One of these days he’s going to drop a new album out of nowhere, and we’ll see what new twists and turns his story will take. It would seem that, someday sooner than later, we’ll hear from Lamar again.
He’d become an arbiter of mythology, of heritage. At this point, he was beyond one verse against someone else’s verse, or any particular trends in pop music. He was the one bringing together a musical accompaniment for a long-waited Black superhero. The last major project he was involved in was a soundtrack for Black Panther, a watershed moment. Even the names who could reasonably be considered his peers couldn’t touch the reach, the way Lamar would offer challenging and adventurous music that would nevertheless become wildly popular. It’s almost quaint in hindsight, to imagine that Kendrick had ignited a rap ecosystem power struggle with a verse on “Control,” a song almost forgotten in the wreckage he’s since left behind. At the time, it seemed like he was starting a war with his verse on Big Sean’s 2013 single “Control,” in which Lamar laid claim to just about every crown there was. His ascension was rapid and stratospheric. Early on, he and other rising artists made their names together: There was his scene-stealing appearance on A$AP Rocky’s “Fuckin’ Problems,” or the sideways lurch he and TDE compatriot Schoolboy Q conjured for “Collard Greens.” But Kendrick soon left that early ‘10s rap moment behind, blowing past the stylistic calling-cards of the era to keep transforming soon he was running wild over Pusha T and Kanye tracks, or teaming up with fellow visionaries like Danny Brown. For the purposes of this list, we’re focusing only on songs from Lamar’s own solo albums, but he also boasted a bunch of show-stopping performances on other people’s tracks. There’s a reason we named him the artist of the decade.Īnd as a musician, Lamar left his mark in many ways beyond the dizzying output under his own name. It wasn’t just a matter of him offering up some of the best music of his era, it was a matter of him becoming a luminary, a troubled conscience grappling with a country that soon saw the rot at its core almost consume it whole. Each broadened and deepened who Lamar was as an artist and voice within these past 10 years. Each would eventually exist in a continuum and conversation, but also felt like singular works presenting versions of Kendrick Lamar we couldn’t have pictured appearing next. Each played into certain aspects of the existing rap landscape and otherwise completely confounded them or bent them to Lamar’s own vision. Kendrick released one instant classic album, then another, and then another. With Overly Dedicated and Section.80, he laid groundwork: Here was a virtuosic new talent, with furious and idiosyncratic rapping ability holding up a complex worldview. Dot over the course of several ’00s mixtapes, Lamar rebranded under his own name and proceeded to take the ’10s by storm. After cutting his teeth as the young rapper K. One who would define the time he was living in.Īt the same time, Kendrick didn’t arrive fully-formed - he didn’t even arrive as Kendrick.
Very early on, it was obvious Kendrick Lamar was one of those artists, one you knew was giving us something important. This is what makes not just the icons, but the legends. You can be thousands of feet away from them in a festival field or arena and still feel a reverberation of greatness, something flowing through them to the rest of us. They have an electricity about them, a presence. And when you come into contact with them, you can tell. They’re placed here to do a specific thing, to play a role. Some people are just born with something else.
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