Kendrick Lamar

Unlike R&B, Pop and other genres of music, Rap is a very difficult one to breakthrough with. It takes ingenuity, prowess, writing skill, deliver and demeanor. Over a decade or two now, the most significant rap breakthrough came from rappers like 50 Cent, Lil Wayne, Kanye West, Big Sean and so on but one of the most recent is Kendrick Lamar. Describing one of the most significant moments in his life which highly impacted his music as a small boy in his home town watch 2pac and Dr. Dre make the video to their then major hit "California Love". Ever since then, he had made up his mind about doing rap and he never drifted away from this decision. Although he was out there doing his music and trying to find his way to the top for years but his breakthrough didn't happen up until 2010 when he released the Mixtape Overly Dedicated, especially with the track "Ignorance Is Bliss", where he rapped about gangsters and the crimes that goes down on the street. This track brought him the attention of many people, rappers and even the likes of heavyweight producers like Dr. Dre. This was the beginning of a successful career for Kendrick Lamar and he never for once let the bar drop. With every song, every mixtape, every album, he kept getting better and better. He got so good Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre and The Game announced him as the "New King of West coast" at a concert in West Los Angeles in the year 2011. For someone who knows about the history of rap in the US, you would know how much of a big deal it is to be regarded as the King of West Coast especially when it's not self acclaimed and Kendrick Lamar never stopped getting better, he kept on grinding hard with his music. In 2013, he was declared the "Hottest MC in the Game" by MTV and in 2016 he was listed as one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time (Magazine). In 2018, his album DAMN was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music and that was the first time the award was given to an album that is not a classical or a jazz album. DAMN is the fourth studio album from Kendrick Lamar and it was released on April 14, 2017. Debuting at number one on the US Billboard 200, it had a first week sales of 603,000 album-equivalent units. After selling a total of 1,002,000 copies and earned 3,137,000 album-equivalent units in the US as of April 2018, the album was certified Triple Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). DAMN ended up being the number one album of the year on the Billboard 200 in its year of release. It also received nominations for Album of the Year and Best Rap Album at the 60th Edition of the Grammy Awards, it ended up winning in the latter category.

Despite being what I’d call a Hip-Hop enthusiast for half of my life now, I’ve never wanted to be a rapper myself. But I’ve seen enough interviews of my favourite rappers talking about their dreams that I know what the fantasy is encompassed of; having a lot of money, being able to perform in front of thousands of screaming people and being respected by your peers who were idols but are now rivals. Those are the places that your mind goes to when dreaming about making it as an MC. The bonuses are things like being paid to travel the world, meeting fans and impacting their lives and the opportunities that you could have never even imagined. Opportunities like creating an entire soundtrack for a film. That’s what fell into Kendrick Lamar’s lap when he was approached to make the soundtrack for Marvel’s Black Panther. “It was something that me and Ludwig always wanted to do” director Ryan Coogler said. “To get with an artist and make a soundtrack that’s like a companion piece, a different artistic take inspired by the same things… and use some of those songs in the film.” And who better than Kendrick Lamar?

One of my favourite things to do with any successful famous person, but especially my favourite rappers, is to look back on their journey at old interviews, listen to old music and watch any old footage that I can. I’ve always believed that knowing an artist’s roots, even if they were literal decades ago, will help you appreciate them in the present moment. Thanks to the day and age we live in, all we have to do is search on YouTube to find videos of all of today’s biggest music artists in the world before they were any different to you or I and I’ve always found it to be a deep source of motivation to fully acknowledge that at one point Drake or Logic or Big Sean were just like any one of us. What makes Kendrick Lamar’s story so special is how detailed it’s been through his music and how you can go back and see things for yourself. He used to call himself K. Dot while in Compton but a name change came in 2009. He’d released four mixtapes under the moniker, but he kept getting the feedback that despite liking the music, people didn’t really know him as a person and saw him as some sort of a character. “They was like ‘yo, the kid is dope, he can rap, but who is he?’” he remembered about the period. In an attempt to amend that, he changed his Rap name to his real name and on December 31st 2009, dropped Kendrick Lamar EP to mark a huge transition in his career. Despite being called an EP, he took a stand and made it fourteen tracks long and available for a free download. Fuelled by the response in the new year, he went straight back to work on a new mixtape called Overly Dedicated.

The idea of making good music is basically what drives musicians into making music that turn out to be widely loved and accepted by fans and music consumers. That is why an artist who may not be popular will rise to stardom after his music has been hugely consumed due to how good it is. That is also why an established artist works so hard to remain at that level, most times calling for songwriters and composers to send in their works for possible inclusion into their music projects all in a bid not to disappoint fans, and to remain at that level. This is normal pratice in the music industry by the way, and the aformentioned reasons are why it still holds sway up till this day. Kendrick Lamar's fourth studio album DAMN shattered records in 2018 because of how good it is. You could say that there are no bad songs in that body of work and you wouldn't be wrong. It appealed to the high and mighty as well as to the little in the music industry. That album gave him a push and shot him up to the position of an A-List artist. It topped music charts in the US and several countries in Europe and won several awards including The American Music Award for favorite album rap/Hip-Hop in 2017, Juno album for International Album of The Year in 2018, The Grammy Award for Best Rap Album in 2018, and The Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2018 making it the first non-jazz or classical work to earn the accolade. That is really something. It was made with an array of mid tempo, up tempo and low tempo beats. Kendrick Lamar chose the right amount of everything and in the end it payed off. In my opinion I'd say that its success is as a result of its good rhythmic beats and a good play of words, and the following are my reasons.