Kendrick Lamar has been all over the blogosphere over the last couple of weeks after his critically acclaimed studio album Section.80. With the buzz surrounding the Compton emcee, I decided to finally give the young 24-year-old some spins on my iPod. I was awestruck. Section.80 is one of the best releases of the year and I was infuriated that I had not given the ferocious spitter the time of day before.
The album is a lyrical powerhouse filled with themes of corrupted youth growing up in Compton, CA who were born in the “Ronald Reagan Era,” which is also the title of one of the first tracks he leaked from the album. Section.80 is virtually unskippable filled with banger after banger of passionate, heartfelt lyrics detailing the thoughts, worries or braggadocio of the superb rapper. If you have not listened yet, please do. For a well-worth $15, you can cop a limited edition signed physical copy of the album from his indie label Top Dawg Entertainment website. Or if you would rather get it immediately, you can find it on iTunes.
Last week, Kendrick dropped a standout track from Section.80 – the song “A.D.H.D.” A mesmerizing track and video directed by Va$htie. In the video, Kendrick and his buddies are leisurely hanging out in the neighborhood, when they start to ride bikes to a house party as he spits his bars about the afflictions of his age group who were birthed in the 1980’s during the peak of the US Crack epidemic, or the “Ronald Reagan Era.”
Two bars that truly stand out to me come in the hook:
“Got a high tolerance when your age don’t exist.”
As a whole, the song is a social commentary about how everyone around him gets drugged out on the regular on whatever it is that is available to them. Although only 23 at the time the song was written, all of his pals have high tolerances to these drugs obviously because of prolonged use. Personally, I believe when he spits, “…when your age don’t exist” I believe he is commenting on how his Compton buddies feel about the meaning of their life. It has been said tons of times in rap how people growing up in that gang-inflicted area have a very short life expectancy. So, at the age of 23, they are past their life expectancy so their mindset is “Fuck it, let’s just stay fucked up. We aren’t supposed to be alive anyways.”
In the first verse, he spits:
“You know when you part of Section 80, and you feel like no can relate, cause you are, you are, a loner, loner, marijuana, endorphins, make you stronger, stronger.”
Extremely powerful lyrics. He feels like his peers were given the short straw when it came to their environment in which they grew up and consequently feel like loners. Kids whose woes are not relatable to the rest of society except for their similar friends who are all apart of the crack generation “Section 80.” Getting high is the only way to escape their worries so in effect it makes them stronger.
Verse two shows Kendrick meeting a young cutie and depicting a quick sex scene before a friend walks in unexpectedly with a pound of chronic and the pleasure abruptly ends as she focuses on getting even higher off of the “Bay Area kush.”
He closes out the song with the words:
“Ecstacy, shrooms, blow, dro, hoes, whatever you like. You can have all my shine, I’ll give you the light.”
Obviously, his crew gets down and parties hard. A standout track from Section.80 with a spacy beat handled by relatively unknown producer Sounwave on the boards.
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