Genres

Delicious Vinyl put out legendary hip-hop titles between 1989 and 1995, and the Los Angeles-based classic label’s catalog of West Coast party rock and conscious rap still gets play, on radio and at functions worldwide.

Their iconic catalog includes smash hits “Wild Thing” (on Tone-Lōc’s Lōc-ed After Dark) and “Bust a Move” (on Young MC’s Stone Cold Rhymin’), as well as groundbreaking albums by Masta Ace Incorporated, which married West Coast and East Coast sensibilities, and the sensational second album from Pharcyde, Labcabincalifornia, which was responsible for launching the career of producer extraordinaire J Dilla, who contributed to six songs including the immortal “Runnin’.”All this music connects the dots between the early Def Jam sound, hip-hop’s migration to the west coast, and micro-eras of sample-based production. You’ll find sounds analogous to Rick Rubin’s booming, stark production for Run-DMC; the Beastie Boys’ record-store-in-a-blender album Paul’s Boutique; and a smoothed-out, funky angle similar to groups like Hieroglyphics.

With Craft Recordings re-releasing key Delicious Vinyl albums in summer 2018, a bunch of that music is now back in circulation, waiting for your trip down memory lane or maybe first-time listening experience.

I’m not paralyzed with fear, but sometimes I wonder if I ought to be. Mostly, it’s the little things I obsess over: the worsening signs of global decline and potential extinction-level events already upon much of the world, but filtered through my bubble of North American privilege. It’s petty stuff, like wondering how much longer my five-year-old daughter will get to eat her favorite food of shrimp tempura, as she may be among the last people on Earth to enjoy seafood before warmer waters and climate change decimate the food chain. Or figuring out how realistic it is for my wife to keep pursuing her lifelong dream of visiting the Maldives, as the island nation may be underwater in our lifetimes, as well as Miami, New Orleans, and more than 400 other American cities and towns soon after.I know these preoccupations are silly and useless given the wretched circumstances and challenges already facing the overwhelming majority of humankind. I ought to see how good I’ve got it, what with my ready access to food, fresh water, fuel, and free Wi-Fi. Sure, every generation believes it’ll be the last, and millennial cults have yet to get the right date for the end times. But it feels like we’ll finally be the ones to make good on all those visions of apocalypse: whether it’s famines, fires, bee-population collapse, or other environmental crises; a viral plague or rampaging superbug; or a nuclear war sparked by rising tensions in North Korea, Iran, or Pakistan. My fears about the future are so huge and unwieldy that the only responses I can manage are pitifully small and solipsistic.But there’s another response, which is anger. How else to react to the Trump administration’s attempts to erase the already too-modest moves by its predecessor to address the climate crisis? Thankfully, it remains to be seen whether Trump can actually gut the Clean Power Plan or pull America out of its commitment to policy change in the Paris Agreement, given the resistance by many industries that have already adjusted to new realities and to the efforts of the Obama team to bulletproof changes in legal terms. It’s ironic how much the President is willing to sacrifice his nation’s economic supremacy and superpower status to the country he loves to bash so much: China is understandably eager to find clean-energy solutions now that so much of the country’s air is unbreathable.I know there are more positive and productive responses than my neurotic ones. Nevertheless, the road ahead is still filled with fear and despair, the same emotions that color the songs on this playlist, which ponder our distressing present and ever so uncertain future. The next Earth Day is April 22, and with Tom Waits in mind, I wonder if it would get more attention if we renamed it The Earth Dies Screaming Day. It couldn’t hurt.

To say Grant Hart lived a hard life is a gross understatement. With 80s noise-pop pioneers Husker Dü, he played the misfit McCartney to Bob Moulds lacerating Lennon, providing the honey chaser to his partners hoarse-throat howls. But just when the band seemed on the verge of following R.E.M. out of the college-radio fringes and into the mainstream, Hart was waylaid by a heroin addiction, not to mention an HIV diagnosis (which ultimately proved to be false). Following the bands extremely acrimonious break-up, Hart gradually faded into obscurity, releasing a small handful of under-the-radar records while Mould enjoyed a steady, successful career as an alt-rock elder statesman. Recent years had been especially trying: Hart lost both parents in quick succession, and he was injured in a fire that destroyed his longtime family home in South St. Paul. And then 2017 brought the diagnosis of the kidney cancer that ultimately claimed him on September 14 at the age of 56.But throughout Harts many trials and tribulations, he never lost the gifts for swooning melody and psychedelized experimentation that made Hüsker Dü the most adventurous band in 80s indie rock. Just when you had counted him out—or even completely forgotten about him—hed blindside you with the dizzying fuzz-pop of 1999s Good News for the Modern Man, the frayed-nerve garage-rock of 2009s Hot Wax (recorded with members of Godspeed You! Black Emperor), or the cinematic grandeur of 2013s Milton-inspired concept album, The Argument, a record that deserves to go down as his career-capping masterpiece.With this playlist, we pay tribute to the man who forged the Dave Grohl prototype of the shit-hot drummer who also a tender tunesmith, beginning with Harts greatest Hüsker Dü hits (including the peak-era duet with Mould on "Flip Your Wig"), and then on through his short-lived early 90s combo Nova Mob*, and his increasingly sporadic, exceedingly underrated solo work.* Note: Nova Mobs 1994 self-titled second album isnt available on Spotify.

We here at The Dowsers adapted this playlist from Marshall Bowden’s “10 Great Forgotten Bob Dylan Tracks,” a listicle the writer put together for Paste magazine. Admittedly, the word “forgotten” is overstatement. Seeing as how Dylan is one the most analyzed artists in the history of recorded music, there simply isn’t a whole lot in his catalog that hasn’t been obsessively chronicled. Headline hyperbole notwithstanding, Bowden proves a knowledgeable fan with a sharp ear for minor gems. There are no missteps here. Each and every cut succeeds in helping paint a fuller picture of the icon’s vision. If you’re a Dylan fan looking to move beyond his classic albums and songs, this playlist will make a great guide into the deep end.

Sometimes music is a solitary endeavor. After recording technology advanced to the point of making it possible for one person to construct an entire album all by themselves, hermetic whiz kids started turning out solo albums in the truest sense of the word, in which they played and sang all or nearly all of the parts. Some of them may have been control freaks eschewing additional musicians out of monomania, but others were studio geniuses who crafted entire worlds all on their own, and thats what were looking into here.A few are former band members who ran with the chance to operate unencumbered, such as Paul McCartney and John Fogerty, who had some of their most memorable songs sans helpmates, like "Maybe Im Amazed," from the ex-Beatles 1970 solo debut, McCartney, and "Centerfield," from the CCR frontmans 1985 comeback album of the same name. Some became famous as youthful mavens of multitracking, as Prince did with his first hit, "I Wanna Be Your Lover," as well as Mike Oldfield with his first album, Tubular Bells, known forevermore as the spooky soundtrack music of The Exorcist.More and more artists are going it alone as digital technology has drastically increased the ease and options in creating one-person projects. Sometimes theyve obscured their solitary stances by adopting aliases that could be taken for band names, such as Glasser (Cameron Mesirow), Grimes (Claire Boucher), and Japanese Breakfast (Michelle Zauner). Whether they tip their hands or not, the next Todd Rundgren or Stevie Wonder could be out there right now, just waiting for the right time to pop up with a new, strictly solo masterpiece.

Right in the wake of Kurt Cobains tragic death in 1994, Billie Joe Armstrongs rascally sneer became a regular fixture on MTV. Green Days stoner punk was ripe to flourish in such a bummed-out climate—they channeled the angst and malaise of grunge through scrappy, jittery old-school punk, threw in a little sardonic silliness, and knitted it all together with some undeniably delicious pop hooks. Throughout the 90s, the Bay Area trio embraced the idea of being rebels without a cause (and with nothing to do: see "Longview"), but by American Idiot—released just prior to the 2004 presidential election—they again captured the cultures growing unease, this time in a nation that looked and felt vastly different than it did a decade prior. "American Idiot" may be their greatest rebel anthem ever, but it certainly hasnt stopped them from unleashing more seething, politically-charged pop-punk that has been just as timely. -- Stephanie Garr

This past July, NPR released their list of the 150 greatest albums made by women. On first glance, the list appears to be wide-reaching in its scope. Meshell Ndegeocello, Sleater-Kinney, and Egyptian superstar Umm Kulthum all make appearances, with iconic figures like Nina Simone and Joni Mitchell nabbing the top spots. However, renowned metal critic Kim Kelly quickly noted on Twitter that the the “definitive” countdown failed to include any albums metal albums by women—so she Tweeted out a list of her own.Given that metal often embraces envelope-pushing shock value as a statement of apolitical art, its omission from NPR’s list reveals a common misconception about the music: that it is dominated by men. Kelly’s comprehensive breakdown tells another story, and the majority of her list comprises catharsis-inducing extreme metal that seeks to both agonize and empower through its sheer heft.Her expert selection spans traditional early ’80s heavy-metal bands like Chastain and Bitch all the way to the sludge-fueled prowess of Windhand and Trish Kolstad’s screeching one-woman experimental project, DödsÄngel. Also making the cut are already canonical standouts by newcomers like False, Dakhma, King Woman, and Cloud Rat.Kelly’s list serves an additional function of dispelling the assumption the women who do make metal music fall into a specific category: white, straight, and cisgendered. The Chilean speed-metal group Demona, the Japanese black-metal outfit Gallhammer (pictured), and the acclaimed Santa Cruz grindcore band Cretin (whose frontwoman, Marissa Martinez-Hoadley, came out as transgender in 2008) serve up some of the most memorable moments on the list. Kelly’s crash course does more than simply construct a history of women in metal; she highlights the diversity in female and non-binary artists who have transgressed the genre itself.

What’s This Playlist All About?: Canadian electro-pop visionary Claire Boucher (a.k.a. Grimes) makes a mood playlist capturing the tracks that inspire her to draw. As a point of reference, here are her drawings.What You Get: A bunch of the least-cluttered tracks by ‘90s IDM trickster Aphex Twin, punctuated by wispy, ethereal songs from Lana Del Rey and other (generally female-fronted) electro-pop/rap acts. We’re not art critics, and we have no strong opinions about how this impacts her visual art, but it does reflect the general aesthetic poles in Grimes’ own music——the mixture of fairy-tale balladry, empowerment anthems, and smeared electronic atmospherics. Biggest Surprise: Grimes still rides for Azealia Banks and Salem in 2018!Greatest Discovery: The blurred, sludgy, nightmare pop of Ginger Blossom, who is exceedingly difficult to Google.Does This Make Us Want To Draw?: Not really, which is probably a good thing for our friends and loved ones. It does, however, make us want to take a nap.

Claire Elise Boucher—a.k.a. Grimes—has always been transparent in her restlessness. Her 2012 breakout album, Visions, was sonically gauzy and thematically thorny, exploring issues of identity, sexuality, and empowerment over smeared, floating electro. It drifted through your headscape like an autumnal fog, but her lyrics—once you understood them, at least—were piercing in their honesty and vulnerability. She painted her follow-up, 2015’s Art Angels, in the bold neon hues of modern electro-pop, echoing her own confidence on entering an increasingly elevated stage. But, still, there was a negotiation taking place—a messy but honest/beautiful evolution of aesthetics and personality —that felt universal.It makes sense that her Spotify mix, the faé list, feels both all over the place and a cohesive product of her roaming gaze. Artisophanes conjures a metallic slab of transhumanist pop on the aptly titled “Humans Becomes Machines,” and Grouper’s “I’m Clean Now” is all somatic romanticism. The playlist’s lead-off track, Yukaris “Am I Dreaming,” floats by in a haze of gentle synth sounds, feeling like the theme song to a narco-fueled Japanese remake of Twin Peaks. But, elsewhere, Claire rocks out with Cardi B and Lil Uzi Vert. She even includes Taylor Swift’s “Look What You Made Me Do,” because why not? Ultimately, like the best playlists, it feels like both a cultural and personal artifact, a flickering glimpse into one of our generation’s most mercurial and talented artists, and an apt reflection of where we all are in this weird, fucked-up, awesome, shitty world.

This post is part of our program, The Story of Kendrick, an in-depth, 10-part look at the life and music of Kendrick Lamar. Sound cool and want to receive the other installments in your inbox? Go here. Already signed up and enjoying it? Help us get the word out and share on Facebook, Twitter, or with this link. Your friends will thank you.Kendrick Lamar witnessed his first murder at age five. "It was outside my apartment unit," Lamar remembers. “A guy was out there serving his narcotics and somebody rolled up with a shotgun and blew his chest out. Admittedly, it done something to me right then and there. It let me know that this is not only something that Im looking at, but its something that maybe I have to get used to.”Three years later, Kendrick would see his second murder. This time it was at the Tam’s Burgers on Central and East Rosecrans, just six blocks from where Kendrick grew up. Though it’s now closed, it was an iconic Compton hangout spot known for its cheeseburgers. For the opening of his Reebok commercial, Kendrick is standing on its rooftop, and he also calls it out on “Element” from DAMN.: “I be hangin out at Tams, I be on Stockton/I dont do it for the Gram, I do it for Compton.”

It’s also notorious for being the spot where Suge Knight plowed down and killed Terry Carter in 2015, and, like most things that have to do with Compton, its memory is bittersweet for Kendrick. "Eight years old, walking home from McNair Elementary. Dude was in the drive-thru ordering his food, and homey ran up, boom boom—smoked him," Kendrick says.Kendrick is a supremely gifted craftsman and storyteller. He is perhaps the greatest hip-hop lyricist of his generation, and his songs touch on universal themes of dislocation, spirituality, and personal integrity. But Kendrick is also a product of a specific time and place, a city and era where violence was commonplace and the degree of poverty was nearly unimaginable for most of us. It’s amazing that Kendrick didn’t succumb to this. These experiences have shaped him, and his power—both as an artist and as a human—is tied into this narrative.“Everyone know Kendrick Lamar for who I am now,” Kendrick offers. “They feel like I have a whole bunch of insight, but, in order to gain that insight, I had to come from this place of loneliness, darkness, and evil. Nobody knows that.”

The roots of this violence are very deep. His family’s gang affiliations stretched back even before they moved to Compton from Chicago in 1984, three years before Kendrick was born. Kendrick’s father, Kenny Duckworth, was raised in Robert Taylor Homes, a public housing project on the south side of Chicago that was notorious for its gang violence and poverty. During the 1970s, rival gang members would throw objects from the top floor of the buildings, intending to hit their rivals but frequently striking children. And, at one point, 95 per cent of its residents were unemployed.[caption id="attachment_10827" align="alignnone" width="450"]

An interior photograph of Robert Taylor Homes[/caption]As a young man, Duckworth was reportedly running with a South Side street gang called the Gangster Disciples, a Chicago gang led by Larry Hoover, the legendary Midwestern gangster who Rick Ross immortalized in his 2010 song “B.M.F.” Hoover is currently serving six consecutive life sentences. “My parents don’t come from the Black Panther side of Chicago,” Kendrick says. “They believe in certain things, but they were just trying to manoeuvre through the cracks.”Sensing that the threats, Lamar’s mom, Paula Oliver, issued Kenny an ultimatum. "She said, I cant fuck with you if you aint trying to better yourself," Kendrick recounts. "We cant be in the streets forever."They stuffed their clothes into two black garbage bags and boarded a train to California with $500. "They were going to go to San Bernardino," Kendrick says. "But my Auntie Tina was in Compton. She got em a hotel until they got on their feet, and my mom got a job at McDonalds."[caption id="attachment_10826" align="alignnone" width="455"]

Kendrick and Paula[/caption]For the first couple of years, Paula and Kenny slept in their car or motels, or in the park when it was hot enough, both working a series of disposable jobs at fast-food joints. "Eventually, they saved enough money to get their first apartment, and thats when they had me," Kendrick says. Though they had fled Chicago so that Kenny could escape the gangs, that lifestyle found the family again in Compton. Kenny started dabbling in street life again, two of Kendrick’s uncles were locked up on robbery charges, and his Uncle Tony was shot in the head at a burger stand. “My whole family is Crips and Pirus,” Kendrick states.There’s a context for this. Violence was endemic during that period in Compton. In 1995, when Kendrick was eight, the murder rate in Compton was 81.5 out of 100,000 people. By comparison, New York City, with a murder rate of 2.2 per 100,000 people in 2015, looks like a playground. Even Chicago, which is the current strawman for violent crimes in modern America, only had a murder rate of 8.52 in 2015. It’s not as bad in Compton as it once was, but it’s also not particularly great. The per capita income is still just a little above $13K, a fraction of the $58,030 US average.For Kendrick, the violence was at times unrelenting. At the age of 15, he would be beaten down in front of his mother at the Avalon swap meet—an incident he would later relay in “Element” from DAMN. And then there was the time his mom found a bloody hospital gown among Kendrick’s clothes. Kendrick was initially cagey, but he eventually admitted that it was from being in the ER with "one of his little homeys who got smoked."Or there was the time Paula found him curled up and crying in the front yard, and figured he was sad about his grandmother’s death. "I didnt know somebody had shot at him,” she said. And then, one day, the police knocked on their door, claiming he was behind a neighborhood incident. His parents promptly kicked him out for two days.

Kendrick’s childhood home, 1612 137th St. Compton, CA.It wasn’t just gang violence that Kendrick had to worry about. One of Kendrick’s first memories was of the ’92 riots, which began after the acquittals of four police officers who had assaulted Rodney King. The chaos lasted six days—from April 29 to May 4—and resulted in 63 deaths, 2,383 injuries, and over 12,000 arrests. Over 3,700 buildings were burned, either partially or completely destroyed, and damages totalled over $1 billion. Eventually, the national guard was shipped in to restore order, but those six days would scar the community, in both big and small ways, for decades to come.Kendrick was four when it went down. "I remember riding with my pops down Bullis Road, and looking out the window and seeing motherfuckers just running," he says. "I can see smoke. We stop, and my pops goes into the Auto-Zone and comes out rolling four tires. I know he didnt buy them. Im like, Whats going on?"Years later, Kendrick would reference this story in the good kid, m.A.A.d. city bonus track, “County Building Blues.” The second verse almost exclusively captures Kendrick’s impressions of the riots: “Couple stolen TVs and a seat belt for my safety/ Played the passenger I think it’s five years after ’87/ Do the math, ‘92, don’t you be lazy.”All of this nearly broke Kendrick. "We used to have these successful people come around and tell us whats good and whats bad in the world,” Kendrick says. “But, from our perspective, it didnt mean shit to us, because youre telling us all these positive things, but, when we walk outside, we see somebodys head get blown off. And it just chips away at the confidence. It makes you feel belittled. The more violence youre exposed to as a kid, the more it chips away at you. For the most part, the kids that I was around, it broke them. It broke them to say, Fuck everything, Im gonna do what Im gonna do to survive … Before I let it chip away at me 100 per cent, I was making my transition into music."The seeds for Kendrick’s music career were also planted very early. Kendrick was born Kendrick Duckworth on June 17, 1987. As his parents drove him home from the hospital, his father played a track from the legendary old-school rapper Big Daddy Kane. “[My mom] was telling him, ‘Cut that music down, that shit too loud,’” Kendrick recalls. “And he was like, ‘Don’t worry about it. He gonna be listening to music when we get home, when he grow up, and forever.’”As a child, his father would take him to the Compton Swap Meet at North Long Beach Boulevard and Orchard. “As a kid, thats where I used to get all my cassettes, all my CDs,” Kendrick says. “My pops, too—hed buy music. Id get my Nikes there. You might see Suge Knight, other folks from Compton."But it was one time in particular that proved to be foundational for a young Kendrick. In 1996, he watched Dr. Dre and Tupac film their video for the remix of “California Love” at the swap meet. Just a few months later, Tupac would be killed, gunned down on the streets of Las Vegas, but at the time he was the world’s biggest hip-hop star. “When Tupac was here, and I saw him as a 9-year-old, I think that was the birth of what Im doing today,” Kendrick says. “From the moment that he passed, I knew the things he was saying would eventually be carried on through someone else. But I was too young to know that I would be the one doing it.”

Kendrick quickly immersed himself in hip-hop culture. When Pac died, he gravitated to DMX. Like Pac, DMX was a supremely conflicted character, with songs that threaded the line between hardscrabble machismo and stark vulnerability. “That’s the first album that got me writing,” Kendrick says of DMX’s seminal 1998 album, It’s Dark and Hell is Hot. “That album inspired me to be a rapper.”While DMX inspired Kendrick from a distance, there were important people closer to home. “I was in seventh grade, I had an English class and a teacher by the name of Mr. Inge and he would give us these poetry assignments, and there was one particular homework assignment that I didn’t do and I said to myself, ‘When I get to school I’m going to write it as fast as possible’, and I did,” Kendrick remembers of his time at Vanguard Learning Center. “I had like 10 minutes until I had to turn it in, so I did it and I turned it in. Later that day, he was passing out the grades and I was looking at my friends going, ‘Man, I got a D, I got a C,’ and I looked at it and it was an ‘A.’ From that moment on, I knew I had a gift to put words together and draw my inspiration out on a piece of paper.”[caption id="attachment_10825" align="alignnone" width="636"]

Vanguard Learning Center[/caption]The hobby quickly turned into a passion, to the surprise of Kendrick’s parents. “We used to wonder what he was doing with all that paper," his dad says. "I thought he was doing homework! I didnt know he was writing lyrics.""I had never heard him say profanity before," recalls his mom. "Then I found his little rap lyrics, and it was all Eff you. D-i-c-k. Im like, Oh, my God! Kendricks a cusser!"Soon, Kendrick began attending Centennial High School. The school is firmly considered “Blood territory,” with a graduation rate lower than 60 precent. (Federal-government guidelines for high school graduation rates dictate that all schools should be at 83 per cent.) But it’s also a school with some notable alumni, including the legendary G-Funk producer DJ Quik and, most significantly, Dr. Dre.

It was here, in 2003, that Kendrick met Dave Free, who would go on to be Kendrick’s manager and president of Top Dawg Entertainment. “Me and Kendrick go back since the beginning of 10th grade,” Free recalls. “I was the local DJ at my school and I used to have rap battles during lunch. And my boy Antonio, he was like one of the best rappers at the school. And he was telling me that he had this friend that was the craziest. I was intrigued. I set up a makeshift studio in my house… and I remember he had this line like, ‘I ship keys like a grand piano.’ And I just thought that was the most amazing line for someone his age.”“We had a little sock over the microphone” Kendrick remembers. “Did a bunch of freestyles over that little mic, gave it to his little brother who was producing at the time, and built something more than just people working together, built a friendship, built a brotherhood over the years.”Around the same time, Kendrick would have another life-changing event. As with many of the landmark events in his life, this one is rooted in violence. “It was a situation, an altercation that happened. One of the homies got popped,” Kendrick says. “And, [afterwards], we was walking the side parking lot, and this older lady walked up to us and asked us, ‘Was we saved?’ We believed in God and everything, but at the same time, we dont know what it means to actually be saved with the blood of Jesus. But… she blessed us right then and there: ‘Close your eyes and repeat after me.’ And it was said and done. And from that moment on, I knew, its real people out here that really care.”Later in 2003, Kendrick and Dave would put out Kendrick’s first release, Y.H.N.I.C. (Hub City Threat: Minor of the Year). It’s only remarkable for the the fact that it was created by a 16-year-old. The rhymes sound like rote regurgitations of a radio rap hits, but it did what it needed to. After putting it out, Dave began shopping it around, though he really only had one person in mind: TDE leader Anthony “Top Dawg” Tiffith.[caption id="attachment_10830" align="alignnone" width="356"]

Kendrick in a 2003 promo photo for Y.H.N.I.C.[/caption]Though just a neighborhood label, TDE was the “closest thing we knew to the industry,” according to Kendrick. But Tiffith wasn’t particularly receptive to hearing a mixtape from a 16-year-old. “I tried everything to get around the dude,” Dave says. “One time, I posed like I could fix his computer and the whole time I was playing him music and just taking apart his computer, and he started paying more attention to me. And I came over and joined the company, and brought Kendrick in, and we started grinding from there.”It was a grind that would take him to the top of the hip-hop world within a decade, but Kendrick never forgot his Compton roots. His childhood, however bleak, serves as the backdrop for his music—it’s there in nearly every song and in every interview. “What happens is it invites people in to get another perspective,” Kendrick says of the role of Compton in his music. “It brings a whole ‘nother side to the world of Compton, to this backyard and say, ‘Okay, these are actually people.’”And Kendrick also stays plugged in through much more tangible ways. In 2013, shortly after the release of good kid, m.A.A.d. city, he donated $50,000 to Centennial’s music department, and much more for the various sports and community programs. His contributions to the music department made it possible for the school to buy new instruments, and establish both string and jazz ensembles. LA Weekly recently named it one of the top music programs in America. According to its director, Manuel Castaneda, 95 per cent of participants in the music program went on to four-year colleges on full or partial scholarships—an amazing number considering that less than 10 per cent of Compton residents have a college degree.Shortly after his contribution, the California State Senate honored Kendrick Lamar for his donations, bestowing upon Kendrick a “Generational Icon Award.”

And two years later, in 2015, while shooting the video for “King Kunta,” Kendrick returned to the Compton Swap Meet, the same place where he had seen Tupac and Dr. Dre 18 years prior. “All them kids were out there looking,” he remembers. “And a good friend said, ‘You was one of those kids looking at Pac up here when he was doing that, and now they’re looking at you.”Related Reading:An In-Depth Conversation with Kendrick LamarChicago Gang History: Robert Taylor HomesVideo: Kendrick Honored On Senate FloorKendrick Lamar: “I Am Trayvon Martin. I Am All of These Kids.”Kendrick Lamar’s Guide to LABounty Hunters (Bloods)Video: Jay Rock: Only Blood in Crip High SchoolJay Rock Talks About Living in Nickerson, WattsNPR: Kendrick Lamar: I Cant Change The World Until I Change Myself FirstRolling Stone: The Trials of Kendrick LamarNoisey Bompton: Growing Up With Kendrick LamarSaveSave