Send "Kendrick Lamar " Ringtones to your Cell 
| ology |
 In a year where hip-hop has rarely left us waiting for something intellectually and musically exceptional, the peak on the climb to perfection has become nearly invisible to those scaling, and following acclaimed releases such as Big K.R.I.T.’s Returnof4eva, Curren$y and Alchemist’s Covert Coup, Wiz Khalifa’s Rolling Papers, Big Sean’s Finally Famous: The Album, Nickel Nine and Eminem’s Hell: The Sequel, Elzhi’s ELmatic, Lupe’s Lasers, and [enter your nominee, because it goes on and on], the quality required for Kendrick Lamar to supersede the accomplishments of his fellow Digital Age emcees and the established veterans couldn’t be more difficult to achieve.Section.80 was very much a quiet announcement up until the month prior to its release, though the radiation still lingering from Overly Dedicated that earned Kendrick an XXL title and mainstream success last year was enough to make sure that the hype would flock in droves once the reality of the album neared. Singles like “HiiiPoWer” and “Ronald Reagan Era” introduced themes we would meet when listening to the LP in full, but I doubt anyone predicted the detail, complexity, and depth that would arrive when we got our first listens. The album is portrait of Compton applicable to anywhere across America in similarity, and the morose narratives woven throughout the tracklist hold the capacity to affect any listener willing to do more than simply hear the music. Much of what Kendrick is saying throughout Section.80 involves the post-Obama inauguration America, how the lower class works under the assumption that simply having a black president will cure the ails of their communities, when in reality, it is solely their actions that are going to solve the conflicts of their lives. By titling his album “Section.80,” Kendrick taps into the issue of Section 8 housing and the ghettos the government are often credited for creating through their program, giving the 16 tracks a living setting with which to breathe his characters, tales, and topics into. Primary concepts of the album are immediately apparent, as seen through the opening track’s title “F*ck Your Ethnicity,” where “creed and color” are eliminated, leaving only the singular lower social class undivided that struggles together in poverty stricken Section 8 communities where crime, oppression, and racism walk the streets daily. In “Chapter 10,” Kendrick admits himself “just a messenger,” just a “n*gger from Section 80,” and the track “HiiiPoWer” may best explain the album’s intention: “Stand for something, or die in the morning…get off the slave ships, build your own pyramids and write your own hieroglyphs.” Messenger or not, Kendrick is truly a narrator of his time with a talent for conveying social commentary subtly through his narratives, giving a vivid, uncomfortably truthful look at the landscapes he discuses, showing through word rather than telling, such as in “Keisha’s Song (Her Pain),” which, in my opinion, alongside XV’s “Pictures On My Wall,” is one of the most exceptionally put together hip-hop narratives of the year. Kendrick doesn’t simply tell us the story of a prostitute, but puts a name to her, a background, a life outside of her labor, and a plotline that moves through every atrocity of her day-to-day life until the end. His messages not only resonate, but transcend the quality of general speech, finding a way to converse with the individual listener while leaving room for thought to be returned....full text |
| Pitchfork |
| Kendrick Lamar is a weird kid, and rap music could always use more weird kids. The 24-year-old is a Compton native with a budding and mysterious Dr. Dre connection, but there's little-to-no link to his hometown's gangsta-funk legacy in his music. Instead, Lamar is very much a product of the late blog-rap era-- an introverted loner type who's willing to talk tough but is more interested in taking a Mag-Lite to his own personal failings and what he sees as the flaws of his generation. His rap style is fluid and melodic but approachable, and his frantic tumble of syllables evokes the feeling when you're high enough that your thoughts arrive fast and interrupt each other. If one of the Bone Thugs guys had a dorky, overly sincere younger cousin who was really into Afrobeat and Terrence Malick movies, it'd be Kendrick. Lamar does exist within a strong West Coast continuum, but it has nothing to do with Dre. Instead, he's very much within the tradition of 90s groups like Souls of Mischief or the Pharcyde-- self-deprecating and insanely talented kids who routinely ripped dizzy, slip-sliding flows over mellow jazz breaks. Section.80, Lamar's new album, arrives on a wave of blog-based buzz, but beyond a couple of ill-advised choruses, it doesn't make much attempt to present Lamar to major-label A&Rs or to a wider audience. Instead, it gives him a chance to chase his muse wherever it runs. The production, mostly from relative unknowns like THC and Sounwave, is almost uniformly excellent-- a spaced-out blur of astral horns and blissed-out Fender Rhodes, with drums that only knock when they need to. A couple of guys from Lamar's Black Hippy crew-- those guys really sound like Souls of Mischief when they get together-- show up, but the album isn't a guest-heavy affair. It's a young thinker attempting to describe the world as he sees it. "You know why we crack babies cuz we born in the 80s," Lamar raps on the excellently emo relationship-song "A.D.H.D.", and that's a theme that comes up over and over. Everywhere he looks, Lamar sees generational symptoms of the kids who came from the era of crack and Ronald Reagan. When he looks around, Lamar sees self-hate, nihilism, institutionalized oppression. When he talks to girls, he sometimes recalls the supportively sincere Goodie Mob of "Beautiful Skin", actually counseling against cosmetics on "No Make-Up (Her Vice)": "Don't you know your imperfections is a wonderful blessing?/ From heaven is where you got it from." (Somehow, the redundant double-"from" makes the sentiment all the more adorable.) And he also recognizes self-destructive tendencies in himself: "I used to wanna see the penitentiary way after elementary/ Thought it was cool to look the judge in the face when he sentenced me." But it's not like he's some preacher/prophet figure; he says "suck my dick" often enough that it gets boring. Given that Lamar is a talented and earnest young man with a lot to say and no big label nudging his music toward accessibility, it's only natural that he'd lose his way every once in a while. Section.80 is an hour long, and it could drop probably a quarter of its running time without anyone missing anything. And certain moments just make me wince so hard, like this one, from "Hol' Up": "I wrote this record while 30,000 feet in the air/ Stewardess complimenting me on my nappy hair/ If I could fuck her in front of all these passengers/ They'd probably think I'm a terrorist." Those few lines add up to a repellent cauldron of horniness, persecution-complex fantasies, exhibitionism, and plain old youthful Bad Idea Jeans indulgence. Dre hasn't yet taught Lamar how to hone all his best ideas into a few absolutely killer pieces of music; maybe he still will. But self-serious flaws and all, Section.80 still stands as a powerful document of a tremendously promising young guy figuring out his voice. Its best moments ("Rigamortis", "HiiiPower", "Kush & Corinthians", "A.D.H.D.") are simply dope as fuck, no qualifiers necessary....full text |
| Hiphopdx |
| “I spent 23 years on this Earth, searching for answers, ‘til one day I realized I had to come up with my own,” Kendrick Lamar says on his new album, Section.80. The Compton, California native delivers one of the year’s sharpest, smoothest albums - a testament to a well-crafted rhyme style, solid production and inspired lyrical swords. His journey for answers seemingly led him to find much more. From the introductory track “Fuck Your Ethnicity,” Lamar showcases an intriguing perspective. On the piano laden intro, he shows an awareness of division lines that must be blurred for unity in the world. This awareness also includes an understanding of domestic abuse as heard on the somber “No Make-Up (Her Vice).” Another side of this is shown with Lamar’s potent pen on the powerful “Keisha’s Song (Her Pain),” where he describes a piercing journey a young woman travels after being sexually abused as a child. “Sure enough, don’t see a dime of dirty dollars/ Just give it all to her ‘daddy,’ but she don’t know her father,” he rhymes over the haunting track. It’s this type of narration that sets Lamar apart with depth that matches the deftness of his delivery. While he shows a knack for observing those around him, he proves he can rhyme into a mirror as well. To show this, the RZA-assisted, hard-hitting “Ronald Regan Era” speaks about the environment that little Lamar saw while growing up. “Poe Man’s Dream (His Vice)” also demonstrates this. “I used to want to see the penitentiary way after elementary/Thought it was cool to look the judge in the face when he sentenced me/ Since my uncles was institutionalized/ My intuition had said I was suited for family ties…Heaven or hell, base it all on my instincts/ My hands dirty, you worry about mud in your sink.” Later, “Ab-Souls Outro” finds him speaking about this generation and his goals over stellar jazzy instrumentation after Ab-Soul rhymes. “I’m not on the outside looking in. I’m not on the inside looking out,” he says. “I’m in the dead fucking center, looking around.” In doing this, he also shows he can look within....full text |
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