Kendrick Lamar Essentials

Compton rapper Kendrick Lamar’s dense wordplay and community-minded vision has earned him both the Pulitzer Prize in 2018 (a first for a rapper) and the headline slot at the Apple Music Super Bowl LIX Halftime Show in 2025. Most people heard K-Dot for the first time on 2012’s good kid, m.A.A.d city, a coming-of-age concept album that nonetheless yielded multi-platinum hits like “Swimming Pools (Drank)” and “Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe”, seven Grammy nominations and the no. 7 slot on Apple Music’s 100 Best Albums list. That resounding success emboldened the generational MC to explore live-band hybrids of jazz and funk on 2015’s To Pimp a Butterfly, all while still producing a single as accessible yet self-possessed as “King Kunta”. As for 2017’s DAMN., it’s no accident that the song titles are in all caps with a full stop, from the all-time clapback “HUMBLE.” to the slow-burn Rihanna collab “LOYALTY.”. With Lamar now firmly established in the culture, he was tapped to curate the soundtrack album for 2018’s Black Panther, giving him one of his signature tracks in “All the Stars”, a swooning pop crossover featuring his repeated creative partner SZA. He has remained dominant since then, flexing hard across multiple vocal modes on 2022’s scathing “N95” as if in training for his chart-topping 2024 diss track “Not Like Us”, powered by his ultra-public feud with one-time collaborator Drake. The same year’s “squabble up” and “tv off” reinforced both his fiery focus and talent for polyphonic delivery, slipping between voices as often as needed to hammer home his commentary on hip-hop and wider popular culture alike.