Kendrick tells the story of the internal struggle within a 'good kid' trapped in the trenches of gang-banging. Kendrick digs deeper into the electricity between him and Sherane over the silky sample of Janet Jackson's 'Any Time, Any Place.' Drake comes in mid-way to lend his own story of lust, rhyming, 'Oh girl, you test my patience, with all these seductive photographs and all these one-off vacations you've been taking/ clearly a lot for me to take in.' robbery ('The Art of Peer Pressure') and rhyming ('Backseat Freestyle), and forewarns the future ('Everybody going to respect the shooter, but the one in front of the gun lives forever').

'Money Trees' gives insight into the rapper's present ('I've been hustling all day, this a way, that a way, through canals and alley ways, just to say, money trees is the perfect place for shade'), past ( i.e. 'I never was a gang banger, I mean I never was stranger to the funk neither/ I really doubt it/ Rush a ni**a quick and then we'd laugh about it/ That's ironic cause I've never been violent/ Until I'm with the homies,' Kendrick raps. Sound bites of his friends, during the ride and robbery, amplify the difference between Kendrick and his boys. As Tabu's production turns from smooth to sinister over Suspekt's 'Helt Alene' sample - coloring in the moods of the episodes within their day-to-day Compton living - Kendrick begins to tell the story of a planned robbery. 'The Art of Peer Pressure' depicts the change of Lamar's character when he's around his boys. Kendrick lays boastful rhymes over a bed of Hit-Boy-produced menacing sounds. 'I can feel the changes/ I can feel the new people around me, just want to be famous/ You can see that my city found me and then put me on stages/ To me that's amazing/ To you that's a quick check/ With all disrespect let me say this,' K.Dot rhymes. city' cut, before getting into the difference of motives and lifestyles between him and the next person (rapper, label insider) within the current state of the music industry. 'I'm a sinner that's probably going to sin again/ Lord forgive me/ Lord forgive me/ Things I don't understand,' Kendrick opens the second 'good kid, m.a.a.d.

The opening prayer and his final bar - 'I pulled up, a smile on my face, and then I see/ Two ni**as, two black hoods/ I froze as my phone rang' - gives listeners a sneak peek into coming stories that go into Kendrick's adolescence. An eerie Tha Bizness-produced beat is introduced at the end of the prayer and calls forth a story of a sexually-driven relationship between his 17-year-old self and a young woman named Sherane.

city' opens with a prayer for eternal salvation recited by Kendrick Lamar's longtime friends. Hit-Boy, The Neptunes, Just Blaze, Scoop Deville, Sounwave, and more plush the album with production that pulls inspiration from the sounds of 80s and 90s rap, from coast to coast.Д¬heck out a track-by-track breakdown of the standard edition of Kendrick Lamar's major-label debut.ДЎ. Still, walking along a road less traveled doesn't sound like a subconscious motive of Kendrick's, but rather the icing that glosses over the album. An ethos of freedom - of both internal and external - builds throughout the album, as Kendrick tells of his story through the creative outlet that saved him from an alternate life ending.

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