Good Kid m.A.A.D City - Kendrick Lamar (2012)

Ideated from: Starting my second year of this blog with some famous second albums

“Second album” is a little hard to determine for sure with mixtape culture. Kendrick appeared (as both Kendrick and K.dot) on a bunch of mixtapes and small label releases. I think people wouldn’t argue that Section.80 was the first time he released an organized, coherent record that people could pin on his name. Which makes this amazing piece of work his second album.

It’s a harrowing tale of a young kid going through a wild night in his Compton neighborhood, where our narrator deals with his youthful enthusiasm, his lust, his faith, and the reality of the hard streets.

Kendrick has created a lot more great work since, but this definitely deserves the same space as his later and more famous releases.

For more complete backgrounder than I could provide, I recommend an episode of the outstanding Dissect podcast where he goes through the whole record and follows the narrative with great clarity.