Hip-hop

He may be one of R&B’s smoothest crossover stars of the last two decades, but Usher has always kept a foot in hip hop. Whether he’s collaborating with his mentors Diddy and Jermaine Dupri, making a political statement with Nas, or providing hooks for hits by Wale and DJ Khaled, Usher has often rubbed elbows with rap’s elite, even earning the nickname “Ursher” from Ludacris. Guest verses by Nicki Minaj and Rick Ross have powered his later hits, and Atlanta rappers like Jeezy and Young Thug have often turned up to help Usher represent his hometown. And hip-hop producers like Lil Jon, Just Blaze and Polow Da Don have provided the beats for some of his greatest songs. -- Al Shipley

Barack Obama was, among other firsts, the first POTUS who shared his listening habits with the public through Spotify playlists. And though he hasn’t personally curated any music selections since leaving the White House, his Chicago-based non-profit recently debuted the first iteration of Hometown, a collection of tracks handpicked by Chicagoans that remind them of home. Comedian Cameron Esposito opens the playlist with one Chicago band covering another, JC Brooks & The Uptown Sound putting an unlikely retro soul spin on Wilco’s fragile epic “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart.” But while songs from and/or about Chi-town dominate, not everyone is so literal with the theme; actor Nick Offerman picks two Tom Waits songs that remind him of his theater days in Chicago (neither of which is Waits’s 2011 track “Chicago”). Kanye West looms large over the playlist, with three curators picking his tracks. One is West’s young protege Chance The Rapper, who singles out the sweetly nostalgic “Family Business.” A few tracks later, President Obama’s former Deputy Press Secretary, Bill Burton, picks Chance’s own “Blessings,” with a tip of the hat to Chance’s father’s work on Obama’s first campaign. But despite some recurring threads, Hometown offers a pluralistic view of Chicago music, with equal room for Liz Phair and The Staple Singers.

Click here to add to Spotify playlist!Damu The Fudgemunk operates in a niche known as instrumental hip-hop. It’s a subgenre that has existed since the late ‘80s, in the days of DJ Mark The 45 King, and has occasionally drawn wide attention through DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing….. and Clams Casino’s Instrumental Mixtape. But it’s mostly limited to listeners who like hearing beats without all that talking—or “wavy singing”—over it, as well as fledgling MCs looking for loops and breaks to rap over. Then there are the chic hair salons, hookah lounges, and coffee shops that occasionally sprinkle in a little instrumental hip-hop amidst the chill out, downtempo (yes, this still exists in 2017), and smooth deep house that make up their daily aural wallpaper. As a result, instrumental beatmakers like Damu tend to go ignored by all but the most committed listeners.Damu hails from a mid-2000s era when underground hip-hop drew an ever-decreasing audience as an industry dazzled by the rise of Dirty South virtually ignored it. He started out as a DJ with Panacea, a duo whose ghostly new age excursions—like 2007’s The Scenic Route—elicited few critical notices. He established himself by working with Boston rapper Insight as Y Society, and their zippy, ecstatic sunshine tones on 2007’s Travel At Your Own Pace made the album a cult classic among true-school rap fans, with OG vinyl copies trading for hundreds of dollars. Damu has since created a virtual cottage industry of beats, compiling them for indie labels like Redefinition Records and Kilawatt Music.His latest album, Vignettes, reveals how the Washington, D.C. producer is so much more than just a Pete Rock disciple. On the standout track, “Get Lost to Be Found,” he weaves a midtempo beat that slowly ripples and roils like an ocean wave. It’s a hypnotic body of music, full of subtle changes in rhythm that last for stretches of over 12 minutes, and it’s emblematic of how Damu can subtly twist instrumental hip-hop tropes—the Pete Rock-ish horn lick, the DJ Premier-like sample chop—into his own elegant sound signature.There’s so much Damu The Fudgemunk material on the market that it’s difficult to recommend a canonical release for listeners who aren’t immersed in beats culture, the intricacies of which can’t fully be explained here. But in light of the enthralling Vignettes, this playlist is a good start.

Every group has its breakout star, and for Atlanta rap trio Migos, Quavo has long been their Beyoncé. But as they rose to new commercial heights in 2017 with the chart-topping single “Bad and Boujee,” the spotlight shifted to another member, Offset. And that left Takeoff—who doesn’t appear on “Bad and Boujee” or the group’s hit Calvin Harris collaboration, “Slide”—looking like the odd man out. Takeoff even had to defend himself to an interviewer at the BET Awards, motioning to his impressive jewelry and asking, “Does it look like I was left off ‘Bad and Boujee’?”But Takeoff (a.k.a. Kirshnik Khari Ball) is nobody’s weakest link. In fact, he’s arguably the best MC in Migos, with a flair for vivid word choices and a distinctively raspy voice that contrasts with his uncle Quavo’s buoyantly melodic delivery. And he’s held down the chorus and first verse on some of the group’s hits, including the recent “T-Shirt” and 2014’s “Fight Night,” which was the highest charting Migos single before “Bad and Boujee.”Takeoff’s hoarse bark often recalls Rick Ross on the group’s most ominous trap anthems like “WOA” and “Cross the Country.” But the way he bites down on consonants with a percussive flow reminds me of Memphis legend MJG, another skilled rapper who was sometimes overshadowed by his partner 8Ball. And he’s displayed a facility for more light-hearted tracks like “Playa Playa,” and even made up for his absence from “Slide” with an appearance on Calvin Harris’ equally smooth “Holiday.” Takeoff released his first official solo track “Intruder” in 2017, and it’s an encouraging glimpse at how capable he is at holding down a song without the help of Quavo and Offset.

This is a track of the day. Be sure to subscribe to The Best Songs of 2018 (So Far)for regular updates.There are an increasing number of second acts in indie rap. Little Brother’s Phonte recently returned with his strong new album No News is Good News, and Kool Keith reunited with Dan the Automator and Q-Bert for their thankfully batshit indie synth-hop opus Moosebumps: An Exploration Into Modern Day Horripilation. There’s also been plenty of chatter about Mos Def and Talib Kweli reuniting for a sophomore Blackstar album, produced by Madlib. Still, the return of Jean Grae is surprising. When indie rap was really popping in the late 90s and early 00s, she was always a bit of an outlier. To state the obvious, she was one of the few females in hip-hop’s boys club, and unlike her counterparts in mainstream hip-hop, she didn’t position herself of a hyper-stylized, endlessly sexualized ubermensch. She was emotionally neurotic, with a thematic palette and persona that was more straight-forward, more real. She was also a supremely technically gifted emcee; her bars stood up next to the rhymes-for-days, meat-and-potatoes emcees of that scene. But, despite this, she never achieved the success or acclaim she deserved.But it’s 2018 now. She’s changed and so have we. It’s seems a little aspirational to say that we as a culture are more inclusive and tolerant when Trump is president, but certainly there are pockets that have opened up to be more accepting of different voices, hip-hop among them. Grae is still doing Grae, but Everything’s Fine -- her recent collaboration with Detroit rapper/producer Quelle Chris -- is the most conceptually adventurous work she’s ever done. It’s also perhaps the most outward looking. Yes, she’s still wrestling with her own competing impulses and trying to reconcile her own conflicting internal narratives, but she’s also doing this in the context of the shitstorm that’s raging outside (Trump, police shooting, etc).“Gold Purple Orange” is an obvious standout track from the album. The beat has a droopy, loopy quality and sounds like the hip-hop equivalent of a giant, stoned sloth. It’s the perfect backdrop for Quelle Chris’ loose, punch-drunk flow and intoxicatingly ironic raps that examine racial and gender stereotypes: “Everybody black dick gotta be long...Every Jew, golden rule, gotta save bills...Every young nigga gotta deadbeat daddy.” His verse kicks off the song, and is a nice counterweight to Grae’s verse, which is both more structured and more personal. She’s the frizzy hair, bookworm” who’s an “immigrant children watchin Buckwheat late night” and listening to “Depeche Mode, Big Audio-o Dynamite.” This leads to an “identity crisis” and “coming later, vices.” It’ deeply autobiographical, and also pretty self-critical, but this is part of her process. Later, she’ll conclude that “With difficulty comes learnin” and “I aint got to be nothing for you but me.” Despite the new collaborators, focus and sonic veneer, this is archetypically Grae -- difficult, honest, and dope.

The work of late hip-hop musician J Dilla is particularly suited to the record industry’s strategy of releasing anything a dead icon has created, no matter how modest or inessential. When he was alive, he would hand out CDs full of beats and short instrumental loops to his friends and collaborators. After he passed away in 2006, those same discs became fodder for bootlegs like J Dilla Anthology and Instrumental Joints Volume 1.However, the recent deluge of Dilla’s posthumously released material has tested the wallets of even his most fanatic disciples. There are remastered projects that didn’t get a full airing during his lifetime, like last year’s The Diary—a proper version of his shelved and oft-bootlegged 2002 album Pay Jay—and his extended Detroit crew has repurposed his beats with fresh vocals that are “produced by J Dilla” for Rebirth of Detroit, Yancey Boys’ Sunset Blvd. (a group comprised of Dilla’s brother Illa J and Frank Nitt), and Slum Village’s Villa Manifesto. Most of all, Yancey Media Group, a label established by his mother, Maureen “Ma Dukes” Yancey, has issued official collections of his beats: Dillatronic, The King of Beats, Lost Tapes, Reels + More, Dillatroit, and much more. Perhaps overwhelmed by the thousands of beats Dilla made in his life, the label has developed an annoying, even if unintentional, tendency to reuse material on different projects—for example, track 31 on Dillatronic is the same as track 663 on Jay Dee’s Ma Dukes Collection.This playlist attempts to sift through the wellspring of Dilla’s recordings to pick out some gems. There isn’t much background information on when these tracks were made, but a knowledgeable Dilla fan can pick out some clues: The King of Beats collection seems typical of his mid-’90s jazzy hip-hop period when he worked with The Pharcyde and A Tribe Called Quest; Dillatronic reflects his early-’00s, pre-Donuts years and his techno-inflected trunk music. A handful of vocal selections from The Diary and Yancey Boys round out this primer that will prepare you for a deep dive into the world of Dilla.Click here to follow this playlist on Spotify.

We all have our passion projects. For some of us, it’s tending a garden or collecting vinyl, while others write novels or cut vanity records. JAY Z, being JAY Z, thinks on a much larger scale. For the past two years, he has been singly focused on building his fledgling streaming service, Tidal. He’s squeezed favors from friends, spent ridiculous amounts of time and money on promoting the service, and even gotten his wife involved in the proceedings (though, it must be noted, her contribution came wrapped in a bow of marital discontent). At first, this very much seemed like a business decision. Most of us never really believed the line about him trying to empower artists with a (somewhat) more fair streaming business model. The best guesses by industry insiders was that he would build it out, and then flip it for a couple hundred million in profit. After all, he is a business, man.But, increasingly, JAY Z seems to be motivated less and less by altruism, or even business acumen, and more by hubris. This is a man who’s not used to losing, and turning his back on Tidal—either by shutting it down, or selling it for scraps—definitely feels like an L. So, here we are. JAY Z has a new album, 4:44, his first since 2013’s critically panned but commercially successful Magna Carta Holy Grail. And that album will be available exclusively on Tidal. There’s been a lotofinkspilledabout why exclusives are bad for the industry and bad for fans, and those articles seem to focus on two basic principles: 1) Forcing fans to shell out for an additional music service is fundamentally unfair, and 2) it frustrates the fans, encourages privacy, and shrinks the marketplace. We generally agree with this line of thinking, albeit with a few caveats—the streaming marketplace isn’t as frail as it once was, and there are consumers with the resources and the motivation to buy what is effectively a bigger bag of popcorn. But, ultimately, the true casualty of the exclusivity wars is the artform.Music is a living medium. It’s supposed to be heard, discussed, and reappropriated into new forms. In short, it’s a conversation between millions of fans and artists, and if you have that conversation in a closet, or behind a velvet rope, then it’s a pretty shitty conversation. The fact that The Beatles took 10-plus years to get into the subscription music marketplace, and were so protective of their online presence, meant an entire generation had limited exposure to what is undoubtedly the most influential rock group of the past half century. It’s probably not a coincidence that most of the retro-minded bands of past decade have gravitated towards the bluesy, garage rock that was championed by The Rolling Stones. It’s simply what they had exposure to, and what they heard. And while the reservoirs of Boomer Beatles nostalgia is nearly endless, the band felt largely invisible to millennials for the better part of a decade.This is not to suggest that JAY Z’s legacy is in any immediate danger—he more or less owned hip-hop in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s—but it’s also pretty clear that the release strategy for 4:44 will hurt its overall cultural impact, even if, by some miracle, it boosts Tidal’s bottom line. It certainly hurt Beyoncé’s Lemonade. That was one of the strongest albums of the decade and arguably the best of Beyoncé’s career, but its impact and cultural cachet already seem to be waning just because many people can’t listen to it.To be very selfish, The Dowsers is a magazine exclusively devoted to playlist criticism and analysis. When an important record comes out—say, SZA’s CTRL or Solange’s A Seat at the Table—we pore over its influences, samples, collaborations, and impact in an attempt to put it in a larger context and make sense of it for our readers. It’s our part of the conversation around popular music. But we can’t do that with JAY Z’s 4:44. We can’t even create a playlist around his previous albums; they’ve also disappeared from Spotify. So, instead, we’ve opted to create a playlist that focuses on his guest verses. It’s an awesome playlist, of course, but it also feels like a missed opportunity—and that’s on JAY Z.

Declaring that you are your own “business” — as Jay-Z famously did on the “Diamonds from Sierra Leone” remix — cuts both ways. On the one hand, it’s the ultimate hip-hop/hyper capitalism boast. You’ve transcended the station of mere worker, and are your own private cottage industry. But, on the other hand, you’re a business: cold, calculating, and corrupt. Not to be trusted, basically. And since Jay-Z uttered that now infamous line (full quote: “I’m not a businessman, I’m a business, man”), he’s gone out of his way to transition from a lowly humanoid to a fully functioning multi-national corporation. He bought a basketball team, started a talent management agency, and captained a digital streaming service. So it’s no wonder that the playlist that he created in conjunction with his inclusion into the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame feels awfully transactional. There’s a smattering of old school hip-hop (Grandmaster Flash, Eric B & Rakim, Public Enemy), a few tracks from his friends/collaborators/labelmates (Kanye, Eminem, Nas), and some tasteful socio-conscious tracks (Mos Def, OutKast, 2Pac). He’s developed his own canon, and that canon is a lot like almost every other fair-minded hip-hop canon. It’d be hard to argue that “Stan,” “Ms. Jackson,” or “Fight the Power” aren’t Mt. Rushmore rap, but this playlist feels like a missed opportunity. In interviews and in song, Jay-Z has displayed a more idiosyncratic taste in rap, championing everyone from Big L to Jay Electronica. There is none of this on this seemingly raked-over, corporatized playlist. Sure, if you want to hear all the hits one more time, and delivered to you by one of the genre’s most talented and transitional figures, this is great, but it’s also not particularly interesting. And, hey, where’s the Memphis Bleek?

Jay Jenkins burst into national consciousness in 2005 as Young Jeezy, but a few years later the Atlanta rapper shortened his official handle to simply Jeezy. And he’s certainly not “young” anymore, as he turns 40 on September 28. For over a decade, Jeezy has stood with his friend T.I. and his collaborator-turned-foe Gucci Mane as one of the titans of trap music, the street-hustler variation on southern rap that has become one of modern Atlanta’s biggest cultural exports.With a hoarse but gregarious voice, Jeezy was at first more known for his ad libs than his rhymes, cackling “ha haaaa” and “yeahhhh” on his multiplatinum Def Jam debut Let’s Get It: Thug Motivation 101, and his group Boyz N Da Hood’s self-titled album, both in 2005. But there was also an unflinching darkness to his music that he retained even in crossover hits like the Akon collaboration “Soul Survivor.” And an unlikely political bent emerged in his music with the 2008 album The Recession, which contained hip-hop’s biggest unofficial Barack Obama anthem, “My President.”Jeezy The Snowman’s career has cooled off in the years since his rapid ascent to stardom, but he’s remained one of Atlanta trap’s most consistent hitmakers. He was early to adapt to new sounds like DJ Mustard’s west coast groove on “R.I.P.” and traded introspective bars with JAY Z on “Seen It All.” More recently, in 2016 he returned to the top of the charts with Trap Or Die 3 (a sequel to his 2005 breakthrough mixtape), which featured “All There,” a posthumous hit for the late Bankroll Fresh. And it’s hard to imagine Jeezy retiring anytime soon even as he marks another decade of life.

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.By 2007, Kendrick was already on his way to becoming a hip-hop star. He had signed with Top Dawg Entertainment (TDE), released two mixtapes—2003’s Y.H.N.I.C. (Hub City Threat: Minor of the Year) and 2005’s Training Day—and he even managed to perform his first show, which was also the first concert he ever attended.“When I went on tour with The Game [and Jay Rock, in 2006]—that was my first show,” Lamar remembers. “[Going to shows] cost money. Gas money. Me being on stage was me fulfilling two different things—performing and getting to enjoy it like the people were enjoying it.”But violence was never far behind, and, just after midnight on June 13, 2007, officers from the LAPDs Southeast Division responded to a domestic-violence call on East 120th Street, about five minutes from Lamars house. There, they found his good friend D.T. allegedly holding a 10-inch knife. According to police, D.T. charged, and an officer opened fire, killing him."It never really quite added up," Kendrick says. "But heres the crazy thing. Normally when we find out somebody got killed, the first thing we say is Who did it? Where we gotta go? Its a gang altercation. But this time it was the police—the biggest gang in California. Youll never win against them."If Kendrick’s childhood was about survival—finding a way to live amidst the pervasive gang and political violence that consumed his community—then his late-adolescence and young adulthood was about escaping that reality through his music. Kendrick was always talented, but, from 2005 to 2011, he would dramatically grow as an artist, and he would go from being an obscure Compton rapper to a globally recognized, award-winning superstar. The reasons for this growth are both obvious—he’s a preternaturally talented rapper and an extremely hard worker—and more nuanced. Over the years, Kendrick allowed himself to grow; he learned from his mistakes, embraced his artistic ambition, and constantly struggled to mold a singular and honest voice.“What you going to do?” Kendrick asks. “You going to find something you love to do and have a passion for, or you going to stay mingling in the streets till something major happens. So the moment when I defined myself and freed myself was the time that I locked myself in the studio and said I need to do music.”Kendrick’s first release, Y.H.N.I.C., is very much the product of a 16-year-old hip-hop fan. The production is scattershot, largely lifted from early-’00s hip-hop beats—Lloyd Banks’ “Work Magic,” Lil Wayne’s “Go DJ,” Snoop’s “Drop It Like It’s Hot”—while Kendrick’s lyrics are a similarly generic hodgepodge of cliched machismo (“I might Ken Griffey ya bitch/ But wont buy her shit/ Not even a small bag of chips”) and vague truisms. Still, despite the debut’s shortcomings, you can hear a confidence and focus in his voice, and, ultimately, the mixtape served its purpose.“We put [Y.H.N.I.C.] out on a local scale in Compton and built a buzz in the city and eventually got to this guy named Top Dawg, he had his own independent label. And I’ve been with them since and we’ve just been developing my sound,” Kendrick remembers.Shortly thereafter, in the summer of 2004, Kendrick was also courted by Def Jam Records. Though not much is known of this, and it didn’t result in any recorded music, it allowed Kendrick to meet one of his idols, Jay-Z.“I don’t think even Jay remember that. This was when I was like first turned 17,” Kendrick says. “And I remember coming out here for a meeting and I was too excited, man. And all I remember was Jay walking in the room, ‘Yo, what’s up?’ And walked back to the elevator and we was like, ‘Damn, that’s Jay.’ So he doubles back, goes back to his office next door and he’s playing my music… that was just one of those situations where I wasn’t ready.”

Though 2005’s follow-up, Training Day, was a vast improvement, it was still fairly derivative. But, at least now, he’d narrowed his focus to one influence in particular. Instead of funneling Jay-Z, Pac, G-funk, and DMX, Training Day pretty squarely echoes imperial-era Lil Wayne. Like Wayne, Kendrick’s voice has a strained whisper that’s punctuated by sudden whelps, and you can map almost every flow on the album to something on Wayne’s first two Carter albums.

Kendrick even has Wayne’s tick where he deeply exhales through his teeth before the beginning of each verse. It’s uncanny, and not terribly creative, but it’s an accomplishment in its own way. After all, Wayne has one of the most intricate flows in rap. This remote, one-sided tutelage would continue for some time, and four years later, Kendrick released C4, an homage to Lil Wayne that featured many of that rappers’ beats.

C4 also contains what, by Kendrick’s own estimation, is his worst song: “Bitch, I’m in The Club.” Though not a terrible song, per se, it is a clanking, perfunctory club banger with rote, swagger-pumping lyrics and tinny production. “That was a reach,” Kendrick says. “I know the level of reach that I was doing when I wrote that record to everything that was playing on the radio to what was on TV. [Lil’ Wayne] was definitely running radio at that time.”

But rather than discourage him, Kendrick took inspiration from the song. When asked what was the moment that he realized this rap thing was for real, Kendrick replied, “I think when I made a terrible single, and that shit was just garbage. Its the real moment because, at that point youre at your lowest ... but, at the same time, I wasnt aware that that was my highest point because I got back in there and I did it all over again, and continued to push through. Thats when I realized I really wanna do this, because I aint give up when I made a terrible ass song.”It was around this time, in 2009, when Kendrick decided to change his performing name. From his time at Centennial High, Kendrick had always rapped by the name K. Dot, and while his rap career was moving forward, he felt that he’d grown creatively stagnant. He was a great writer, but he’d didn’t feel as though he’d invested himself into his stories, so he decided to be more direct.“When I stopped going by K. Dot, I think that was the moment where I really found my voice,” Lamar remembers. “Early, early on, I really wanted to be signed. And that was a mistake, because it pushes you two steps backwards when you have this concept of ‘OK, I’ve got to make these three [commercial] songs in order to get out into the world and be heard.’ So there were two or three years where I wanted to be signed so badly that I’m making these same two or three repetitive demo kinds of records, and I’m hindering my growth. The world could have got Kendrick Lamar two or three years earlier if I’d stuck to the script and continued to develop.”At that moment, Kendrick began work in earnest on good kid, m.A.A.d. city, but that project would be derailed and he instead focused on The Kendrick Lamar EP. “He actually wrote a project called good kid, m.A.A.d. city before the EP came out,” TDE president Punch relays. “The plan was for the eight-song EP to drop as a warm-up for the good kid, m.A.A.d. city he did already. In the process, he had more songs and the buzz started growing, so we dropped the EP.”While we had to wait another three years for the landmark good kid, m.A.A.d. city, the hour-long, 14-track EP was perhaps Kendrick’s first essential release, and it represented a dramatic artistic evolution for Kendrick. For one thing, it sounded like nothing he’d done in the past. TDE producer Sounwave has been in and out of the TDE camp since 2005, and he produces most of the cuts here. Tracks like “P&P” and “Celebration” feel relaxed and fluid, intercutting snippets of tinkling, jazz-inflected piano lines with rich vocal harmonies. Unlike Kendrick’s previous releases, the EP doesn’t sound like just a mixtape, but rather something fully realized and alive.Kendrick, meanwhile, sounds genuinely like Kendrick for the first time. There’s an added vulnerability in his rhymes, as on “Vanity Slaves” when he relays, “Sometimes I want to leave, sometimes I want to cry/ Sometimes I hate to bear the truth, sometimes I want to lie.” Aside from the newfound emotional honesty, the album contains many nods to Kendrick’s spirituality and to his brimming social consciousness. But, unlike other “conscious” MCs, Kendrick relays his lessons in small stories, whether it’s the self-assured black female of “She Needs Me” or the housing project kids in “Vanity Slaves” who find worth in material value.Kendrick also benefited from good timing. Hip-hop was in a transitional period during that time. Hip-hop’s old guard—Jay-Z, Nas, UGK—were still lingering around, but there was a younger generation emerging. Drake broke in 2009, and the West Coast also had a cadre of viable new talent for the first time in nearly a decade. Critics (and even some artists) called this the “new west,” and it included a broad range of styles. Rappers like Nipsey Hussle and Dom Kennedy tapped into the more traditional strands of West Coast rap, channeling the ghosts of Dre and G-funk, while “blog rap” acts like Pac Div, The Pack/Lil’ B, and Odd Future embodied a more eccentric and ironic take on the genre that was located less in a specific geographical place than a cultural one. Kendrick split the difference, embracing the ambition and irreverence of blog rap while maintaining a starkly SoCal identity. He rounded out the sound by embracing the neo-soul underpinnings and broad social commentaries of boho rappers like Mos Def and Common. It was a compelling blend, one that managed to seem vaguely familiar and also completely singular.The Kendrick EP was released on the last day of 2009, and provided an apt capper to that decade. But, in the next year, things would move forward very quickly. Overly Dedicated, which was originally imagined as a remix project for The Kendrick EP, was released in September 2010. The album is full of intimate, subtle tracks. Over the shuffling rhythm and simmering vibes, “Average Joe” crystallizes Kendrick’s persona: “Who is K. Dot? A young nigga from Compton/ On the curb writing raps next to a gunshot/ On the corners where the gangsters and the killers dwell/ The fraudulent tender scars that get unveiled/ Everyone I knew was either Crip or Piru.”But it would be another track, “Ignorance is Bliss,” that would end up being the most important track of Kendrick’s career. The song is a sly commentary on gangster rap, with Kendrick spitting out the violent cliches of the genre—“Imma back em down like Shaq with this black 2-2-3 in my hand”—before bookending each verse with the ironic, self-canceling declaration, “Ignorance is bliss.” This would be the first Kendrick track that Dr. Dre would hear.“Believe it or not, Paul Rosenberg, Eminem’s manager, is the one that put me on [to Kendrick],” Dre recalls. “I was in Detroit and he’s like, ‘You got to hear this kid from Compton.’ So I went online and the thing that really turned me on at the beginning was the way he spoke in the interview—it wasn’t even the music at first, it was the way he showed his passion for music. There was something in that, and then I got into the music, and then realized how talented he was.”Kendrick was on tour with Jay Rock and legendary Kansas City, MO indie MC Tech N9ne. When Dre called his engineer and Kendrick initially thought it was a prank. But, the next week, Dre got in touch with Kendrick’s management and invited the MC into the studio to record with him. “It came to a point where I had to really snap out of fan mode and become a professional because after we were introduced, he said he liked my music and I said that I’m a fan of his work,” Lamar remembers of the sessions. “Then he said, ‘Okay, now write to this, write a full song to this.’ Right after I said, ‘Man, Dr. Dre, you’re the greatest’ and he was like, ‘Yeah man, you’re good too, you could be something… alright now write to this beat.’ And that beat ended up being the first song I did with him and ended up on my album—‘Compton’.”It had been nearly a decade since Kendrick first started releasing material, but, at this point, he had very much arrived. Though his 2011 release, Section.80, was not the sweeping Bildungsroman Kendrick had been planning (that would come soon enough), it was an evolution of subtly introspective rhymes and jazz-tinged hip-hop soul that Kendrick had been mining on the previous two releases. Tracks such as “A.D.H.D” and “Fuck Your Ethnicity” were instant classics, and the album would eventually go gold. Critics placed it near the top of their year-end lists, and compared him to everyone from Ice Cube to Nas. Of course, the next few years would reveal that Kendrick needed no comparisons—he inhabited his own story, and told that in his own voice. But it’s not a bad way to end the beginning.Related Reading:Kendrick Lamar, Conscious Capitalist: The 30 Under 30 Cover InterviewKendrick Lamar Says "Section.80" Is Just A Warm-Up, Analyzes Work With Game & Dr. DreThe Making of good kid, m.A.A.d. city