Awesome / Kendrick Lamar

• All of 'Compton', the last song on good kid, m.A.A.d city. Kendrick trades bars with Dr. Dre, which represents a passing of the torch from Dre to Kendrick.
• The last verse of m.A.A.d city.
  If I told you I killed a nigga at 16, would you believe me?
  Or see me to be innocent Kendrick you seen in the street
  With a basketball and some Now & Laters to eat
  If I mentioned all of my skeletons, would you jump in the seat?
  Would you say my intelligence now is great relief?
  And it's safe to say that our next generation maybe can sleep
  With dreams of being a lawyer or doctor
  Instead of boy with a chopper that hold the cul-de-sac hostage
  Kill them all if they gossip, the Children of the Corn
  They vandalizing, the option of living a lie, drown their body with toxins
  Constantly drinking and drive, hit the powder then watch this flame
  That arrive in his eye; this a coward, the concept is aim and
  They bang it and slide out that bitch with deposits
  And the price on his head, the tithes probably go to the projects
  I live inside the belly of the rough
  Compton, U.S.A. made Me an Angel on Angel Dust, what
  • The Intro/bridge on m.A.A.d city counts too.
  If Pirus and Crips all got along
  They'd probably gun me down by the end of this song
  Seem like the whole city go against me
  Every time I'm in the street I hear
  YAWK YAWK YAWK YAWK!
  • For classic gangsta rap fans, the beat changing to a more old school-ish sound with bangin' drums, accompanied by MC Eiht's "Wake your punk-ass up!" is this, big time.
• His performance, in superb Motor Mouth style, on "Rigamortus".
  • And the remix featured the original Motor Mouth rapper himself, Busta Rhymes.
• His freestyle to "Monster" by Kanye West is a Villain Song at it's finest.
• His scene-stealing, name-taking, bar-raising verse on Big Sean's "Control".
• The fact that, throughout his career, he's worked with just about every rapper that's ever inspired him. If he hasn't, they've given him praise and accolades. Certainly one of the most amazing cases of Ascended Fanboy in hip-hop.
• It's short, but "Look Out for Detox" certainly counts.
• The remix to "Bitch Don't Kill My Vibe", with Jay-Z, who K.Dot arguably one-ups.
• His world-beating verse on Big Sean's "Control" shouts out Sean Connery and 90s West Coast rapper Kurupt. It also disses Lindsay Lohan and Miley Cyrus.
• His performance with Imagine Dragons at the Grammys. Better than it sounds incarnate.
  • YMMV but the proof that TAYLOR SWIFT is apparently a huge Kendrick fan as she was going nuts during his performance. Narm Charm for sure but definite proof of the man's crossover appeal.
• "Alright" is a song that is largely about hope, and stands as the Hope Spot on Kendrick's otherwise very dark and introspective album To Pimp a Butterfly. The song's lyrical refrain ("We gon' be alright!") was used as a protest chant at Black Lives Matter protests when protesters were harassed by police officers.
• "The Blacker the Berry," full stop. From the incredible, intense beat, to the message, to the most sheer fury he's ever brought to the mic this side of "Control".
  • And then there's The Reveal:
  So don't matter how much I say I like to preach with the Panthers
  Or tell Georgia State "Marcus Garvey got all the answers"
  Or try to celebrate February like it's my B-Day
  Or eat watermelon, chicken, and Kool-Aid on weekdays
  Or jump high enough to get Michael Jordan endorsements
  Or watch BET 'cause urban support is important
  So why did I weep when Trayvon Martin was in the street
  When gang banging make me kill a nigga blacker than me?!
  Hypocrite!
• The ending of "Mortal Man", just the fact that with impressive editing, we hear Kendrick talk to no other than Tupac Shakur in regards to political awareness, their influence one's career (in regards to this case, Kendrick and his influence in music) and the perspective of African Americans in the present time makes it more perfect.
  • It also also be considered Kendrick talking to someone he looks up to, despite Pac being dead for years.
• Receiving 11 nominations in 9 categories at the 58th Grammy Awards (2016), the most nominations given to a rapper in one night and the second-most overall in one night behind Michael Jackson's 12 nominations in 1984.
  • His politically-charged performance at said awards, which mixed basically every song on TPAB and blew the sound for almost 20 seconds, is nothing but raw, unadulterated, passion.
• How many musicians under 30 can say that they influenced David Bowie instead of the other way around? Kendrick can. Moreover, Lamar was genuinely touched to hear that Bowie had loved To Pimp a Butterfly and that it had inspired him to make ★, and wrote a two-tweet tribute to him after he died in January 2016.
• The entirety of "Black Friday", a remix of J. Cole's "A Tale of 2 Citiez"
• The fact that "Untitled Unmastered", a utterly deep and great EP, was just Kendrick's outtakes from To Pimp A Butterfly.
• Kendrick returning to the spotlight and allegedly taking shots at Drake with "The Heart Part IV", the fourth installment of the Heart series.
  I put my foot on the gas, head on the floor
  Hoppin' out before the vehicle crash, I'm on a roll
  Yellin', "1, 2, 3, 4, 5
  I am the greatest rapper alive"
  So damn great motherfucker I've died
  What you hearin' now is a paranormal vibe
• "HUMBLE." debuting at #2 on the Billboard Hot 100, later rising to #1 after the album dropped, becoming both his highest-charting single and his first top 10 (and later #1) hit as a lead artist. It really shows how high his star has risen since GKMC came out 5 years before.
• "DNA" an epic song with an equally epic music video
  • How epic you ask? Who else would you expect to be in it other than Don frickin' Cheadle (a.k.a. War Machine)(a.k.a. the ORIGINAL Kung Fu Kenny)
• This video where the audience sings Humble. As in an entire stadium full of people. Even Kendrick is stunned and needs to take a moment to recompose himself and continue his performance.
  • I guess you could say he was... humbled.
• In April 2018, Lamar won the Pulitzer Prize for music, DAMN becoming the first non-classical/jazz album to do so.
• After accepting the Pulitzer, Lamar has added a new segment to his live show: A screen reading, simply, "PULITZER KENNY".
• If you haven't seen his performance at the Grammys, a medley of some DAMN. tracks and the latter half of Kings Dead, please do.
• "Auntie Diaries" off of Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers features Kendrick discusses someone seeing their cousin and aunt becoming a trans and how they slowly began to accept it despite being so confused by it at first. A very strong message, especially in hip-hop where being LGBT is at times frowned upon.
  • Kendrick also approaches a third view on the song, pointing out some saying homophobic slurs sometime genuinely do not know, but states it's an unfortunate side effect of ignorance.
  • The final verse, which just can leave the idea of homophobia in hip-hop as dead within the scene:
  To truly understand love, switch position
  'Faggot, faggot, faggot,' we can say it together
  But only if you let a white girl say 'Nigga'
• During this performance of Savior, Kendrick locked eyes with a fan in the front row that was rapping along with him and decided to give him his full attention for the rest of the verse before giving him his props for not missing a single word. Here's a clip.
• On the Metro Boomin/Future collab album "WE DON'T TRUST YOU", the song "Like That", Kendrick disses both J. Cole and Drake's song "First Person Shooter". Cole responded with a diss track that he immediately went back on, while Drake responded by making his own diss track with a feature from an AI-generated Tupac that caused Tupac's family to file a Cease and Desist against the artist. Kendrick's response? A scathing musical "The Reason You Suck" Speech called "Euphoria".