Guides/A Riffiter guide
Where to start with Kendrick Lamar
The defining rapper of his generation (and the only one with a Pulitzer) in seven records.
Kendrick Lamar is an American rapper from Compton, California, and the first hip-hop artist to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music. This guide maps seven albums as the best way in, from the cinematic good kid, m.A.A.d city to the Pulitzer-winning DAMN.
Kendrick Lamar doesn't make albums so much as build them: dense, novelistic records you can study for years and still find new doors in. That can make him daunting to a newcomer who just wants somewhere to start.
The good news: every one of his major albums is a rewarding first listen, and they reward repeat listens even more. Take them roughly in order and you'll watch one of the most ambitious artists in modern music grow up in real time.
- 1
Section.80
★ 3.5 · 3—His first proper album, and the one where the vision arrives fully formed. Section.80 introduces the themes (race, addiction, faith, the weight of a generation) that he would spend the next decade deepening.
- 2
good kid, m.A.A.d city
★ 4.7 · 7—Start here if you start anywhere. Subtitled "a short film by Kendrick Lamar," it tells the story of one day in Compton with the detail and tension of cinema. Accessible, gripping, and widely considered one of the best rap albums of the century.
- 3
To Pimp A Butterfly
★ 4.1 · 12—The masterpiece. A dizzying fusion of jazz, funk, spoken word and rage, To Pimp a Butterfly is as much a statement about Black America as a rap record. Overwhelming on first listen. Give it room and it becomes a permanent fixture.
- 4
untitled unmastered.
★ 4.0 · 3—A loose collection of To Pimp a Butterfly-era offcuts, and the most relaxed entry in his catalogue. A great low-stakes way to live inside that sound for a while.
- 5
DAMN.
★ 4.2 · 10—The album that won the Pulitzer Prize for Music, the first ever awarded to a work that wasn't classical or jazz. DAMN. is Kendrick at his most direct and hardest-hitting, built around radio-sized songs like "HUMBLE." and "DNA."
- 6
Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers
★ 3.4 · 9—His most personal record, therapy, fatherhood and generational trauma laid bare. Less immediate than DAMN., but it rewards the patience his best work always asks for.
- 7
GNX
★ 3.6 · 6—A surprise release and a West Coast victory lap, arriving in the wake of his year-defining feud with Drake. Looser and more triumphant than the dense concept records, proof he can still make a straightforward banger when he wants to.
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