Hey all. Quickie entry today.
I went on an album buying spree a week or two ago. All the albums I bought turned out to be really good, which was a pleasant surprise, but the best of all of them was undoubtedly the hip-hop début to end all hip-hop débuts, Good Kid mAAd City. If you follow hip-hop, or underground music in general, you already know about this album. In it, all the elements of a good rap album - lyrics, personality, subject matter, beats, etc - coalesce to form a conscious-minded coming-of-age story that felt like a film. It basically launched Kendrick Lamar from "that interesting up-and-comer who got noticed by Dr Dre" to "OH MY GOD YOU GUYS THIS IS THE NEW TUPAC".
But when you make that kind of album, where do you go from there? I mean, sure, he bought himself some relevance with the Control verse, but sooner or later he's going to have to make another album, and it WILL be compared to GKMC. The way I see it, he's probably going one of two ways:
a) the Nas way. In this scenario his next album will hit the #1 spot, but will be less inspired than the début. He will continue to make subpar albums until he decides to make a spiritual successor to the début, at which point he'll be back in critical favour.
![B)]()
the Wu-Tang way. In this scenario he'll enjoy commercial favour for a few years, but then drop out of fashion and continue to make music for a solely underground audience.
Or he could just make that Black Hippy album. That's the most likely action plan.
I went on an album buying spree a week or two ago. All the albums I bought turned out to be really good, which was a pleasant surprise, but the best of all of them was undoubtedly the hip-hop début to end all hip-hop débuts, Good Kid mAAd City. If you follow hip-hop, or underground music in general, you already know about this album. In it, all the elements of a good rap album - lyrics, personality, subject matter, beats, etc - coalesce to form a conscious-minded coming-of-age story that felt like a film. It basically launched Kendrick Lamar from "that interesting up-and-comer who got noticed by Dr Dre" to "OH MY GOD YOU GUYS THIS IS THE NEW TUPAC".
But when you make that kind of album, where do you go from there? I mean, sure, he bought himself some relevance with the Control verse, but sooner or later he's going to have to make another album, and it WILL be compared to GKMC. The way I see it, he's probably going one of two ways:
a) the Nas way. In this scenario his next album will hit the #1 spot, but will be less inspired than the début. He will continue to make subpar albums until he decides to make a spiritual successor to the début, at which point he'll be back in critical favour.
the Wu-Tang way. In this scenario he'll enjoy commercial favour for a few years, but then drop out of fashion and continue to make music for a solely underground audience.Or he could just make that Black Hippy album. That's the most likely action plan.