Reacting to My good kid m.A.A.d city Review 10 Years Later

hey hi and hello everyone anthony fantano here internet's busiest music nerd i hope you're doing well it's time for a reaction to a classic review that i did uh it'll be this fall that this uh coverage that i did of kendrick lamar's good kid mad city one of my most popular videos on my main channel will be 10 years old a whole decade old look at me back then smiling with my rectangle glasses looking young looking fresh looking excited wearing the death grip shirt that don't fit me no more yes i mean while i loved this record at the time i still love this record to this day uh i want to go over my original thoughts on it and just kind of see how they may have evolved over the years i want to see if this review still like you know stands up to criticism does this criticism stand up to my criticism ten years down the road to be honest like i remember that i loved the lp obviously remember that i gave it a nine but i don't remember a lot of what i brought up or mentioned in my process here so it'll be interesting again going over this i'm looking at my records i'm already seeing like the binders of a few albums that i don't own anymore i think i may have sold at some point so that's given me some nostalgic feels this video was also shot in my old apartment too that was depicted in the death grips money store uh video though i had decided upon a different orientation of like the camera and the shelf at this point nailed it and you know since i nailed it i have stuck with it don't know what i'm laughing about off the bat here but uh let's uh look at this giggly review i will say i'm very surprised that my coverage of this album uh was just 11 minutes and 37 seconds that is it uh that's it for the review i feel like a 2015-2016 anthony would have easily done a 20-minute review on this record i feel like i have more than 11 minutes of material on this record at this point hi everyone anthony fantano here thank you for watching internet's busiest music nerd hey he's right thank you for watching and it's time for a review kendrick lamar good kid mad city this dude is a compton rapper this is his sophomore full-length album the follow-up to last year's section 80 which is one of my favorite hip-hop albums of 2011 and it's a conscious hip-hop album that does not sacrifice great flows production catchy hooks stellar wordplay and personality in the process of developing a very relevant and socially aware message and it does this through a series of short stories in in the tracks lyrics that kind of come together thematically by the end of the album though kendrick has a lot of great qualities as a rapper what i thought was so awesome about section 80 is how conceptual the album was and that was a characteristic about him and his music that i just was hoping he would not let go of as he kind of went into later albums so far i will say i don't have a whole lot to add i haven't jumped into like you know the meat of the review yet in terms of goodkid mad city but as far as like the lead up explaining my feelings on the last record explaining sort of what i was hoping for what i was anticipating for the new record um not only am i fine with this uh still to this day but this is like very much still how i format a lot of the reviews now i'm actually really happy to say that being conceptual is one of the artistic personality traits of kendrick that has gotten stronger there are a good handful of tracks from this album that had been released before the release of this lp including swimming pools backseat freestyle compton the art of peer pressure as well but none of it really makes total sense until the entire album is being listened to from beginning to end just kind of standing back getting a glimpse of the bigger picture of things this is true and a lot of people totally have erased this from their [ __ ] memories that not every single in the lead-up to good kid mad city was super well received especially like you know stuff such as backseat freestyle where i i think some fans kind of like you know we're almost like losing faith like oh no it's not like a conscious song but it's like it's not until you hear the whole record that you realize all these songs are a part of a story some of the reception in the lead up was a little mixed but only because fans didn't have the full picture yet and honestly like to be a part of that moment and be a part of an audience that didn't necessarily expect this level of narrative and conceptuality from kendrick was really something was really something special because now like even if you're a newer fan of kendrick lamar his talent and his pedigree his mo is so well established no matter what he does you're gonna go into a new kendrick project looking for some kind of huge overarching concept that pulls everything together some kind of you know narrative is it uh obvious is it esoteric is it secret is it lurking in the shadows again in retrospect it was really something to go into this lp just not expecting this level of storytelling and being totally uh taken aback by it because you know you were just kind of off your guard and just blown away by uh the effort and the detail that was put into this thing as far as lyrics on this lp go they're just on point track after track after track none of the flows really feel elementary or anything like that and though some songs may feel a little more shallow on the surface than others it may depend on the kind of character that that kendrick is playing on the song for example the track backseat freestyle you've got kendrick kind of rapping very braggadociously over this banger beat about his growing as big as the eiffel tower it is just completely over the top ridiculous if you're familiar with this kid's music it's just really out of character for him but if you look into the voicemail messages occurring after and before the track and the music that comes before and after the track it becomes apparent that kendrick right now is in the back seat of a car chilling with his friends just kind of being as loud and obnoxious as as they are as they're all hanging out together right after backseat freestyle you get the track the art of peer pressure which is kind of like an internal monologue with kendrick where yeah he's hanging out with his friends and he's having you know this good time on the outside but in fact he's kind of doing all this stuff that is out of character for him whether it be doing drugs running up on people robbing houses things he wouldn't normally find himself doing if he wasn't hanging out with people who see themselves successfully living this gangster lifestyle i don't really take issue with anything that i'm saying here in the general sense but maybe that's the problem it's a little too general in a way i think in retrospect i would have liked to have gone back and spoke about like what exactly makes kendrick's flows his lyrics so good on these tracks in terms of like the scenarios the settings that he's describing and painting and what makes the production hit so hard as well i mean you know obviously again i'm kind of explaining the point of the tracks in a macro sense but um there are so many great amazing finer nuanced micro details to this lp as well that i'm not diving into as closely as i could at this point anyway i also think like i would have had better wording if i had more experience and more understanding of the ways in which things like stereotypes and systematic racism and poverty like you know also play in a larger sense into a lot of what you know is happening on this lp conceptually good kid mad city is pretty much a story of love lust violence the violence that you're surrounded with kind of sucking you in the violence you're surrounded with tearing your family apart and finally the realization of where a violent path can kind of bring you in life which is where a song like real comes in toward the end of this lp and pretty much every track on this album adds to that narrative like the track poetic justice which is kind of like a love song kendrick sees himself in like this love fantasy with this girl that's mentioned toward the beginning of the album sharane but at the end of the track kendrick ends up getting jumped by two cousins of hers at that moment kendra kind of sees himself violently snapped back into a harsh reality after seeing hey you know like living this life isn't really so bad things are going pretty well i'm in love i see money coming my way which is kind of another fantasy kendrick sees himself in the midst of on the track money trees right before poetic justice obviously it was necessary to add this in text i wish i said this more explicitly it's it's funny i'm talking a lot at this point in the review and i do tend to talk uh i can be very long-winded but i feel like i'm saying a lot but i'm not getting to the point as succinctly as i possibly could and still to this day i have an issue with this but the point being like kendrick is laying out very clearly a two-path option here i could continue living in this fantasy that is intoxicating risky uh most likely will lead to a bad outcome those bad outcomes are very much spelled out blatantly and boldly through the death of friends toward the end of the lp i could continue on this path or i could opt for something better after these two songs it's two of the grittiest tracks on this entire lp good kid and mad city that become really sobering the first of which kendrick is talking about the death of his uncle he's talking about racial profiling for police officers and the track mad city takes a look at that same violence but from more of a retrospective angle with kendrick kind of rapping about a younger version of himself and on that track he actually takes a completely different inflection with his voice rapping where his voice is cracking like this whether it's from emotion or maybe even puberty if he's trying to be a younger version of himself either way it's just really chilling this is actually something that before i started watching this i knew his kind of dogged me a little bit about this video i'm not doing enough to praise kendrick's technical skill and ability as a rapper and when i say that i don't necessarily mean it in the sense that oh he's just like got such amazing rhythm and uh you know really really cool uh uh inventive flow ideas no i mean his ability to capture a certain mood with a voice and a delivery and a certain kind of inflection really enhances i mean just imagine this record of kendrick kind of flatly in a monotone way just delivered every single one of these verses he wouldn't transport you to a different time place mentality in the way that he does if not for his ability to switch up his inflections so boldly and so wildly that he sounds like you know several different people across this record you know it's it's not just his ability to write down a story but deliver it to you in a way where it just instantaneously brings you to a time a place a frame of mind for him you do get some self-aware spots on this album where you have kendra kind of rapping about his current self outside of this storyline like [ __ ] don't kill my vibe where he's kind of rapping about his fame and sort of where he sees his artistic vision going as he gets more attention on his music and sort of how his message is ultimately what's going to be most important to him and the song sing about me is really one of the most interesting songs i've ever heard where a rapper is is literally writing about his art and his career in such a way where it's impacting the people who listen to it or the people he raps about i mean he literally does verses on this song referencing people who kind of were inspirations for music on this album and his previous lp2 in a way the song is kind of like another layer of narrative to this album itself it's kind of like an epilogue in a way now as far as the production goes on this lp it is sonically inconsistent but i do think overall it's great but the reason i say sonically inconsistent is that you know the sounds on this lp change up as much as the scenes and just sort of the moods of these tracks do you know that the sounds most definitely fit the story kendrick is trying to tell her where he is in the progression of this tale the opening track charade is just really nocturnal it's really dark and it's completely fitting for what kind of seems to be a night drive to his girlfriend's house you know going to meet her talking about being with her what brought him up until this point and basically the point at which he is about to get jumped and then it just kind of cuts but why is it fitting anthony talk about some of the instrumental details anthony what's wrong with you anthony i believe the track swimming pools was the first to drop from this lp it's a song i wasn't totally hot on at first but it has totally grown on me it's got kind of a synthetic vibe to it synthetic drums synthetic keyboards and there are a lot of trap style hi-hats going out throughout the track there was a point around this time in uh uh you know the the needle drops review history where i was i was just saying a lot of trap flavored hi-hats trap style hi-hats it almost became like a meme in the comments for kendrick to throw out a single like this that had more of a trendy sound at least for me at the time uh did feel like okay you know like where where is this going but again you know the beauty of the chorus and uh hearing the narrative kind of play out within the grander scheme of the record did warm me up to the song uh quite a bit also keep in mind like you know this was at a point where trap music's popularity it's growing popularity and some of the artists that still represented it uh it's it's explosion explosivity into the mainstream like waka flock of flame were very much controversial um even kanye and jay-z when they originally came out with ham prior to the release of watch the throne was a very controversial single among a lot of fans because that there was a negative reaction to the more trap influenced kind of lex luger direction stylistically that that song went into it feels really smooth kind of watery like you could dive into it just like the metaphorical swimming pool full of alcohol that kendrick is rapping about that you know people figuratively use to kind of douse their pain douse their sorrows basically deal with this terrible situation surrounding them in a really unhealthy way there's a lot of themes of escapism on this record and in so many ways kind of continuing on this more negative path that kendrick is tempted by also comes with a note of escapism too but you know in a way he not only opts for positivity but also you know reality uh as well because to continue assuming that the way things are going is viable would be a lie a lie to himself what i love about this lp is like the beats kendrick is very careful about placing certain people in certain places so that it works j-rock isn't a perfect spot on this album dre is placed perfectly on this lp2 with the track compton of course and even drake finds himself fitting nicely into this album i mean stylistically drake and kendrick are two very different artists and yet drake fits like a glove into the love song on this album kendrick really kind of like nailed it in terms of in terms of that placement you know you really have to admire and love when an artist doesn't just have features on just be like yeah this is this is my feature it's a cool crossover it's uh popular it's trendy it's it's nice or you know i'm similar to this artist so we're just going to vibe together on a track there's nothing wrong with that inherently but you know when an artist sort of picks out a song and grabs a feature that is going to make them shine that is going to play to their strengths and overall play to the strength of the song that you're crafting and creating that that helps make a special moment and i think uh kendrick was really effectively doing that even little moments that are still like just [ __ ] legendary and totally essential to this record to this day like you know cue with the yak yak yak yak i have to admit that this lp is a nice improvement hook wise over what i heard on section 80. just to kind of like put that critique in in perspective a little bit um yeah there are some pretty weak ass courses on section 80 but the vast majority of uh the courses on that record were you know and still are very good and when i say it's sort of like a weak point for him it's only relative because you know if we're looking at kendrick like an rpg character like uh all of his uh characteristics are uh nearly maxed the [ __ ] out the song real where you know kind of i'm really really real yeah i'm still not like you know that's that's not my favorite chorus on the record to uh this day but still you know i very much do respect uh the concept and just uh how that song plays into the storytelling of the record overall i still think it's a you know a special moment on a very special record but uh there you go the vocal looks on that track do sound a little thrown together like i i think musically something better could have fit in there uh but you know that's that's my one major issue with some of the writing on the lp and there are moments where kendrick is singing on here in this really weird inflection it's kind of robotic and while it did hit me as being pretty strange at first it really grew on me pretty heavy by my third or fourth listen to them and it's and it's only grown on me more since you know having heard this album and uh kendrick's inflections and uh styles of delivery have only gotten wilder and bolder and more versatile and more out there i mean you know going from here to range brothers is kind of night and day like you know imagine 2012 kendrick going straight from section 80 to range brothers i i don't know if uh everybody could [ __ ] handle that i'm pretty much feeling a light to decent nine okay um a couple more things i again pretty much agree with the score if not like a decent to strong nine maybe i'm a little hotter on the record um and it's obviously like you know gonna go down as a total and complete [ __ ] classic but i i wish i um went more into how the narrative on the album ties up um i didn't really talk too much about like kendrick making that final choice that final decision to go in a positive direction and why he does that i'm not really kind of going over the major narrative points that kind of drove the decisions in the end in terms of like uh his friends and the revenge part and the you know old woman uh who approaches them and the uh you know religiosity element as well surprised i didn't really go uh deeply into that i wish i went more into the production i wish i went more into some of the instrumental elements that made the beats unique and stand out and contrast from each other so strongly i wish i went over the major points of the narrative and even elements of the narrative's progression that um you know may be true to life you know maybe kendrick's actual experience but in terms of like how they are rolled out and displayed don't make complete sense like you know the fact that him and his friends are so like you know into this idea of getting revenge so quickly and then you know this old woman with a prayer just kind of like changes their minds instantaneously and it's done it's over you know we're saved there's obviously like total merit to uh things such as spirituality and religion uh saving people and changing people's lives you know i don't doubt that at all but the thing is you know that ending and that change happens very quickly and very very abruptly uh to the point where it's like wow it's like you know all of this you know we we have this whole ocean this whole mountain of everything pushing kendrick in this one direction and then after all of that like this very tiny small surprise moment just like completely flips the script as somebody who knows a lot of you know very religious people i i understand and i have to believe that there's there's got to be like more depth to it than that but yeah you know i mean uh obviously very positive coverage of the album that i i just wish was a bit more uh thorough in retrospect let me know in the comments what you thought of uh my review my review of the review and how is this album held up for you over the years are you somebody who's been listening to it since 2012 or did you come into this album uh more recently what were your original thoughts on the lp and how have they evolved over the years over here next to my head it's another video you can check out hit that up or the link to subscribe to the channel anthony fantano kendrick lamar goodkid mad city forever

Channel: fantano

Views: 587,116

Keywords: music, anthony fantano, needle drop, kendrick lamar, kdot, gkmc, good kid mad city, album, classic, rap, hip hop, 10 year, anniversary, decade, retrospective, reaction, review, story, lyrics

Id: M_gTxSI4SoY

Length: 21min 24sec (1284 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 18 2022