Episode 57: Kendrick Lamar's "good kid, m.A.A.d city"

Before the Super Bowl, the super beef, the Pulitzer, or PGLang, one good kid and king-to-be sojourned from South Central to the height of the American promise and rained down lightning that united one nation under a groove. You’ll feel the energy of this episode from two planets away — hop in the van real quick and let’s roll out.

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Episode Transcript

Kyle (00:00):
Today, we're talking about good kid, mad city by Kendrick Lamar.

Cliff (00:03):
Everybody?
Everybody?

Kyle (00:05):
How long has this been on the list?
As long as we've had a list if youhad a Rolling Stone 500, I feel
like this would be in the top 20.
Is that fair to say?

Cliff (00:13):
Oh, for sure.
Yeah, easy.

Kyle (00:18):
friends, thanks for joining us.
talk about Pulitzer prize winner andproud son of Compton, California.
Kendrick Lamar Duckworth.
Just 37 tender years old, who youlikely best know for his recent
public execution of Degrassi star andsuspected sex criminal, Aubrey Graham

(00:40):
song of the summer owner2024 with a diss track.
And now that it's football seasonband sensation, not like us.
I don't feel off base and sayingKendrick owned the zeitgeist.
And to some degree reset the culturein 2024 as was so desperately needed.
So before you watch him in the Superbowlin February, we thought we would

(01:06):
rewind a bit and use the opportunitythe calendar has afforded us to, um,
observe his first lightning bolt momentin the zeitgeist, so to speak, I would
say we're going to go where no man'sgone before, but as the research has
shown, plethoras of them have, myGod, is this a well dissected album?

Cliff (01:26):
What we're gonna do together is everybody.
Everybody.
Everybody.
Everybody is gonna sit your bitch assdown and listen to this true motherfucking
story told by Kendrick Lamar on Rosecrans.
That's what we're gonna do together, okay?
And that way, if you've made thecriminal mistake of never having
listened to this record enough, whatI just did will be in your head first.

(01:50):
then you'll hear it in the music.

Kyle (01:52):
I am not so foolish as to assume anybody who would listen to
a music podcast in the year 2024 orbeyond has not heard this record or

Cliff (02:02):
I would hope not.
I would hope not.
But this is one of those, uh, uh,it's very easy to come in swinging
from the very top of this episode,like, We will list off the accolades,
but mostly this is one of thosestop what you're doing moments.
If you somehow haven't even paid alittle bit of attention to this, I
try our best to talk about why thisalbum is important, but I think

(02:23):
it's also personal to both of us.
This, I mean, straight up, thisexcited me in a way no other record
did for like years around this.
And there was a lot of hip hopcoming out then, gave me hope for the
future for the type of hip hop thatI love and continues to be probably
my favorite modern hip hop record,

Kyle (02:44):
Yeah.

Cliff (02:45):
top three, definitely.
But

Kyle (02:47):
Yeah, and for me, you're right, it was very personal for us, and we
connected over it but because cultureis accelerating so much, it's so
easy to forget especially becausehe's continued to put out Watershed.
Albums great art.
What a moment this was andwhat a like perfect artifact

(03:09):
it is kind of of its own merit.
So, I think it'll be nice for mepersonally to just have one little
capsule to remember all there isto appreciate about this record and
what was happening in the cultureat the time and to think about what
it might mean It's like Kendrick hasgiven us so much more and life has

(03:29):
gotten so much weirder along the way.
2012, for all of its bullshit,really was a simpler time.
In retrospect, things areonly getting more complicated.

Cliff (03:39):
this record was so good.
The Mayans did not even come back.

Kyle (03:43):
may, but some would argue they did.
And that's when, that's whythings got weird after that.
We just, we didn't notice the vibe shift.
Ha

Cliff (03:55):
Yeah.
I was sad when they didn't pull through.
So this was released October 22nd, 2012.
So we're, about 12 years out,uh, from the release nowadays.
A lot of accolades we can go throughhere, but I think it's worth noting
part of the reason why it's personaland all of a sudden maybe this is just

(04:17):
getting older or whatever that means,but you start to think about specific
things a lot more and this record wasreleased probably at the end of that
block of time where whatever music wepaid attention to got in our bones way
deeper than almost anything can anymore.
for me personally, right, this wassort of, well, no, both of us, and

(04:38):
we were kind of like a few yearsinto trying to be whatever form of
adults we have to be to survive.
And we were exploring what that meantfor both of us and doing the best we
could, and also still deeply connectedto our own personalities, history.
We're seeing a ton of shows by thentogether all the time, just like
we haven't all the time since then.

(05:00):
But I.
I love thinking about the periodsof time now where I can specifically
notice, like, yeah, when music dropsin like a five year period in your
life there's a way that it gets inthere that it never really can again.
And for me, this was probably rightthere on that tail end where I can
just like, I remember a place wewere in, in a car together talking

(05:21):
about this record specifically.
And Folks that you knew at GeorgiaState who like were telling you about
how much they loved this record andhow like this became like everyone was
talking to each other about it and wewere listening to it with like truly
great anticipation as soon as it was out.
One of the last times I can rememberlistening to an album with intention
as soon as it was humanly available.

Kyle (05:43):
And I got to thank our buddy Brandon Roan, who was like the first big acolyte.
He, he did the hip hop show, the bomb atGeorgia state and was a buddy of our is a
buddy of ours and was big on section 80.
He was like the first big Kendrick head.
And I've always known with Brandon, likeif he likes it, it's quality hip hop.

(06:06):
He's a student of the game.
so I don't necessarily want to gloss overall the accolades because that was the
first thing where I was like, Oh my God.
Just the, the order of magnitude of itbecause, uh, you know, there, there's
always two axes popularity or likecultural print penetration in quality or

(06:28):
artistic progress or density or whatever.
And I don't know that there'sbeen a thing Certainly not an
artist in the 21st century.
That has been as high, as upinto the right as Kendrick has.
So let's just run througha few of the things.
This is, we'll call it hissecond album after section 80.
You know, people will say this is hisdebut cause this is his first major

(06:50):
label record or whatever you like.
And that's another thing of theera is mixtapes and whatever.
It all gets kind of foggy.
But he put out five mixtapes in the twothousands, the first in April, 2003.
So like the man's put in is.
10, 000 hours.
Uh, it's deceptive to call it a debut.
He's a entry level with 10 years ofexperience type cat debuted at number

(07:11):
two on the billboard, 200 sold almosta quarter million copies in its
first week, you know, and this is inthe, as the streaming era begins so.
Crazy amount of sales.
It's still on the chart to this day, 622weeks later, the first hip hop record to
stay on the charts more than a decade.
Surpassing the Eminem show is thelongest running hip hop entry.

(07:33):
So that puts it in a category withDark Side of the Moon, Nevermind,
Thriller, Rumors, Bob Marley's LegendMetallica's Black Album, ACDC's Black
and Black, Back in Black, and GreatestHits entries from The Beatles, Credence,
Journey, Queen, Tom Petty, and others.
It had five singles, all of whichcharted, and now multiple billion
plus streamed tracks on Spotify fromthis album, one in the two billion

(07:56):
ish category, four Grammy nominations,including Album of the Year, Lost to
Daft Punk's Random Access Memories,and yes, this is also the record that
Macklemore Texted and posted an apologyover because the heist won over good kid
that's a fun one to go back and look up.
That was a moment Uh, it topped many ofthe best of 2012 lists and it's already

(08:17):
12 years on Number 115 on rollingstone's all time top 500 and if you
know the politics of rolling stone, youknow It's crazy that there's a hip hop
record that high he made 2011's doubleXL freshman list with Mac Miller, big
crit, Lil B, Sci Hi to Prince, YG, YellowWolf, Meek Mill, and a few other guys.

(08:38):
Snoop Dogg, arguable King of the WestCoast, hailed him live on stage as
the new leader of the West Coast,made Kendrick cry over that on stage.
Pharrell called him this era'sBob Dylan, masterful storytelling.
Listen to it.
It will elevate you.
And just like that, music has changed.
that's crazy.
The billion streams thing, I think isone of the ones that got me because most

(08:59):
of the songs on this record have morestreams than nearly all 36 chambers.
Most of them.
I went back and looked atclassic hip hop records.
And I, you know, I know it's notapples to apples because people
are consuming generationally musicdifferent ways, but When you go to

(09:20):
compare records in the hip hop pantheon,it's, there's an enormity that's
like almost difficult to comprehend.

Cliff (09:27):
One of the better things I feel like I can say about this record
at least from, well, This is myfucking half podcast, so of course
it's coming from my perspective.
One of the best things I can say about it,though, is like, all the accolades that
you just said, certainly well deserved,representative of the quality of the
record, and the artist, representativeof the growth that we'd see from Kindred.

(09:49):
All that stuff is true, and also, 100percent regardless of any of those
details, this record is a masterpieceworth listening to regardless of whether
anyone had ever cared about it at all.
And for me, Even as not the hip hop headin this duo for sure, have my own barriers

(10:10):
to entry, uh, with hip hop and especiallyleading up until this point, I was much
more in the how do I follow JurassicFive and other very weird, stylish,
uh, Types of hip hop into whatever itwould become in the coming decades.
And like this one yanked me backtowards popular hip hop for lack of

(10:33):
a better term, because right aroundthis time is what watched the throne,
the Carter for the, there's a lotof stuff that was coming out then.
But like, I didn't givea shit about take care.
And like, everyone loved that recordthen, like, you know, around 2012.
and so this one.
Yeah, it's not the debut for all ofthe great reasons that you point out,

(10:57):
but the kind of seismic ness of theway that it drops through Interscope
brings people like me back over andhave been able to keep me curious
about hip hop for the next 10 yearsbased on this singular album alone.
Because as we will Keeptalking about like for me.
It was the first listen was oh shit.

(11:18):
That was really good But I thinkthat there's more there and then the
second through the like 30th listenwas oh he cared about this It's deep.
There's a lot of stuff here.
Not just uh, not just deep inthe emotional sense in the like
No, no, he like, mementoed thisthing, uh, like, Christopher Nolan
produced this hip hop record.

(11:40):
It's really weird it

Kyle (11:41):
did, I did think of the hand drawn Inception map when I
was thinking about this record.
There's definitely thatlayer of intentionality.
I do want to quickly say,I think it's interesting.
You pointed out you called outJurassic five and that sort of thing.
This was such an important intersectionpoint for us as friends and fellow

(12:04):
music fans, because we sort ofrepresented opposite polarities
in hip hop up to that point.
Like you were, I don't want topaint you as like a conscious
rap guy, but I think That's whereyou became the most activated.
Jurassic 5, Common, stuff like that.
And then, I was way on the otherend with like, Project Pat and Gucci
Mane and all that sort of thing.

(12:26):
And it, it's very hard, Ithink still to this day, to
find good intersection points.
And this was the moment.
the, the blog era, as we'll continueto refer to it, where we found really
crazy good intersection points,especially in Kendrick and to a slightly,
but not much less extent, Big K.

(12:47):
R.
I.
T.
it was interesting thatthis was like a watershed.
Oh, there's something for everybody wholoves hip hop or music element here.

Cliff (12:56):
Partly my naivete about hip hop led me to think that conscious hip hop was my
more interesting angle into everything.
I think lyrically, yes.
We will talk about it, butone of the reasons I love

Kyle (13:14):
place lyrics matter for you, Cliff?

Cliff (13:16):
Yeah, cause it fucking matters!

Kyle (13:17):
It's central to the form.

Cliff (13:19):
It's a whole story, but In the vein of lyrics mattering, this was one
where I can appreciate when people tella really interesting story through words.
Cool.
It's interesting.
Um, but production wise, I took aparallel path to you for sure because

(13:39):
like, all of my stuff was like LP, I'llSleep When You're Dead and then 2012
was the Rainforest EP too, from ClamsCasino, which was On repeat for sure.
So yeah, speaking of a blog rap and allthat like for sure but this was for me
An album where those two types of thingsmet, like lyrics that meant a thing

(14:04):
because it was personal and interestingand intricate, um, but production, that
was, I mean, there's a whole lot ofinteresting things about the production,
including the fact that no one personproduced this whole album at all.
But it merged more of the.
I mean the, the samples and the tonalityand the just kind of loose weirdness

(14:28):
of everything, uh, and everything'sgot a, yeah, and it's, yeah, it's got
atmosphere, it's got a little odd reverbto things or loops a little funny and
almost kind of reminds me of, you'llhave to jog my memory now, but what
is it that we were talking about that,Took that sampled the mini Ripperton
vocal and turned it into like a drone.

Kyle (14:50):
Oh, tribe.
Yeah.
Tip.
Tip did that on one of the songstoward the end of Midnight Marauders.

Cliff (14:56):
Thank

Kyle (14:56):
Where he like, he like, he, he pitched it up just slightly.
And it, it was.
Insane that he took a fall,a piercing falsetto vocal.
And if you just play the clip, you'relike, this is the worst sample idea ever,
because it's literally like the dumb anddumber, most annoying sound in the world.
But he, he blends it, he loops itand blends it so beautifully there.

(15:20):
There is a lot of that tip Dillastyle sampling where they just
take little things and theychop them in ways that are.
Not intuitive.

Cliff (15:31):
Yep
well said on that and then I would justadd the even pointing back to an earlier
episode of Tune dig like La PlanetteSauvage, the weird, we're going to pull
down every odd noise directly into ahip hop song and somehow it's going to
click directly into place like that.
It's not as abstract here on GoodKid Mad City, but it, it feels

(15:56):
like it comes from that lineage ina way that I always got down to.
Plus I'm sure there'll be a more intricateand delicate way of saying this, but.
The beats are hard as shit thoughunder all of that I and I think that's
something that'll be easy not to sayabout this record, but should definitely
be pointed out directly is like it'sIt may be sensitive and thoughtful

(16:21):
and interesting and it'll stillblow the shit out of your speakers.

Kyle (16:26):
Yeah.
And, and I think you have to listen tothe earlier Kendrick projects, like even
before section 80 to get an appreciationfor this really sounded like the first
time he had kind of a vision for a sonicpalette and worked with people that
could, Blend those sort of two idealsof like, it's gotta be atmospheric and

(16:51):
it's, it's gotta be something that I canrhyme over, but it's also got to like.
really super go hard.
And, you know, there have been multipleepisodes where we've, we've talked about
the beat, the beat, the beat, and therole of bass and low end and how that
frequency hits you in a certain way.
And it just would not be the same album.
It would not be as primallyaffecting without the base.

(17:15):
If it was just a bunch of likeboom, bat shit with no disrespect
to, to like MC rap it would notbe the same without some of the.
West coast, southern trunk type vibe.
I do think it's worth clicking in justa little more on the blog era bit.

(17:37):
And then move on for anyonewho wasn't there living it.
And like you remember.
Our buddy Elliot and I had a blog.
We were participants in the blogecosystem with good old boys.
Where, with like, obviously thebig ones, two dope boys, not right.
Fake shore drive scores of others.

(17:57):
You know, this was pre needledrop, pre video, you, YouTuber,
TikToker, that sort of thing.
And like Tumblr was a huge one for.
Anybody could start a thing.
I would encourage folks to listento a little bit of, there is
a podcast called the blog era.
that dissects what this phenomenon was.
But the thing to know about it, Ithink, is that, um, there was an

(18:20):
authenticity that came with it.
people were starting to deregionalize because they were finding
stuff from all over, not just themixtapes from where you were from,
which was like a huge, huge shift.
And it was influencing the sound andsort of like bringing things back
down from the first wave of hip hop,regional hip hop being like a big
pop phenomenon, thinking about like.

(18:42):
You know, New Orleans and 3 6 winningan Oscar and outcast and obviously L.
A.
stuff in the 90s.
just in a, in a like 12 ishmonth period, we had, like you
mentioned, watch the throne.
We had good music's cruel summer.
And that, that run of singles thatthey put out on a blog, we had you
know, arguably two of the biggestbreakout stars of the mixtape

(19:05):
era was Khalifa and currency.
They're worked separately and together.
And like cushion OJ, when I thinkabout the blog era and mixed tapes,
I think about cushion orange juice.
You add Titty Boy rebranded in histwo chains and coming out as like one
of the hardest rappers of that era.
You had Lil B, whose influence is stillfelt in pop culture to this day, and

(19:27):
especially how contents put out andvideos are made and that sort of thing.
You had the, the double albumfrom Death Grips, speaking
of another Toondig episode.
You had Donald Glover becoming, uh,uh, like actually really legitimate.
rapper moving past the, the, thewhatever, whatever of the early days
and putting out royalty and being righton the eve of because of the internet,

(19:52):
you had channel orange from FrankOcean on the back of a handful of years
of odd future dominating this space.
Odd future should probably be themost synonymous with this era.
And their influence Tyler's especiallystill pervasive to this day.
To this day, but you also had thereturn of Earl Sweatshirt and he was
on, uh, Elimination Chamber and asong on Channel Orange and that was

(20:13):
a huge, huge, huge thing culturally.
You had the pre run The Jewels.
Meet up in killer.
Mike's rap music.
And then you had trash talk, thesensational hardcore band of the
internet era in the early 2010ssigned to the odd future label.
So it was just like a crazy convergenceculture while things happening, but

(20:34):
2012 also an election year, also sort oflike a polemic, uh, lightning rod year.
Politically.
With, you know, Romney Ryan againstthe second Obama era and all the
feelings around the 2012 apocalypse.
Like the air was really crackly thenin a different way than it is now,
but it, it felt like a big time,I think, even as we were living it

(20:56):
and then at the end of October comesthis record and it was a collective.
Immediately unanimous.
I think this was the one that complexor somebody within a week or two of it
dropping said, this is an instant classicand it should be regarded as such.
And then there was blowback with that.
But Kendrick himselfwas like wait 10 years.
And here we are 12 years on.
And he was right as shit.

(21:18):
Anyway, it's also interesting that themost timeless stuff came from like.
Ecosystems.
So, you know, in the ninetiesthere was Dungeon Family and
Wu-Tang and stuff like that.
But thinking about Top Dog, TDE, givingus Kendrick Absol school voice as a
thinking about odd future, thinking aboutASAP Mob, just like a really, a really
potent time and still this came out almostimmediately on top and has stayed there.

Cliff (21:44):
It's been fun to check out reviews, thought pieces, whatever from
about this record from about the timeit came out the year afterwards because
of how many people said to your point.
Basically, clock it.
Come back in 10 years and tellme I'm not right about this.
And uh, living in an age where peopleare constantly prophesying something

(22:08):
that becomes immediately falsifiable 30seconds after they fucking say it all

Kyle (22:13):
that, what was that Twitter account?
Coldest takes or something?

Cliff (22:19):
it's enough to make a smart person not want to be alive anymore.
So, so it's a nice relief to seelike, no, no, no, there are moments
where we can, some of us can stillsee a little bit in the future
and go, no, I'm right about this.
It's good.
that's hard to pull.
one thing that feels dorky tosay, but also important to say.

(22:42):
And then I can just like kick thedorkiness to the curve and talk about it.
I guess it's worthsaying about this record.
It is a concept record, like in the sortof larger, vague sense of concept albums.
And even though that's perhaps moretraditionally associated with weird ass

(23:03):
genres like prog or something like that.
It's worth mentioning one because it'sworth calling out all the details that
are in here and we won't touch all ofthem for sure But some of them that make
them interesting But secondly like Idon't know There's probably some people
listening to this who hear the phraseconcept album and will generally recoil
at that idea At the risk of cheesiness.

(23:25):
I see you I feel you I hear you Ithink that that's generally a good
response to have this one's fun, dude.
This one's like You Sort of like,if the MCU was cool to talk about.

Kyle (23:38):
Is this the first concept album we've talked about on the podcast?
Probably for all thereasons you've mentioned.
Is ArchAndroid a concept album?

Cliff (23:47):
yeah.
I would say yes.
Um, but this is definitely the, Ihad concepts of a concept album.
this is the most sort of like Vaguelylike we're doing a thing but i'm not
going to do it in order for you or makeit easy for you to consume at all So
yeah, I would definitely pull janellemonáe's record into that category.

(24:11):
But this one takes you in the I enjoythe space this particular concept record
occupies, because my favorite type ofconcept is just like a parties theme.
This exists, and you can careabout it, but if you don't, no
one will say anything to you.
That's exactly how I want myHalloween parties, and that's

(24:31):
how I like my weird records.

Kyle (24:33):
It adds, but it doesn't detract.
You can still enjoy these asa collection of songs without
thinking too hard about the story.

Cliff (24:42):
Just like you could enjoy Human Clay without doing Creed Quest.
It's exactly like that, but Creed Quest,you know, really augmented the experience.
so, when we say that it's aconcept album, there's just a few
things that help going into it ifyou're not already aware of them.
In the most basic sense, like,this is a story that Kendrick

(25:03):
is telling about himself.
He is telling it though, and hereare some very important details.
It is extremely non linear and when Imade like a memento reference earlier,
that's probably my best reference forsort of how this twists around it is
It's not nearly confrontational inthe way that it orders its own story.

(25:25):
Um, but what it does instead, again,if you just kind of lean back and
take it, what's cool about it, uh, isthat it's just a story that comes to
you just fine and piles up referencesas you go along that feel clever.
You don't have to follow everypath if you don't want to, but you
can basically make this a chooseyour own adventure type of book.

(25:46):
Where you don't choose the adventure,you just go to a page and then it
tells you to go to another page, ifyou'd like to continue the story.
But, it is, like it's kind of hardto express this nuance it is not a
fanciful or imaginary story abouthim, but it is also not entirely true.
It's not autobiographical.
It's not designed to be ahistorical document, but it is

(26:09):
very much about him and puttingit sort of in the silliest sense.
Like, it's the story of K Dot, thecharacter in the story, becoming Kendrick
Lamar, the person who is telling youthe story where he dips in and becomes
present day himself on two of the tracks.
To tell you about the storiesin which he's past himself,

(26:32):
telling you other stories.
It's all good stuff, man.
But, you know, we can kind of walkthrough all the details of that and
why it's cool and exciting or whatever.
But like, it's an album that has a coverart with a Polaroid of Kendrick on it.
With his uncle and grandfather.
In the middle of this storythat he's talking about.
Uh, and then right thereon the cover in the album.

(26:54):
Scribble letters that you may nothave noticed like good kid mad city
is called a short film by KendrickLamar on the album itself So this
is one of those nice moments.
I feel like we have these inepisodes where it's like, okay,
like calm down Don't get too nerdy.
It's not that big of a deal.
It's not rush But it is pretty cool, andit is from somebody who cared a lot about

(27:17):
music and put a lot of details into it.
And so if you want to godown that route, you can.
That is one of the ways that youcan enjoy this record for sure.
But it's also it's just good music.
And you don't have to thinkabout it if you don't want to.

Kyle (27:29):
One thing also that strikes me about the concept is the importance of place.
this record is super duper Compton.
And I can't think of many other recordsthat are as about A literal place,
grounded in a literal place as it is.
And I, I learned in reading abouthis relationship with Compton,
there's, there's tons of layersto it, but you know, he was six

(27:53):
years old when the chronic cameout, and obviously Dre e peed this.
record.
So it's, it's full circle in a lot ofways, but he has talked about a watershed
moment for him was when he was eight,his dad took him to watch the filming of
the California love video with Dre andPac like in the neighborhood in Compton.

(28:13):
And that being a super formative thing,thinking about that as like his Beatles
Shea stadium moment, like that was for somany rock musicians is kind of incredible.
You know, when you think about the globaltranscendence of this record it's also
so local, it's so steeped in place.
And it adds to the storytelling, but italso adds to the sonic quality as well.

Cliff (28:36):
That's not only an awesome point, but I think a really cool segue actually.
So the placeness of it isdefinitely real and truly visceral.
Even with a halfway active,listen you can feel it.
It's street names, it's album namesand artists names, it's places
and things and everything thatsets it in a particular moment.

(28:59):
So I think to that end, so.
A couple of the things that we do foreach other, uh, to help other people think
about how to experience these records is.
Talk about a couple specific exercisesthat we do for every album and one
of them is How do you kind of takethis one in fresh either again?
Probably not for the first time but ifit's the first time in a long time, or if

(29:19):
you're just trying to go Kind of harderinto it than you have before and give it
some appreciation we talk about thingsthat surprise us as we did that and
then sort of interesting context to hearthe record So i'd actually love to talk
about then interesting context to hearthe record because a Albums that have a
placeness to them feel like they tend tohave tend to be more sensitive to their

(29:42):
context I think is a way to say it forme, that's two almost opposite things
that I found really interesting aboutthis record As one I've listened to a lot
over the years You know, 12 years now.
One is driving.
It feels like driving.
So if I want to feel like I'mdriving, or if I am driving, and I

(30:04):
like that feeling, this is the one.
It's really easy to put on,feels good, sounds good, and has
a real, like, weather quality.

Kyle (30:13):
Mm

Cliff (30:14):
you can feel a temperature and a humidity to it.
You can kind of feel likethere are people around or not.
The other thing that's interestingthough, or the other context that's
interesting for this one, whichusually doesn't work this way, is I
can really focus listening to this.
And I usually have a lot of troublewith hip hop because I want to

(30:36):
hear everything that's being said.
I think this one probably crossedthe Rubicon into, you already
know these words, we don't needto think about this anymore.

Kyle (30:45):
hmm.

Cliff (30:46):
And At that point, it just, it recedes back to the level that Clam's
Casino occupies of just like driving itforward, helping me keep up with a little
bit of a sense of time, but otherwise justsort of like thinking about what I'm doing
and having a vibe that sits around me.
But this one is definitely onethat can be kind of stretched into

(31:07):
either of those extremes for me.
Was curious how it hits you.

Kyle (31:11):
I always love thinking about this prompt in particular for the episodes now.
And I started with basically thetwo ends like you have, and then
I kept listing contexts where itreally worked for me, not forcing it.
And I was shocked by howmany places it worked.
So it's great for focus time, whichis crazy for such a verbose like

(31:37):
rap ass rap record where Kendrickreally like demands your attention.
And I have some, I have somethoughts on maybe why you can
slip back out of it as well.
It works on a playlist for a party, bitchdon't kill my vibe and swimming pools,
especially, but other things as well.
It works for like lower key, moreintimate, vibey, like kickback or

(32:03):
just you and one person type of,you know, thinking about like poetic
justice being on the same record.
It works for working out.
It works for writing your, like,sparking your own creativity.
You can play it on the PA at a sportingevent or front of house at a show.
There's just a huge amount ofversatility in it contextually.

(32:26):
And I think that's probably partof the secret is it does have a
little bit of everything in itand, you know, thinking about.
all the huge records, iconic recordsthat we listed off at the beginning
from Billboard, thinking about it likea Nevermind where there's Teen Spirit
and Lithium or In Bloom and Polly.

(32:47):
There's a similar thing here andthere's double the amount of it.
Like it's, it's over anhour, just the main record.
And then there's a whole bunchof other songs that he made
that belong to this period.
So there's a lot.
There's a lot you can do with it.
And again, I'm hard pressedto think about records that
stretch in that many directions.

Cliff (33:07):
So to that end, being surprised at how wide it stretches
and then how many directions.
So I can still remember beingsurprised by this record the first
times that I listened to it but thengiving it fresh attention again.
the way that you shift into is like themore attention you pay to it, the more
you get a little bit back out of it.

(33:29):
Uh, and the first level you havefun paying enough attention and
energy into, you get the rewardback of like, Okay, he's clever.
He's a good rapper.
Okay.
This is, this is fun.
Okay.
You know, good production isclever and it's got like, kind of
like a cinematic quality to it.

(33:49):
He's, he's got something that makesit feel gritty and you can sort of
experience a little bit of that.
And then it's, whether it's subsequentlistens, whether it's harder or
different listens or whatever.
You know, one of my, one of myfavorite ways to go into the.
Further level of a record is thenext time you're on an airplane.

(34:10):
Don't put your eyeballs on anything.
Listen to a record untilthe plane takes off.
When you go deeper into this one, that'slike the story element that we've been
talking about and then sort of teasing,like all of a sudden it's like you
put on, 3d glasses or whatever And inthe things you were looking at before
sort of have a new shape and start topoint to each other in different ways

(34:33):
And for me That's exactly the type ofthing I'm looking for in records is
getting something back out of my likeemotional and energetic investment into
the real time listening of that music.
We talk about so many different levelsof appreciating things, and there
are so many ways to enjoy an albumbecause of what it means or because

(34:55):
of its history or its influences.
And you can hear all of thosethings, but this one feels special
while you're listening to it.
And you can tell because you get it back.
As soon as you put it in whilethis record's going on and that
probably more than anythingis what still stands out to me

Kyle (35:10):
I noticed a handful of things.
It's so fun with a record that you're sointimately familiar with to try to reset
your brain and do it for the first time.
One, I think, in a loudness wars timeand an attention wars time, When this
came out, opening so atmosphericallyand to your point, cinematically, it was

(35:32):
a clear choice, uh, it fades in slowlyafter the prayer, you know, after like a,
a cutaway snippet, if you're watching amovie and then it, fades from black and
that's, that's just really interesting.
Especially when you have songs towardthe end, like real and Compton that are
like big but they're more of an epilogue.

(35:55):
And then it, it commands yourattention or it has some level of
hypnosis over you, depending on howpresently you're trying to listen.
So a couple of specific things.
One is.
I didn't really regard the productionsuper seriously as part of the reason
I love this record so much for along time, but it really rewards
repeat listens and headphone listens.

(36:17):
Um, there were more beat switches inthis record than I ever remembered things
that could have been separate songs ondifferent projects for different artists.
He, he mashed togetherlike at least five times.
And then there's stufflike strings that I.
I associate with like latter day Dr.
Dre that's big trying to gofor kind of classic feel.

(36:40):
And then to the point of like,how can you lean out when there's
so much density to this record?
Kendrick has a thing like three stacksto me where he has such an idiosyncratic
His voice is unusual sounding talkingand, and rapping and pseudo singing.
His cadences are so unusual.

(37:03):
So like the timbre of his voice isimmediately recognizable and then he
manipulates it in really interesting ways.
and.
Like, so he'll, he'll lock in, he'lllike skate or ride on a beat in a
way that kind of hypnotizes you.
And then he'll, he stacks his vocals,interestingly, it's a bit like Alice
in Chains where it's like not quitea harmony or it's a weird harmony.

(37:26):
And it's, it's totally unique to him.
voice is such an instrument on this thing.
So not only are the lyrics reallypowerful and what he does as a
wordsmith, but the way he uses hisvoice as an instrument to deliver,
doubles, triples, 10 X's the impact.
And the fact that he's clearly thinkingabout the dimension of that, puts him in

(37:46):
like the kind of top echelon hip hop wise.

Cliff (37:49):
I have no credentials from which to agree with you, but I agree with you.

Kyle (37:54):
okay.
So we've started speculating on hisintent a little bit or thinking about it.
Clearly intent, uh, forethoughtis, um, it's kind of a hallmark
of who Kendrick is as an artist.
So let's talk a little bit moreabout his intent, his headspace,

Cliff (38:10):
No,

Kyle (38:10):
how, how it came to formulate the
thing.

Cliff (38:13):
No.
Yeah.
No, that's great He actually gives usquite a few quotes thanks to a complex
interview at the time we like to oh,this is my favorite toondig thing.
Let's talk about how we talk aboutourselves we try to avoid conjecture
in the sense that Uh, it's no funto listen to two fucking strangers
talk about what they think someonethought about while they were in

(38:34):
the studio making a great record.
That's boring.
There's

Kyle (38:38):
I'm also hyper aware of the optics of two white guys who grew
up in the suburbs, speculating onanything related to hip hop culture.
Treading

Cliff (38:47):
authentic Compton experience?

Kyle (38:50):
Yeah, we're, we're, we're gentrifying just by opening our mouths.

Cliff (38:55):
Like, I'm from Atlanta, but that doesn't get you all the way to
let's talk about life in Compton.
Yeah.
Um,

Kyle (39:01):
I walked around downtown Atlanta barefoot while I was a student at
Georgia State, but, uh, there'sstill a huge, huge cultural barrier.

Cliff (39:09):
I was gonna put on shoes, but I'm with the homies right now, One thing
that's great though about a concept recordis it is going to channel a way for us to
talk about What he says his intention isbut also he sets it up pretty clearly such
that we can just follow the story Withouthaving to overly diagnose it, I think.

(39:31):
So he says, kind of all about thisalbum, quote, These songs, they
come naturally for me to write offof the experience I grew up with,
and the things I had been around.
It's just what we were going through.
It's easy for me to write realstories, rather than making up stories.
A crazy story.
Okay.
So again, that's just sort of reinforcingwhat we were mentioning earlier.
It's a story about himself.

(39:51):
It's clever.
It's interesting and it's creative, butit's not necessarily a fanciful version
of himself in one way or the other.
He's trying to tell stories in away that he experienced at the time.
And so, in that sense, an importantthing to draw out, uh, it's a
completely non linear story.
To the reference you just made kylethis record starts off on track this

(40:16):
starts off with a song that has theLord's Prayer being uttered at the
beginning, uh, and then later on inthat song, there's like a call from
Kendrick's mom to Kendrick's cell phone.
there is where you can start, if yougive a shit about this aspect that
we're talking about, where you canstart to connect really fun dots.

(40:39):
Cause immediately, uh, the, Imean, I guess this is a spoiler.
I don't know.
But the Lord's Prayer at the beginningis connected to later in the story,
like the neighbors praying withthem because someone just got shot.
It's tying together different songs.
It does not come in order at all.
The phone call that you hear at the endof, uh, Charain, that first track there.

(41:04):
Like that phone call is a referenceto something Kendrick references
throughout other songs in which heborrows his mom's van for quote 15
minutes to go Meet up with Shireen.
15 minutes doesn't workfor anybody in that case.
So you can tell that he wasjust lying to his poor mama.
And his dad did not gethis dominoes in time.

Kyle (41:22):
My damn dominoes.

Cliff (41:24):
But even like the, the last line of the song, like leads directly
into Bitch Don't Kill My Vibe.
Like the whole thing is connected ina way that is both so direct that it
is clearly intentional, but also so.
Discombobulated that it's clear that he'snot like playing 4D chess or whatever.
He's just making it interestingfor you, uh, and letting you feel

(41:47):
what it felt like to experience apretty serious series of events.
You know, inside of his own head.

Kyle (41:54):
It's very Terrence Malick y to me.
It's very like, okay,so this is a short film.
I was trying to think about what filmicqualities I get, and Memento is a good
one, but you sort of have to reorder thelinearity of that for it to make sense.
Um, Terrence Malick is more like scenesand impressions, you know, that stack

(42:16):
up into inviting you into a world.
But I also.
It took me a long time before the prayersthing connected for me, because there
are songs after sing for me where theprayer is and, you know, some people
would say that that's the end of therecord, but there's two more songs.

(42:37):
It is a little confusing toknow in the digital age because
there's 37 versions of this shit.
and I could have sworn when thisthing like I Mandela affected,
uh, I have a memory of Sing for Mebeing the end of this record, maybe
just because it's 12 minutes long.
It's like where the brainkind of naturally stops.
But I feel like I'm writing a letterboxreview in my head when I'm like, well,

(43:01):
the tone of the one at the beginning withjust the young men doing it sounds like
gearing up for battle or a pregame thing.
And then the one at the end is becausethey've grown and they've shed.
The, uh, their young man's foolishness.
They're relying on the wisdom and careof the elders in the older neighbor

(43:21):
and it's, it's full circle in that,you know, they've, they've had to go
through the Lord of the Flies darknessto get where they are into manhood
and It's an incredibly subtle way to,to signal that sort of a shift to me.

Cliff (43:36):
Yeah, and plus we would, this podcast would literally spontaneously
cease to exist if we did not mentionthis first track It's very Atlantan
Kendrick said he was in Atlanta when thebusiness gave him the beat Which is a
cool Sentence just period no matter howmany things are capitalized inside of it

(43:58):
moving into the next song In the nonlinear narrative story of this album.
everybody's favorite 2012 song, I'm sure.
Bitch, don't kill my vibe.
Because we could all rememberit, sing it, it felt good.
All of those neat things.
So here's a fun moment where, okay,we've dropped in one song into

(44:19):
a concept record that's about animportant story of his childhood.
This next song does not take placeon that timeline at all Isn't about
it it it has little fun connections.
Like I said with the with the lyrics inthe pat in the You know just prior song
and all that stuff so it's still fun,right but uh, it is not about the story

(44:42):
itself anymore There are two places wherekindred basically steps outside of that
past version of himself On this recordand this is one of the two This one.
Well, there's a lot offluffy useless shit.
We can say about this song for sureBecause everybody likes it, but this
is one of those You Sample heavy songsthat feel so good to go back and devolve

(45:09):
back into their original and hear it.
I don't even know if I can say thiscorrectly, um, but it samples, well, I
can say boom clap bachelors correctly.
I can say that part.
But they're 2018 Teidenfleiver.
They're Danish.
So we're just going to sayTeidenfleiver like that.
Um, but it was a Danish electronic group.

(45:29):
But like the, once you've heard theKendrick song first and you go back and
listen to this, this sounds like, uh,if like, the sound of music was hard,
somehow, uh, it would feel like listeningto this, I not only enjoy that, but also
the, the odd ass trivia that Lady Gaga wassupposed to be on the song, and was not.

Kyle (45:52):
Incredible.

Cliff (45:53):
Apparently for no bad or weird reasons, just didn't happen.
Okay.
Okay.

Kyle (46:00):
line.
And they did that, uh, they didanother song that never saw the
light of day party, nauseous.
Um, And then this is the, um,the boom clap bachelor sample.
That she later used as.
An interlude, like a live onlyinterlude at the art pop ball.
The boom clap bachelor sample.
The beach house sample.
On I think money trees.

(46:20):
And the lady Gaga feature islike, that's such a relic of the.
Um, 2012 cultural convergence.
Moment.
unusual for today and also super passe.
So like, I don't think we're seeingquite as much weird mashup probably
because so much of it was happening inthis like specific small bottle moment.

(46:46):
Like I'm also thinking about, theTimu version of that would be the
Miley Cyrus, Mike will track whereshe's in a Michael Jordan Jersey.
The, uh, the, this is the good.
Quality version of that.
And I think they, but I, like,I think it's safe to say that
because they both thought so.
When the album came out, Gagaposted her version on Twitter and

(47:07):
Kendrick said to double XL, I didn'teven know she was going to put
that out, but I was cool with it.
It showed people wewasn't playing with it.
We was actually in the studiovibing out when we recorded for
her to put it out even undone.
That says a lot that says she's confidentnot only about her work, but my work.

Cliff (47:23):
That just feels rad.
Maybe I'm projecting ontoit, but that just feels rad.
It feels like, I could never hearanother Lady Gaga song and be fine, but
I'm fine with her personally, whatever.
As far as I've ever heard or seen,she's someone who cares about the
quality of her performances, uh, inthe music that she's writing, the
performances she puts on, whatever, dude.
So

Kyle (47:43):
She's an immense natural talent, a truly committed craftsperson,
and a rare original in this world.
And to say that you worked withKendrick Lamar and Tony Bennett
those two creds alone, in additionto the scores of things she's done
culturally, uh, in being a cultureshifter, I have a huge respect for Gaga.

(48:05):
Nothing but love for Gaga in this house.

Cliff (48:08):
a hundred percent.
Like has been a theme in these last manyepisodes lately when artists who are good
talk about other artists being good payattention Usually that means something
cool And you can always smell thedifference between that and a my publicist
made me write this instagram captionbecause this is a sabrina carpenter

(48:31):
feature on a schoolboy q album now or someshit like that Um You can always sense it.

Kyle (48:37):
And the breeders going on tour with Olivia Rodrigo falls somewhere between.
Also worth noting with this song there'sa J, there's a remix with Jay Z on it
and it's a whole ass different song.
Like he did different verses.
In my opinion, far inferior tothe original, which speaks to the
quality and singularity of Kendrick.

(48:58):
people are obviously entitled totheir opinions, but I love the single
artwork when they put the remixout, it's the photo of Kobe and
Jordan next to each other with theirhands on their knees between plays.
And that, uh, that really says athing about the headspace and the
confidence, and it's not wrong.

(49:20):
extrapolating on that littlebit is its own podcast episode.
I'll go get smoked for my hot takes.

Cliff (49:29):
you know, one thing Kendrick said about this song, which I think
supports the cover art that you werejust mentioning, He was saying, uh,
he kind of jumped into a quote here.
He says, that's really one bigsubliminal at everybody getting
mixed in a situation where everybodywants to have creative control.
Okay.
So what he's trying to say iswe're in a situation a lot of
times where everybody wants to havecreative control over the thing.

(49:51):
And he said, that's thevibe I wanted to kill.
That's why I threw thatrecord out like a past effort.
And if you listen to some of thewords, it's real intricate, but
it makes he wants to be great.
Stop fucking it up.
Can we do that now?
That's why I like that song somuch in my own way I understand
this feeling quite a bit.

(50:11):
Okay, I have I have suffered you aslong as I possibly can I am done.
I am ready to move forward.
Can we keep this vibe

Kyle (50:20):
Here's a billboard hit single about why I will simply not pass the aux.

Cliff (50:26):
Because you lost your privilege next track is awesome I love this
because now we're gonna drop rightback into the narrative with basically
like a prequel To the next songitself, but this is great because

Kyle (50:40):
To know you is to know and still be jarred to this day by
how often and out of context yousay non sequiturs from this song.
Where did that come from?
And it's like very out of character, too.
It's like not of all the songs youcould have picked to quote at random.

(51:04):
Very, very uncliffed selection,but it's part of what makes
you you and I love you for it.

Cliff (51:11):
Every now and then I like things and i'm not sure what to
do It's a fascinating moment.

Kyle (51:16):
You have two modes.
I love this thing or I'm going toLarry David about this thing for sure.
But I'll use loud noises for both of them.

Cliff (51:24):
I probably identify specifically with the idea behind the song because
of how visceral it is to make a 16year old version of yourself and
tell a story from that perspective.
It's like, there's such a feel to it.
Uh, and it comes with sucha swirl of dumb emotions.
I don't know why, but this one inparticular brings out the feeling

(51:48):
of, um, Remembering what it was liketo think dumb shit when I was 16,
but think that it was smart shit.
And that feeling really kills me now.
it is sandpaper on my soul to thinkabout those moments before you
even, like, woke up to anything.
Um, and you were so full of hubris.

Kyle (52:09):
Thank God Zanga got obliterated off the face of the earth, where most
of those thoughts went, uh, faster.

Cliff (52:17):
Yes, I am also glad.
I do not need to add what I'mcurrently listening to when I
write things about how sad I am.
Those are not a combination of thingsthat we need to give each other anymore.
Anyway, Backseat Freestyle, Kendricksaid, This is just me capturing the
moment of being 16 and saying the mostoutlandish shit when you are around your
homeboys and you're around whoever, okay?

(52:39):
He said, It's the stuff you reallydon't care what you're talking about.
It's the type of way that we used to talk.
Mike.
Well, let me complete the quote.
That's dope.
Because that was me going as ignorantas possible and they are still
analyzing it as ignorant as possibleand putting national stats behind it.
That is funny.

Kyle (52:58):
That is funny.

Cliff (52:59):
end quote, don't overthink it.
It's a song about the type I, the type ofshit I would say when I was 16, like, oh,
my dick is as big as the Eiffel Tower.
Wow.
That'd be neat.
I feel bad for saying wow.
I don't like the way that I said thatat all afterwards But yeah to be able
to like step back and then take thislittle moment Into not only like I guess

(53:24):
a little bit of vulnerability talkingabout being stupid when you're 16 But
like this actually sets really importantcontext for everything else that happens
to him like the overarching story That'sbeing told here is not overly nuanced.
It's like it's literally inthe title like He's a good kid.
He's trapped in a bad place.

(53:44):
He's realizing he's trapped in a badplace, and is gonna have to figure
out whether he wants to stay inthe bad place and survive, or get
out of the bad place and thrive.
that's the whole story.
And so stepping back though this far,to where like, he's freestyling in the
backseat with his friends, as you willlater find out, uh, as, uh, Part of a
story that wouldn't turn out so great.

(54:05):
This is the type of shit thatthey would say to each other.
And like the way that it captures the truemoment of like, no, I was 16 and an idiot.
So remember that when I tell youeverything else that's about to happen,
this is such a clever way to do it.
Much better than either talking downon yourself or otherwise just trying
to verbalize that experience at all.
Instead just being yourself andtrying to speak and write from that

(54:28):
moment will always connect with me.
I think.
I'm

Kyle (54:33):
reasons that are not necessarily all bad frankly often necessary hip hop.
Has tended to be a mask, a prisonsometimes to make you bigger than you are.
So where he deliberately Hasthese moments of like no i'm
gonna do the mask the masculinity.
I I want to make it clear That it's afarce that like I I'm aware that i'm

(54:59):
not Like i'm not really a gangster.
I don't have it in me Again, interesting.
And so like, rather than saying it outloud, he's giving you he's bringing you
into a moment where he's, he's doing that.
And where he's under thinkingair quotes lyrically.
I think back to the me without you episodewhere we talked about like different

(55:19):
players had the lead on different songs.
Like it was their momentat different times.
This is a huge one from a productionstandpoint because hit boy.
Great producer is arguably overthinkingto, to the tune of flawless execution.
he did a making of, for geniusthat, that breaks it down a bit.

(55:40):
But I also, I remember like probablytwo years ago at this point,
sending you a tick talk where theyshowed the intricacy of the sample.
There's a, a version of your soy Cubano.
There's a little bit of an AC DC flip.
And then an unlicensed sample from aPowerpuff Girls episode, which reminded me

(56:01):
when we talked about Death Grips, that theone song has one of the Williams sisters
grunting when she's returning a serve.
And it's got the you know, theMetro Transit taking off, uh, from
a YouTube video, like not even afield recording they got themselves.
So like really incredible workto dial in something really
specific by Hitboy on this one.

Cliff (56:23):
So going straight out of that, we keep dropping into songs that
take us further along this narrative.
But, uh, if you haven't noticed the themeyet, uh, it's always the story, but weird.
So here, Art of Peer Pressure.
First of all, I speaking of rememberingthe first times that I listened to
records up until this point in listeningto the album, I was pretty stoked.

(56:47):
We were good to go.
This one was like, this is going tobe one of my favorite records ever.

Kyle (56:53):
Oh, man.

Cliff (56:53):
the, he is telling me a story and he's telling me.
So many things so quickly that I can'teven, I don't think, digest it while I'm
listening to everything that he's saying.
I'm not a well read enough person tomake an explicit author reference here.
Uh, but the people who give you tremendousamounts of detail, this is what that

(57:15):
kind of feels like all of a sudden.
Um, But it also Speaking of it being thestory and weird Narratives picking up.
It's also basically two songs squeezedtogether there's like a kind of
Preamble, Kendrick telling you he'sabout to start telling you the story.
And then the song kind of dropsout, starts again, and then

(57:37):
he starts the actual story.
Which, again, if you were, you know,making everything as simple and
easy as possible, theoretically,this is your first song.
This is you kind of dropping intothe whole story and going from
there and actually telling theinteresting things that are happening.
But, again Part of the reason we're evensort of going track by track right now
is, like, add in the really thoughtful,masterful context of, like, but instead of

(58:00):
telling you a story either starting hereor telling you a story leading up to this
point, he's sort of giving you a collage.
Of things that he's experiencingaround this, before this, during
this, through it, all of that, sothat by the time you get to the actual
story, you're carrying some emotionalweight with you at this point.
People mean things a little bit, uh,and you can, honestly, you start to get

(58:25):
the sense of danger as this track goesalong, which is Which is really cool.

Kyle (58:30):
I saw him compared in multiple sources to James Joyce.
So looking for author comparisonsthe stream of consciousness
and kind of immersion of JamesJoyce among other authors.
But yeah, it's, very writerly.

Cliff (58:45):
So this one samples another Danish group The Danish
group suspect the song is held.
I lean I think Again, we're not gonnaoverthink very particular Danish
pronunciations today but one of the thingsfor me that I really love about this,

(59:05):
aside from just the level of detail andthe way that it brings you into the story.
One of the ways that it brings youinto the story, I think in a really
clever way it would be insufferableto dissect things at this level.
On every hip hop song, it would bethe worst version of, like, ARgenius.
com that I can imagine.
However One particular vignetteto me, you can anchor people.

(59:29):
Well, you can anchor some people topoints in time by referencing other
music in your music and the way thatin this one, they talk about bumping
the first Jeezy album, and then laterin the song, they quote it again.
Last time I checked out was the man onthese streets, like that's from, let's
get it, thug motivation, one Oh one I,Cliff, was not riding around listening

(59:54):
to Thug Motivation 101 in exactly thismoment, but I know what he's talking
about, and I know about what time he'stalking about, and I know some of the
stuff of that record, and I know enoughto know the vibe and the feeling of it.
And like, now, someone who has neverbeen a 16 year old in a car cruising
around Compton probably about toget into trouble, I can at least

(01:00:16):
share a little bit of that now.
I get it.
I can feel some of it.
And I just, I love how both obvious andclever it is to just like reference the
songs that are always on in the backgroundwhen you were that age at that time.
Cause all we were ever doing wasgetting into cars and then going

(01:00:36):
somewhere else to entertain ourselves.
Cause we didn't want to be at home andwe had cars, but we lived in places where
we had to be in them to get anywhere.

Kyle (01:00:43):
Yeah.
And there was also.
Then Mr.
Raymond Lederberg came on and, um,what was the other one you pointed out?
Oh, E 40.
Big ballin with my homies.
But there's like snippets and then he,he references, there's like threads.
He weaves little details likethat through often more than once.

(01:01:07):
Which is, is cool.
Because that's when it's your world,when it's the stuff you're into at
that point, it's a detail that doesn'tpop up just once out of novelty.
And I guess if we're comparing, uh,more filmic touchpoints, that's very
Richard Linklater, it's about youth andit's about connecting to little details.

(01:01:31):
Um, Like the music that was playing on theradio the day you got out of high school

Cliff (01:01:36):
Money Trees has one of the heaviest lines I've lyrically.
Um.
Which, again, the first time I listenedto it, I didn't clock the story, so
the line, everybody gonna respect theshooter, but the one in front of the
gun lives forever was enough on its own.
To be a pretty memorable line,I would take away to begin with.

(01:01:57):
Um, but then, again, like we weretalking about, when you invest in
the story, you understand he's,he's talking about the story.
Um, and there are, sure, there are alot of moments where the, the quips that
he's making are things that you can, youknow, abstract away from it for sure.
But, I mean, he's, he's talking aboutreal stuff here, including real people

(01:02:18):
that really died, um, that he reallyknew and were his family and friends.
And so, that is the emotionallyappropriate context in which to
bring in a Beach House sample.

Kyle (01:02:33):
Which is a, I didn't think we'd be able to jump episode
to episode on this one, but
beach house, the spiritual successorto the cocktail twins as evidenced
by signing to Bella union and beingthe central artist at Bella union.
So, Having her in Las Vegas inthe Good Kid, Mad City makes
it we just kept on baking it.
But again, a relic of the, arelic of the time that he came

(01:02:54):
up, I also have associated thatline with Nip since he got shot.
and Kendrick and Nipseyboth being from Compton.
Um, it's one of those, it's, it tookon a new dimension after a new thing
happened, but you know, very muchemblematic of the, the darker parts
of the world that they came from.

(01:03:15):
And I know, Kendrick carries Nipwith him in his heart and I know
Nipsey would have been so blown awayto see everything that has happened
for Kendrick in the past few years.
And Especially the past year andhow, how he's been a torchbearer for
the culture and all the transcendentthings that Nipsey was trying to do.
I'll stop down to say like Idon't necessarily believe that

(01:03:40):
Nip ever put out a project on thelevel of what Kendrick has done.
But he's one of the most important.
Figures in 21st century music culture.
and it's just like a, a goodass human who was gone too soon.
So, there are probably, while there area lot of people who have listened to

(01:04:00):
this record and know it really well andare revisiting things that they love and
appreciate about it, I would suspect thereare a lot of people who love this record.
Who also don't know that much about Nipand his story, and that is a rabbit hole
I would, I can't encourage you stronglyenough to go down he is something of

(01:04:24):
a hero to me with the things that hedid and he stood for and we would all
do well to be a little more like Nip.

Cliff (01:04:31):
Certainly your preview at the end of the episode where we tell you a
million different directions to go in.
It's going to be bad this time, folks, butNipsey Hussle is a pretty good local exit
if you'd like to get off the interstate.
That'll take you inthe right direction for

Kyle (01:04:48):
405.

Cliff (01:04:53):
My mind just, uh, cycled through at least ten very funny things
that I'm choosing not to put on tapethat would allow us to transition
into the song that has Drake on it.

Kyle (01:05:02):
Ah.
Yeah, speaking of R.
I.
P.
Aubrey Graham.

Cliff (01:05:10):
He doesn't get more space than, than we'll allow here.
Um, so, so here's, here's how thislittle segment is going to go.
Um, so this is exactly why weavoid conjecture and try to
just speak about the thing.
Okay.
So here was the thing at the timewhere this song was recorded.

(01:05:31):
Kendrick and Drake wereokay making music together.
Okay, Kendrick was on tour with Drake.
He was on take care This was a littlebasic reciprocal thing And even though
i'd argue that drake's verse here isliterally the weakest part of this entire
album it's still a really cool song Itadds to the narrative we've talked about

(01:05:53):
this before, much to Kyle's chagrinlooking at my face while I say this.
Uh, I really do appreciatea good sexy hip hop song.
Uh, like, one that's written eloquently.
And this Well, Kendrick says the song isabout a chick saying her legs are poems.
Alright, good enough for me, man.
I can follow you down that path.

Kyle (01:06:13):
I respect that.
Women are great.

Cliff (01:06:15):
yep.
And without, again, going too fardown the concept album rabbit hole
this is a song about Theraine themain woman in the story itself.
And so this is, it's giving yousome interesting mental tracks
into what was going on for him.

(01:06:35):
Again, emotionally and, uh,intellectually, uh, if you want
to go that far during this time.
But, again, another good m opportunityto point out how visceral it feels
to talk about the things that youfelt when things were happening
as opposed to trying to judge themand tell a story about them now.

(01:06:56):
Once again, this does an awesomejob and probably has the most
obvious sample on the album, the

Kyle (01:07:05):
But god, such a good one.
Oh, A Janet classic.

Cliff (01:07:09):
Anytime, anyplace.

Kyle (01:07:11):
I saw somebody call this song a spiritual successor
to electric relaxation.
that's a little more like hollering honey.
This is a little more like oneon one, you know, his house
you're going to type thing.
But, same, but you're talking aboutgrowing a sexy hip hop to two great
examples spanning across decades.

Cliff (01:07:32):
Next song.
Good kid.

Kyle (01:07:34):
Yeah.
Then now you get into like the core
of the, of the story, the, the likelinchpin end of second, beginning of
third act, this is the climactic part.

Cliff (01:07:46):
Yes, and increasingly, on this track and the next one especially,
ones where we don't have to tellyou what he's saying too much.
If you want to know, youcan read them this time.
Like he's actually talking about the songin the song, but One fun little, for lack
of a better term, kind of Easter egg.
Again, he's always throwing alevel of detail extra on top,
if you'll go back and notice.

(01:08:07):
So this is, you know, name ofthe album is Good Kid, Mad City.
This song is Good Kid.
The next song is Mad City.
This song has no profanity in it.
Little details like that.
Where it's just like, if we cangive it one more element of making
the point of whatever story elementwe're talking about right now.
we're going to do it and goa little bit further into it.

(01:08:27):
And here is a, is our best way ofsaying this, that it's an interpolation
of, we live in Brooklyn or wouldyou describe it a different way?

Kyle (01:08:36):
Yeah, I think it's an interpolate.
I'm thinking of that, uh, that luxuryguy that is always talking about, is
this a sampler or an interpolation?
Pharrell produced this one.
He is singing theinterpolation of Roy Ayers.
We live in Brooklyn, baby Which I thinkis an interesting choice because that's
another super place based place mindedsong Uh, and the the sort of charge in

(01:08:59):
that one is our time is now It is nowand future minded so May you know easy
to speculate hard to know maybe a littlebit of a like Toss off thing, but uh,
Roy Ayers, I think cosmically very muchgoing for the same thing as a Kendrick.

(01:09:20):
Roy Ayers we also invoked onthe Erykah Badu episode because
he has featured on a song.
And certainly everybody lovesthe sunshine being like a, a big
staple of the Black experience.
Roy Ayer is another great rabbithole used to great effect here.

Cliff (01:09:39):
We're eventually going to need a meme that's like Pharrell mentioned.
That's kind of like turning into our, uh,he's, he's one of the top three characters
that we talked about that we talkabout that we haven't talked about yet.

Kyle (01:09:52):
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
The Toondig Cinematic Universe is kindof turning into like that Simpsons poster
with all the little minor characters.
he's definitely up near the front.
Ha

Cliff (01:10:03):
You make a song, says we're running on the top of a cop car,
Cliff and Kyle are gonna be fans, so.

Kyle (01:10:09):
Ah.

Cliff (01:10:10):
So out of Good Kid and into Mad City, for what it's worth, if
you are following along with this,uh, MCU ass saga in order going
through Good Kid and Mad City isgoing to dump you out before Money
Tree Swimming Pool and Sing About Me.
So you'll have a little bit offun order to go in, uh, if you
want to follow it that way.

(01:10:31):
But.
Mainly, I think, the thing worth pointingout on this one is all the samples, yeah?

Kyle (01:10:37):
13 of them by who sampled's count and because it is essentially two songs
you have The kind of more soul partbb king's change and chains and things
Uh, and then there's a five stair stepssample or portion of a sample, but then
there's like a a lot of almost feels likekendrick His personal Rushmore type thing

(01:11:00):
because there's samples or interpolationsof Kanye of Ice Cube of orangey and
eight dogs regulate of reset by outcastsfor by big boy from speaker box and
a lot of other little pieces as well.
probably more important thanthat nugget, though, is that M.
C.
Eight.
Is on this as a feature.

(01:11:22):
And I think of like all the LApeople that he could have put on
this, especially with access to Dre.
He could have had Snoop on this.
He could have had Cube on this.
He chose like a more authenticto the story type of character.
MCA was 159th Street Compton Crip.
He was in the group Compton's Most Wanted.

(01:11:43):
He was the de facto leaderof that group of MCs.
probably most notably playedAWACS in Menace to Society in 93.
He extended that cred by playing acharacter called Ryder in GTA San Andreas.
Which was all about gang factions.
And there was a content most wantedsong on one of those radio stations.

(01:12:06):
He had a notorious and longstandingbeef with LA's DJ quick.
So like, I don't know that it's fairto call him the sunny barger of the
Crips, but he's a little bit of a,there's a little bit of an analog
there because he's a pop culture figurewho represents authentic gang life.
In South Central LA.
I mean, he's also justa, just a good ass MC.

(01:12:29):
He's nice.
And so when you're talking aboutmad city, I think it was a, it was
a surgical choice to have MC eightof all the people he could have had.
Uh, gotta be real, gotta be raw,gotta be somebody who can really
tell the story authentically.

Cliff (01:12:49):
I also like that you mentioned that, he's nice.
Nice people get fuckin promo'd on Toondig.
Bring

Kyle (01:12:54):
I meant like he's nice on the mic, but yeah, I, I think by all accounts he
seems like, uh, he seems like a nice dude.
He's made it this far.

Cliff (01:13:02):
Yep.
Alright, next up, another one that I love.
Swimming pools.
Drink.
Why do I love it?
I love it cause it's a

Kyle (01:13:09):
Known alcoholic Cliff Seal, that's why.

Cliff (01:13:12):
Yup.
Why

Kyle (01:13:14):
Cliff Seal.

Cliff (01:13:15):
a song that sounds like a drink party drink song.
That's mostly about, Hey, drinkis not so good for you song.
I like that a lot.
It's also got a killer hook.
It's awesome.
This is the number one or the firstsingle off of this record at all.
Did a pretty good job, I think of.
Hinting at the subversion thatwould come through the rest

(01:13:37):
of the songs on this record.
But in Kendrick's words, quote, I wantedto do something that's universal to
everybody, but still true to myself.
And what better way to make somethinguniversal than to speak about drinking?
Um, but then he goes on to talk aboutbasically that drinking was a big
part of growing up, uh, in his family.
A lot of people drank, uh, and he wasbasically saying either you're casually

(01:14:00):
drinking or you're drunk and thoseare, you know, pretty much the only
two options, but since this is a lotof what the record was about, was his
experience of growing up in that timeand in that place with his family and all
the things that, impacted his story andwhat happened, alcohol played a huge part
about it, uh, and so that in a sense,uh, is a lot of what this particular one

(01:14:22):
is about, but it's also just a banger.

Kyle (01:14:25):
And part of that is the music, which I think you'd be right to
assume it's just a cool synth pattern.
that they found.
It is actually a sample of a groupcalled Chrome that was a cult late
70s, early 80s, post punk band,really mostly based in the Bay Area

(01:14:48):
that had like random obscure subsetssuccess in the UK and Germany.
Uh, and we're like, not, not reallyknown in their time, but the main
dude in that group who was known asDamon Edge, uh, was a graduate of
Inglewood High School and of Cal Arts.
Um, so there's a bit of like deepLA lore in that sample choice.

(01:15:11):
That song produced by T Minus who produceda number of big things and, and like
reinforces the Drake connection there,because he produced I'm On One, the DJ
Khaled track, and five songs On take care,uh, including a couple of the big hits.
So another very of the timechoice deployed to unusual effect.

Cliff (01:15:35):
And this otherwise fantastic song, by all accounts, would not be
complete without a skit at the endin which someone dies in a fucking
shooting, because that is how thisrecord is going to go every single time.
At the end of Swimming Pools, we get theskit that basically fills in the details

(01:15:57):
about, uh, at this point, Kendrick andcrew are going back for some payback after
basically Kendrick got jumped, tryingto go over to somebody's house, uh, and
then Dave turns up shot, man That againis another moment where up until then
if you've only been doing the surfacelevel or halfway attention paying You

(01:16:19):
start to get some dots forcibly connectedfor you That kind of forces you to pay
attention to how deep things must begoing on this record And I hope again
like to me there's 20 moments throughoutthis record that make you go Well, I've
got to listen to this again like soon

Kyle (01:16:36):
It's crazy that it comes so late in the record and it hits in such
an anguished way, the way he says,my brother got shot it's so pained.
And if you were just vibing out as youwould have been on that song, it, it
Grabs your gut and ties it in a knot andsends you into the, the third act, right.

(01:16:56):
You know, or the fourth side dependingon your context, which is sing about me.
I'm dying of thirst in all.
Its 12 minute glory.

Cliff (01:17:03):
yep into that end.
That has that next song sing aboutme i'm dying of thirst Has the
other line that I remember going.
Oh shit Like you justyou got me with this.
I need to do the whole thing again.
This is incredible it's going to soundright I think to verbalize it, but
that's fine in this song, you knowkendrick is telling You The perspective

(01:17:29):
of Dave's brother, which this isjust another good moment to remember
Kendrick like is connecting his owndots He cares about all this stuff.
He's telling from the perspective ofDave's brother Dave who just got shot then
also Keisha's sister who is a characterfrom section 80 That he's like pulling

(01:17:51):
back and referencing directly for as faras we know like the first time on this
record at all So he's kind of reachingback and connecting in general but then he
also gives his his own perspective in theother part of the song but when he's in
that first part and he's he's giving sortof dave's Perspective Dave is the person

(01:18:11):
it turns out who is saying, oh, I want youto sing about me, you know, and there's
just this line where he says, you know, ifI die before your album drops, I hope, and
then gunshots come in and the line ends.
And it's like, I Oh shit, okay, and thenin, in this sort of weird inverted version
of the Miles Davis, you never play thewrong note, it's the note afterwards.

(01:18:35):
The thing that made it so impactfulwasn't just that line, it was that Kendra
just picks right up and keeps going

Kyle (01:18:42):
Yeah.
It goes right back intothe hook or whatever.

Cliff (01:18:44):
Yeah, and it really pushes back into you the like, this is a
record about the hood, dude, someonedied, like this is about family and
friends and life and death and really,really serious shit that happens.
And the way that that not only shocks you,but that the story must go on immediately.

(01:19:05):
Um, it's just these little moments thataren't overthought, but that really drive
home the entire thing that this record istrying to do, um, that makes it not only
interesting, but like really impactful.

Kyle (01:19:18):
And then you have a similar thing with the second verse.
Where it's from the perspective ofKeisha's sister, and it slow fades out
as if to signify that it's waning inimportance and people are ceasing to
pay attention to the story and it'stragic in its own way, You know the that

(01:19:38):
old saying about two deaths when yourbody dies and the last time somebody
says your name uh, and he capturesboth of them in the two verses and
it's It's devastating like I talkedto multiple people About this record.
I talked to brandon.
I talked to elliot and I talked to acouple other folks and everybody said
I forgot how emotional this record mademe And it's interesting because it is

(01:20:03):
such a vibe record for so much of it.
And then when you studyit, it's so gripping.
And I think that's really what isat the core of the, the cinematic
quality of it is the story as ahuman story, it's an emotional story
and you meet these characters andyou get invested and then they're.
They're ripped from frame and in away that reminds you of every tragedy

(01:20:28):
that's ever happened in your life.
And I, I think I can say withconfidence, neither of us with all
the things that we've experiencedhave ever had anything on this level.
But you can certainly alsoconnect to the pain and the grief
that he's processing in this,

Cliff (01:20:44):
There is such a division between the portions and thoughts and perspectives
on the song that it is effectively.
Two different songs smashed together.
First of all each song portion Wasproduced by two different people but
even the even the music video itselfwhen released was actually split into

(01:21:07):
two totally different parts so Worthkeeping that in mind here, especially
again, if you're keeping score a littlebit with the, okay, that's interesting.
Why is it this way or that way?
Well, here's another thinker for you.
And then by the end of thisone, which again is the whole
album is emotionally heavy.
This song is probably the pinnacleof that emotional heaviness.

(01:21:33):
the length being a part of it for sure.
But by the time you get to the end ofthis one, Now you are hearing the prayer
that you heard at the beginning of therecord and you're finding out that you
had only heard like one of the tracks ofthe conversation thing that was actually
happening as a part of that prayer.
And it starts filling in something muchdeeper and richer for you after you've

(01:21:57):
made it through 12 minutes of a reallyintense song about what it means to
die and be alive at all to begin with.

Kyle (01:22:06):
just your casual hip hop there.

Cliff (01:22:10):
Well, don't roll over too soon because there's two more songs left to
go for some, for some terrible reason,

Kyle (01:22:17):
it does remind me of the part of Dark Side where they say, I'll
see you on the dark side of the moon.
It's got that same emotional arc.

Cliff (01:22:26):
for sure.

Kyle (01:22:27):
Let me not get choked up talking about fucking Pink Floyd.

Cliff (01:22:32):
You won't be too sad.
They just sold all their rights for 400million dollars to somebody else anyway.
Yeah, good

Kyle (01:22:37):
in all, we're just another brick in the wall.

Cliff (01:22:42):
Once again, they don't get to occupy space.
They're in the column with Drake now.
Okay, Roger Walters is an insane person.

Kyle (01:22:51):
But that just reminds me of when we took my brother to see Drake in Future.
Uh for his first concert Now i'mthinking about the floating pink hotline
bling balls that they had going upand down in the ceiling Being being
like minimalist pigs from animals

(01:23:12):
Oh my god.
Okay, I have a whole bit evolvingin my head where Drake and Roger
Waters are on tour together.
Oh

Cliff (01:23:27):
Give me some Kid Rockin Traps and you have a whole tour.
We're good to go.

Kyle (01:23:31):
my god, did you see that picture of Trapped performing for
like six people at a sports bar?

Cliff (01:23:36):
Oh no.

Kyle (01:23:38):
I long for the day where I see a picture like that of Drake.

Cliff (01:23:41):
They're headstrong.

Kyle (01:23:42):
Just, like
Nicely done.
Picture, okay, we'll get back intoit, but, uh, picture Drake performing
for seven people poolside at Mara Lago like Uncle Baby Billy.

Cliff (01:23:57):
Now that's, that's a good character analogy.
Thank you for that veryspecific one there.
Um, that's gonna help me a lot.

Kyle (01:24:06):
Yeah, Uncle Baby Billy naked in the outside bathtub is the Chris D'Elia
Drake crying in the shower a bit.
There's, there's an, and nowthere's two things you can smash

Cliff (01:24:15):
Yes.
Oh no, I am connecting way too manydots between those two at the moment.
next track on this record is Real,and this is the, um, as Kendrick
says, quote, That's the start of merecognizing that everything I was doing
throughout that day, it wasn't real.

(01:24:36):
And I, God bless me, I am not going totry to tell you what he means by that,
because he tells you that in the song.
But it is.
appreciably deeper than eitherit didn't exist or It wasn't me.
It is something different.
He is kind of defining a word inreal that I think is worth embracing

(01:25:01):
and encountering Uh in the way thathe tells it and thinking about what
real means and what your versionof real might be for yourself I
realized in Reading those lyrics that

Kyle (01:25:15):
Realize, realize, realize.

Cliff (01:25:20):
Now you go ahead.
That's your segue.
You go ahead.

Kyle (01:25:24):
I don't have a seg.
I don't have a segue from that.
No one should have a segue from that.
Remember getting folded notes pastyou and when you were 14 or whatever.
That's the last time Iremember seeing that.
Or an aim away message.
Eject, eject, eject.
Back to the record.
Mm-Hmm.

Cliff (01:25:43):
No, I didn't get notes.
My, I was asleep on the desk.
It is a cool song and momentto draw out once again.
Uh, I mean, in case it's not clearthat a lot of this stuff is intentional
throughout the record through manydifferent facets of the music, then
I don't know what to tell you, buthere you can definitely see like

(01:26:04):
Kyle, you mentioned early on in thisepisode, the way that he would have
a particular kind of vocal range,sharpness, intensity, all that stuff.
Well, by the time you get toreal, you realize that he.
Has either been doing something like abit the whole time is doing a bit now
or is capable of just Existing acrossa spectrum of vocal styles that are

(01:26:28):
pretty impressive Because on this trackwhen he's trying to talk about what
real means relative to his own lifeLike he's the his voice is different.
It's lower.
It's controlled and generally speaking,he sounds older You And it doesn't
sound nearly as urgent or frantic asthe songs that have come before it.

(01:26:49):
And finally, finale,we finally do have Dr.
Dre.
You mentioned earlier he had accessso he could have done anything.
Well, this is what he did.
Last track is Dr.
Dre produced

Kyle (01:27:02):
The song Mega Megalopolis from the Musical Megalopolis, where the city
is a character, ladies and gentlemen.
Content concrete jungle wheredreams are made of, that's the one.
Right,

Cliff (01:27:16):
but this is the other song I mentioned on, uh, Bitch Don't Kill
My Vibe that there's only two momentswhere he steps out of the character
of basically being himself at thetime, uh, and this is the other one.
It's basically an epilogue ofsorts and sort of like, Present day
perspective back on the story thathe's been telling this entire time.

(01:27:36):
But he mentioned that he, he wrotethe lyrics the day he met Dre.
Uh, he got really easily inspired and itwas the first studio session he had with
Dre and it's the last song on the albumfor a reason, even though it's the first
song that he did with Dre and he feltlike it was the start of his new life.
Which, if I'm recording a song with Dr.
Dre, that would probably mark thebeginning of my new life as well.

(01:28:00):
So that makes sense.

Kyle (01:28:02):
Interesting.
There's so much reference to water andbaptism and, and rebirth in that sense.
I'm not trying to read too muchinto that, but I just really like
his use of that sort of imagery.
Yeah.

Cliff (01:28:20):
Well, I mean, I'm sure we'll talk about this soon too, but, we are
focusing in and honing in on a reallyparticular record from Kendrick,
uh, but the idea of using long termmetaphors really well, especially things
like water that have crossover with,um, deep, religion and spirituality
and history and things like that.

(01:28:41):
Yeah, like he would, uh, hewould do that quite a bit.
So we can save some of that discussionfor our, uh, 18 hour episode of all of the
other albums that he's done since then.
But even just, just bringing it backsince we've mentioned this so many times,
by the end of Compton he's telling hismom that he'll be back in 15 minutes.

(01:29:02):
Referencing the phone call that you hearin the first track and then throughout
where he's borrowing his mom's car toostensibly make a booty call and ends
up in the middle of this storylinethat becomes Good Cat and Mad City.
it is, yeah.

Kyle (01:29:24):
I'm now also picturing, you know, like the, at the end of the coming
of age movies where they do a montageand they stop on a still frame of
each character and then have like thegolden text of what happened to them.
Kenny Duckworth never didget his damn dominoes.

Cliff (01:29:43):
I am First of all, glad that we just went through all of that
to just draw out maybe even the top5 percent of the stuff that's like
available to you if you give a shit

Kyle (01:29:53):
For the record, that's how much we love this record because As
a rule, we would never, we never wantto go track by track on a record.
And this I would borderline say demands it

Cliff (01:30:06):
If you want to go back and listen to very early Toondake
episodes, you can hear us mentallyanguishing with the idea of whether
we should go track by track or not.
Uh, and so yeah, to your pointby this, by this time we have
pulled up around the, yeah, wedon't ever really need to do that.
And yet.
We had to do some ofit here, but yeah, uh,

Kyle (01:30:23):
over under on the next time we do that 20, 25 episodes.

Cliff (01:30:27):
well, this was like a, uh, I have the sincere privilege of giving
like public talks pretty often.
Uh, and one of the things I do nowis I bring, uh, I usually bring like
a transcript of what I want to sayactually, even though I spent a lot
of years just, you know, doing thetraditional here is a slide, let me
try to remember what to say thing.

(01:30:48):
And I love talking to people about itbecause You know, they're like, are you,
like, worried you'll forget what to say?
No.
No.
No.
Not at all.
This is a framework to keepme from talking for seven
hours to you about some shit.
Okay?
And so, similarly, track by track on thisone kept us from talking about anything.

(01:31:09):
every hair brain thing that's come upbetween us and the last 12 plus years of
talking about this record in particular.

Kyle (01:31:16):
If I could summarize cliff brain in a phrase, it would be remember too much.

Cliff (01:31:24):
I can only sift through all the thoughts faster, so let's do the most
fun part of this turn in general though.
Cause I, if it's okay with youwant to, an exercise that I
think we can just kind of skip.
We usually talk about like whatto focus on and isolate when

Kyle (01:31:39):
We just gave you 45 minutes of that

Cliff (01:31:41):
please.
Okay.
So yeah, if you're curious, if youreally need to go on advanced mode,
you can go find this album in aplaylist in chronological order and
listen to it that way if you want to.
Short of that stuff, what we'd ratherdo is spend the rest of our time here
telling you literally infinite directionsto go in that will all be cool.

(01:32:03):
should we start?

Kyle (01:32:04):
my god how do I avoid talking for a half hour about this as my brain
shoots off like a box of fireworks?
well I think first and most notably,it bears calling out that if Kendrick
rabbit hole because he goes on athree album run that starts with

(01:32:25):
this that I would put up against.
Any artist discography, hip hop orotherwise, you know, you talk about
those first three tribe records.
You talk about the four outcasts records.
You talk about God, the four Zeppelinrecords the first seven Sabbath record.
Like this is, this is, you know, Pantheonstaying at a high level, the highest

(01:32:46):
possible high level for a very long time.
In addition to that, though, along theway, and especially between the fame
of Good Kid and a Butterfly a few yearslater, he went on a run of Historic
features the big one being the controlverse, which you'll just see Referred to

(01:33:08):
as the control verse in the sphere andthat's its own rabbit hole and story But
that's what big sean and jay electronicahe killed on one train, which was like
a friendly frenemy Competitive possecut on the second A$ AP Rocky record.
He's on Lemonade, one of the mostimportant records of the 2010s.

(01:33:31):
He's on a damn TaylorSwift song, which is crazy.
The song Bad Blood.
He's on the remix to Mask Off.
Which is a huge momentof the decade rap wise.
He's on all of his heroes records.
He's on the the tribe return record.
He's on an Eminem record.
He's on Dre's record Compton.

(01:33:52):
He's on a Wayne record and itgoes on and on and on, you know,
Isaiah Rashad, blah, blah, blah.
He's on tons of stuff.
But every time he appears, it's like,this is easy to forget if you weren't in
the moment, but when Ludacris showed upon guest versus for a run there in the
early two thousands and killed everybody.
on their song.
Kendrick does that, but likeon pop crossover stuff too.

(01:34:16):
think the other thing to like take withyou as you move forward with Kendrick's
catalog is noticing the vulnerabilitiesand imperfections that he is so adamant
about putting on display, like especiallywhen you get all the way to Mr.
Morale.
He's not trying to be a savioror the hip hop guy or whatever.
He's just a, a human being trying tobe real in a beautiful and poetic way.

Cliff (01:34:39):
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.

Kyle (01:34:48):
according to some moving goalposts.
But also in, in hip hop where there's somuch of a code where you have to behave
a certain way to be in the Pantheon.
He shows so much dimension Ithink that's really worth lauding.
And it's also just a great reminder inyour own life that outside narratives
flatten people and everyone's a perfect,and frankly, everyone's kind of a piece

(01:35:11):
of shit but to really, truly love humanityand to have music remind us what human
beings are capable of at their best.
You to quote our man ProjectPat, gotta take the good with
the bad, smile with the sad.
And Kendrick gives it all to you,and you should appreciate the
ugliness, some of which belongs tohim and some of which belongs to

(01:35:33):
the world from which he was born.
But it's just a good reminderthat everybody culturally
is having a tough time with.
Right now.
So I'm, I'm really grateful for that.
And he himself said at the end ofthe day, my success is because people
perceive me as a human being rather thanan action figure that can't be touched.
And that's the thing Ireally appreciate about him.
What else?
more musical stuff.

(01:35:54):
What's on your mind?

Cliff (01:35:55):
I'm going to let you take me in a direction but I just
want to make sure it's noted.
Like I think we were already believersin the traditional sense but we went to
one music fest last year and saw Kendrickand like that shit was spiritual, man.
I had a good hip hop show in Atlanta isa good hip hop show in Atlanta for sure.

(01:36:16):
But like, that was, I was on anotherlevel and, uh, re reinforced to me the
idea that, uh, you don't necessarilyneed to be a hip hop head to get rewarded
going deep into an artist catalog here.
And that's definitely true for Kendrick.
Everything you said abouthis other albums, especially
were true for me as well.
Yep.

Kyle (01:36:39):
that like, how do so many, there were like 80, 000 people in Piedmont
Park and it was like, how do you.
On just a raw word count alone.
How did this many peopleknow this many words?

Cliff (01:36:51):
It sounded so good.

Kyle (01:36:52):
Memorize at a bone deep level.
I'm still stunned by it to this day.
It'd be like, it felt a little bit tome like, If Coltrane was going to do
a Love Supreme in the park and peoplecould sing along with the melody
lines for the whole record, we'rejust like, how are you following this?
There's so much to it.

(01:37:13):
Truly outstanding.
That like a like an all time livemusic pinnacle moment and I'm glad
that we got to share it Sittingunder a tree in piedmont park where
the allman brothers got their start

Cliff (01:37:24):
Yep.
My favorite musical moments arerarely happening in 80, 000 person
crowds and parks these days, so

Kyle (01:37:31):
I will say yeah, I I walked to the uber that night thinking i'm so glad
I did that I don't want to be aroundthat many people again for a long time,

Cliff (01:37:41):
Cumulatively, ever.
Thank you.

Kyle (01:37:44):
Right.
Yeah, i've exceeded the quota vastlyand then I saw travel ron at lalapalooza
and was like that is my nightmare Yep

Cliff (01:37:52):
Alright, so, uh, maybe let me throw this tennis ball in a direction and
I'll see if you like chasing it this way.
Like, so, Kamasi Washington issomebody who came more clearly
into my purview thanks to Kendrick.
mean he has some associationwith, with the West Coast, yeah?

Kyle (01:38:07):
Yeah, yeah.
Kumasi, Washington, another greatlive experience that we shared.
Some of the only jazzI've seen standing up.
But damn, he's good.
Oh, we've seen him twice now, haven't we?
We saw him, we saw himseeded that second time.
God, he's so good.
Yeah, there's, there's a groupcolloquially referred to as the Wu
Tang of Jazz, the West Coast Get DownCollective Kumasi being part of that,

(01:38:33):
but really anchored by the cousinsknown as Thundercat and Terrace Martin.
Also I would count BrandonColeman on the keys.
As another favorite from thatgroup of, I don't know, I
want to say like 10, 12 cats.
Really it's been like them and bad, bad,not good that have brought modern jazz

(01:38:55):
to the four as a popular format and havegone totally different directions with it.
But they've maintained such a core of likereally high integrity, thought provoking
music, and they're so fucking good.
Yeah.
At playing music, everyone in that crew.
Kamasi Washington is reallyjust outstanding in person.

(01:39:16):
And like Thundercat, you can watchany 10 second clip of him playing a
bass and you're just like, how doesthe human mind even begin to approach?
Where do you even learnto make a bass like that?
It's the step before that New ZZTop bassist bass, the like 17 string
smash 3 djent guitars together thing.

(01:39:37):
Thundercat thrives on absurdity,but he's, he's one of the greatest.
musical figures of the 21stcentury, I would argue as well.
And you know, those tentacles extend tothings like Flying Lotus and Brain Feeder
to Mac Miller, May He Rest In Peace,to, they've worked with like George
Duke and Stevie Wonder Thundercat playedbass in Suicidal Tendencies for a little

(01:39:58):
while, I, I only recently learned, whichis the coolest shit I've ever heard.
They've had so many good.
People cycle through that bandin the past handful of years
and are still really cooking.
Uh, and then like Zach Fox, whois really funny, but it's also
a tremendously good artist ofmultiple disciplines in their orbit.

(01:40:20):
Also fun to know about Thundercathis main like teacher in school, his
music teacher co wrote let it whip.
By the Daz band and his daddrummed for the Temptations of
the Supremes and Gladys Knight.
And he was mentored into a solo careerby Erykah Badu and by Flying Lotus.
So like, I think the highestpossible pedigree of musicality

(01:40:42):
happening right now is those guys.
It, almost everything good that's happenedin the last five to 10 years is no more
than three degrees away from Thundercat.

Cliff (01:40:52):
Feels like the spiritual successor to the Soulquarians.
Our, our best aversion thatwe could have these days.

Kyle (01:40:59):
100%.
I love that analogy.
Thank you.
And I love that you invoke theSoulquarians because this just
reminded me of the pure childlikejoy of hip hop as an art form.

Cliff (01:41:11):
Yep.

Kyle (01:41:12):
And like, I love that shit.
I'm getting emotional thinking about itright now because I, I don't, you know,
as a kid that grew up on rock and theblues and other forms, I don't know.
I have a single creative form inany medium that has enriched my
life and taught me as much aboutthe history of the place that I
grew up in as much as hip hop did.

(01:41:34):
So like studying the music and the cultureas a lifelong practice and a reward.
And as we've learned through thispodcast, the joy comes from the
discipline and the repetition of study.
And nowhere is that more true thanhip hop, the sampling aspect, the
MCing aspect, the reflection of.
Of not only of history, but of thetimes and context they exist in.

(01:41:57):
Hip hop is like capital I important,especially if you're an American
of any race or ethnicity or gender.
And it's just good.
It just like, it's true soul food.
And so the same way a few episodesago, we were like, you know, botch
may not be your shit, but if there'sone heavy record you're ever going to
listen to, please make it this one.
Just becoming a student of hip hop andfinding the joy in it is one going to make

(01:42:21):
you love music more in a number of ways.
And two is going to give you so manypoints of connection with other people.
Because it, it has createdso much history and so many
artifacts in such a short time.
And it's also still today,the most right now music.
There is.
And obviously nobody in theworld is doing it better and
more completely than Kendrick.

Cliff (01:42:43):
I was just reflecting that listening to this record makes me
want to listen to more hip hop.
So, um, yeah.
Yeah.

Kyle (01:42:48):
Yeah,

Cliff (01:42:48):
more or less what you're pointing out here.
And I, I love our two differentdegrees of said hip hop scholarship,
uh, and it has benefited us bothrespectively to those degrees.
I think it's really cool to bekind of just two different people
who can say there are multipleways to engage with hip hop.

(01:43:09):
Especially that one genre of music thatgave us so much, especially historically,
this just draws it out again.
I always appreciate that about us.

Kyle (01:43:17):
I agree, man.
It and thinking about in the contextof a very special form like hip hop,
why this record is so important in hiphop and beyond is one again, it is has
become important almost immediatelyin recognition of its quality,

(01:43:37):
uh, and reflection of its context.
In a time of great culturalacceleration, things are moving faster.
It's harder to appreciate thingsor think things are going to last.
Everything's a fast fashion world,but this one has just stuck.
It stuck right away andhas continued to stick.
So I think thinking abouthow time is moving faster.

(01:43:58):
But things that transcend timeare more important as a result,
makes this record really important.
So appreciating the, the lightningin a bottle, not only of this record,
but of Kendrick as a generationalartist and wanting to strive for more
timeless things and reset culture inour own lives whenever we possibly can.
Just, and you can do that in likesmall ways in the day to day.

(01:44:20):
Like if some bullshit happens, juststopping the momentum of the moment.
And saying like, nope I bristledagainst that and I want to represent
not that anti that in my own life.
That's a small way to be like Kendrickin, in the art that is your life.
and like you said, it gives me hopethat records like this can exist

(01:44:41):
now in the shitty ass internetage gives me hope that it's still
possible to make something timeless.
If and only if you diligently committo something transcendent and you
stay deeply true to yourself in theprocess, vulnerabilities and all.