Last week, we featured Bob Dylan, an iconic American songwriter from the 20th century, and this week, we’re featuring Kendrick Lamar, one of the greatest American songwriters of the 21st. The Compton-born rapper has grown more critically and commercially successful with each new release, each one pushing the boundaries of his artform. He also pairs each album with succinct cover artwork that reflects his masterful storytelling, such as this photograph afront his 2012 coming-of-age “good kid, m.A.A.d city.”
February 24th, 2019: Kendrick Lamar’s good kid m.A.A.d city
Cover photo by Paula Oliver, handwriting by Schoolboy Q
Last week, we featured Bob Dylan, an iconic American songwriter from the 20th century, and this week, we’re featuring Kendrick Lamar, one of the greatest American songwriters of the 21st. The Compton-born rapper has grown more critically and commercially successful with each new release, each one pushing the boundaries of his artform. He also pairs each album with succinct cover artwork that reflects his masterful storytelling, such as this photograph afront his 2012 coming-of-age good kid, m.A.A.d city.
Lyrically, good kid, m.A.A.d city features a continuous story about his childhood in the city of Compton, California. He captures snapshots of gang violence, poverty, and family disputes, describing how he navigated it all and ultimately how it factored into his success. The cover photo was shot by his mother, showing a young Kendrick on his uncle’s lap. Schoolboy Q is credited with the cursive writing of the album’s title on the lower right hand side. Lamar commented in an interview with Fuse, “Two [of the men] are my uncles, to the far right, it's my grandpa, and a baby bottle, next to a 40 oz, next to a gang sign, holdin' a kid… If you look in the background, you see a picture on the wall, and the picture is me and my pops. The eyes blacked out, that's for my own personal reasons, you'll probably hear about that on the album. That photo says so much about my life, and about how I was raised in Compton, and the things I've seen, just through them innocent eyes. You don't see nobody else's eyes, but you see my eyes are innocent, and tryna figure out what is goin' on."
