comparing this to 2pac, Guru, AZ, Nas or KRS etc. is a joke. Even comparing this to new

artists like Eligh is a joke. This album is filled with immature raps and the concept is not as

profound as you are pretending, and even his mature raps aren't that superb, the one that is, Black

Boy Fly, was left off the album. S



ing About Me is cool but its really nothing new at all, every run of the mill rapper has made some

songs about their dead friends, this one is cleverer than most but definitely not singlehandedly

enough to make up for the cheesiness of the rest of the album. And to be considered a classic you

should be bringing something new or revolutionary to the genre, not just repeating the same stories

others have already said and making them idiosyncratic.



He didn't say anything new in this entire album. The story of Compton is as banal as can be, and

just because he sugar coated it with good production and flow doesn't make this a classic.

Album Rating: 4.2 | Sound Off

kendrick >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> pac tho

Album Rating: 3.0

even Kendrick would tell you that is ridiculous



Pac completely changed rap, he probably has the most quotable lyrics in hip hop history. Kendrick's

lyrics suck, none of you can quote a single decent line in this album.



goes back to my whole generation x rant about hopsin, people don't want to hear real shit anymore,

"thats preachy" any time you make a mature song, they want to hear 16 year old mind-state lyrics with

cool beats and flow. To me thats pop music, not hip hop, the poetry aspect of albums like this is

completely missing.

Album Rating: 3.0

Any MC can battle for glory

but to kick a dope rhyme and wake up your people is another story

Album Rating: 5.0 | Sound Off

You do realize that your idea of the term "pop" is completely incorrect. You think that "pop" defines

a sound. "Pop" means, well, popular. And in this sense, 2pac is pop music. Seeing as you hate pop

music, theoretically, you should hate 2pac seeing as he made pop music.

Album Rating: 5.0 | Sound Off

Lyrics in hip-hop are important, but they're not the only thing. Some of the best freestylers in the world can't make a good album to save their lives. Production matters, topics (to a lesser extent) matter, flow matters, and cohesiveness matters. You don't have to talk about all these profound subjects in order to be a good rapper, or to have a great album.



So sure Backseat freestyle might have ignorant lyrics, but the beat bangs and it fits into the album perfectly. Sure there might be some pop-ish hooks, but it's not like any credibility is lost because of that, as the album is highly regarded by the hip-hop community. It's a mainstream rap album that has enough mainstream qualities to classify it as such, but it's also self-aware, conscious of important issues, and able to tell a story much better than most mainstream rappers out there today, even if the story has been told before. In this case, it's not the story itself, but how that story is told that keeps me coming back.



TL;DR : Lyrics are not the only thing that matters in hip-hop, this album is a great example.