Like many a white suburban kid, I’ve had a passing fascination with hip hop. I was a pretty big fan of Kanye West until he went off the rails. I know every word of “Rapper’s Delight.” I have a huge appreciation for old school acts like Public Enemy and Naughty By Nature. I’ve even got my own unfinished Jay-Z mashup album.
But when Kendrick Lamar came on the scene, I completely lost track of what was going on in the world of hip hop.
A lot of that disorientation came from this record, an eighty-minute monster filled with the densest verses around. But a few weeks ago, I decided to dive into it, and I can’t escape its grasp.