If K-Dot the mixtape rapper was able to create new and inspiring versions of standard hip hop formulas (this at the tender age of 22), and the Kendrick Lamar of good kid. So far, Lamar has proved himself up to the challenge: time and again he’s managed to make the stories of his life fit these roles, each time refreshing his presentation to make us want to get to know him all over again.
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Whether it’s the four installments of his series of singles “The Heart,” where he’s cranking up the passion and playing the part of career-long aspiring rapper, or the chart-topping “Swimming Pools,” where he’s talking about the mistakes of youth and why some of us keep making them, or his magnificent “Fear,” where he’s explaining how a multi-millionaire rapper never quite gets over the fear of losing it all instilled by a childhood of gang violence and deep poverty, Lamar is always making his experience palpable, new, and universal. Like most rappers, Lamar primarily raps about himself, but unlike 90 percent of MCs he’s always able to find something new-and worthwhile-to say about Kendrick Lamar.
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At heart this is what we want from pop stars: people whose lives we can care about for the right reasons, and also relate to, and who know how to keep evolving their sound into something that always feels current and fun. It’s a particular challenge for a pop star, and recognizing this challenge and its necessity is a big part of what’s kept Lamar’s music in touch with himself, his community, and American culture at large, while also presenting one endlessly complex young man who keeps getting more and more interesting. For anyone who works in an autobiographical genre, be they novelist, poet, musician, or other, that’s a very hard line to walk, and one that comes with significant rewards. Listening to Lamar’s music, you immediately get what he’s about as a human being, even as you see just how impossible it is to ever fully know him. If you want to know why he deserved rap’s first Pulitzer Prize, awarded to him earlier this month, I think you have the core of it right here.
In the intro to “Average Joe,” a track off Kendrick Lamar’s fifth and name-making mixtape, Overly Dedicated, he says that “the hardest thing for me to do is to get you to know me within 16 bars,” aka one standard verse of hip hop, about 40 seconds.