by Bronson Schmidt ’25
December 17, 2024
The opinions expressed here are strictly those of the writer and do not reflect the views of University School of Nashville or the Peabody Press.
No other artist in 2024 has gripped the music industry by the neck and wrung out its creative potential more than Kendrick Lamar. Lamar’s influence and musical ferocity was brought to the forefront of pop culture this past spring when Lamar incited a rap battle with rapper Drake that would sprawl the next several months as both rappers produced hit after hit.
In a year so filled with Kendrick Lamar’s viral moments and astronomically large singles, it’s easy to forget the creative prowess that has defined his artistry in years past. With the surprise release of GNX, Lamar beckons his listeners to reevaluate his life’s work with fresh ears.
Thus, the time for a Kendrick Lamar full album ranking is now.
7. Section.80
Section.80 may be the worst album in Kendrick’s discography, but it is certainly not a bad album. In fact, Section.80 is a very enjoyable and consistent listen. Released in 2011, Section.80 oozes with Kendricks witty, down to earth, and introspective personality. Despite being his first album, it demonstrates a purpose and confidence that instantly invites the listener to widen their ears and open their mind to the parables and narratives of this 54 minute project.
Section.80 follows Kendrick Lamar in his infancy as a rapper, chronicling his life experiences as he navigates a world of systemic oppression and music industries. Section.80 paints an all encompassing picture of his hometown, Compton, using blunt storytelling and imbued metaphor, peppered with spoken word monologues by the pitched down omniscient voice of Kendrick Lamar.
Where Section.80 suffers compared to his other albums is its relative complacency in its stylistic concepts and the occasional repetitiveness of its tracklist. Many songs stay comfortable in a certain sonic landscape of fuzzy beats and wavy vocals, a style which Lamar had not refined as he would in his later albums. Some songs suffer from this complacency more than others, with the track “Tammy’s Song (Her Evils)” boasting one of the worst instrumentals Kendrick has ever produced paired with the most bigoted lyrics the artist would ever utter.
All in all, Section.80 is a solid album, but its above-mediocrity pales in comparison to the creative grandiosity of Kendrick’s later projects.
Best songs:
- “ADHD”
- “Rigamortus”
- “Hiiipower”
Worst songs:
- “Tammy’s Song (Her Evils)”
Section.80 scores a 7/10.
6. DAMN.
Kendrick’s 2017 studio album is one of his most diverse and chaotic projects, and not in a good way. DAMN explores the nature of good and evil, following Kendrick’s descent into moral ambiguity as he evaluates himself and his role as an influential person. Kendrick invites his listeners to join him as he synthesizes the past, present, and future of American society in a manner akin to a prophet.
While the concepts of this album hold incredible potential, the album struggles to consistently explore them with the creative rigor that Kendrick demonstrates in other projects. Many songs sacrifice their sonic prowess in favor of accessibility, creating moments that bore the listener and serve merely as filler tracks between the big hitters of the album. Kendrick’s ability to achieve accessibility while maintaining the compelling music of DAMN is demonstrated by tracks such as “DNA” and “PRIDE”, whose high quality leave the listener even more disappointed during the dips in quality that dot the album such as “YAH”, “LOVE”, and “GOD”.
Despite DAMN’s occasional mediocrity, Kendrick’s lyricism and delivery is always incredibly on point. Kendrick synthesizes his own life with the sociopolitical climate of America, presenting a relevant and introspective story that questions the morality and dialectics of the country. The highs of this album reach incredible climaxes, with its best songs standing out as Kendrick’s best work.
All in all, DAMN is still a good album. Where DAMN struggles is its grandiosity; Kendrick’s goals are so lofty and so grand that he was doomed to fail in meeting them. Kendrick went into DAMN trying to creatively outperform To Pimp A Butterfly, while reaching the same commercial success as good kid, m.A.A.d city. This goal was too high for DAMN, and for that reason it has landed at spot number six.
Best songs:
- “DNA”
- “XXX”
- “FEAR”
- “DUCKWORTH”
Worst songs:
- “YAH”
- “LOVE”
- “GOD”
DAMN. scores a 7.5/10.
5. untitled unmastered.
untitled unmastered is one of Kendricks most strange and organic albums, in a sense that is oddly endearing as a listener. This 2016 project is not necessarily an album, but more a collection of B-sides from its predecessor, To Pimp A Butterfly. However, due to the sheer creativity oozing from each of these songs, this collection of B-sides retroactively becomes an album, almost on its own accord.
Every song on untitled unmastered is (surprise) untitled and unmastered, displaying a date instead of a name. The anonymity of each song’s title allows the song to exist in and of itself, escaping the expectations and definitions of specific song titles. This musical freedom is bolstered by the B-side nature of these tracks; each song has been reborn into a completely new medium, with no expectations of cohesiveness or commercial success. And yet, this very lack of expectation allows the album to soar.
untitled unmastered’s tracklist is a spectacular offshoot of the unique and high quality musical era that characterized Kendrick’s creative streak between 2014 and 2016. Songs often use live instrumentation and jazz samples in parallel, offering a lively backdrop for Kendrick’s sprawling and calculated preachings. Every single song pays homage to some era of black music, integrating history into the contemporary lyrical musings.
While the freedom and patchwork selection of its tracklist creates a fascinating album, its intentional inconsistency inevitably leads to a relative lack of compelling narrative structure that Kendrick’s other albums possess. The album also holds one of Kendrick’s most uncomfortable and unlistenable songs, “Untitled 04 | 08.14.2014”, who’s SZA feature is trampled by intimate whispering and an intentionally disconnected beat. While this song does provide a somewhat interesting transition into Untitled 05, it marks an incredibly uncomfortable minute and 39 seconds that brings this album down to the fifth spot when accompanied with its narrative sporadicness.
Best songs:
- “Untitled 05”
Worst songs:
- “Untitled 04”
untitled unmastered scores 8.5/10.
4. GNX
In many ways, GNX mirrors untitled unmastered in quality and purpose. Where untitled unmastered collected a variety of tracks reflecting on contemporary racial politics that paid homage to soul and jazz, GNX collects a variety of tracks reflecting on Kendrick’s current standing in the rap industry that pay homage to west coast rap. The difference in GNX and untitled unmastered is GNX’s higher consistency, and more pointed drive and purpose.
GNX, released in late November of 2024, follows one of the most influential rap battles in history– a battle which many believed Kendrick won. Similarly to how Not Like Us was a bombastic victory lap that followed the sinister dissection of Drake’s psyche Meet the Grahams, GNX is a victory lap following the entire Kendrick vs. Drake beef. GNX takes the hatred and intensity of Kendrick’s beef with Drake and transforms it into a pervasive love for the West coast.
GNX is at its core a love letter the Los Angeles and its iconically organic and complex music scene. The album itself is filled to the brim with LA production and features, with Kendrick collaborating with relatively unknown artists whom he brought into the spotlight with GNX’s release.
Kendricks support for LA isn’t just demonstrated through his aiding of upcoming artists, but is also shown through the sonic landscape that colors the album. Every song feels like an organic product of the very soul of LA, with songs like “squabble up” and “tv off” brimming with the same catchy bounciness that DJ Mustard brought to “Not Like Us”. The latter song, “tv off”, is in many ways proving to be another “Not Like Us”, with Kendrick’s iconic delivery of its beatmakers tag “mustard”.
Kendrick shows a from-the-heart vulnerability in songs such as “luther”, “the heart part 6”, and “gloria”, demonstrating how even during his most viral moments of 2024, he can still foster the same emotional depth as his other more conceptual projects. “reincarnated” adds even more depth to this love, creating one of Kendrick’s most compelling and significant tracks.
All in all, GNX is a phenomenal album, not just for its dynamic music but also for its cultural relevance. While songs such as “man at the garden” and “gnx” may provide some slight downgrades in quality, the album provides an overall cohesive experience with songs designed to be reflections of the power of LA more than anything else. Even considering this, Kendrick’s other albums provide even more powerful experiences.
Best songs:
- “reincarnated”
- “heart pt. 6”
Worst song:
- “man at the garden”
GNX scores a 9/10.
3. Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers
Kendrick’s 2022 release, Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers, marks an incredible moment in mainstream music history where mental health was approached as a tangible societal problem rather than a symptom of a weak person. Mr. Morale demonstrates Kendrick as more than just a lyricist; he is a voice of the times, a thinker who has delved into the rabbit hole of therapy and emerged as a wiser being– but who is still a human being.
The concept of Mr. Morale is one of the most unique and engaging that Kendrick has delivered yet. Each song metaphorically presents itself as recordings of individual therapy sessions, dividing up Kendrick’s mental anguish in a parasocial and hostile world into dissectable chunks which can be explored with pointed lyricism and varied sonic landscapes. Mr. Morale is a double album, so it boasts an impressive eighteen songs. Each side of the album mirrors the sequence of emotional development, following similar musical structures that demonstrate the pervasiveness of Kendrick’s use of mirrors as symbolism.
Throughout the entire album runs an undercurrent of isolated piano and string sections, from the very first track to the very last. Nearly every track includes this piano, offering a sort of narrative thruline that weaves and connects the sonic differences in each song. This, when paired with the concise subject matters in songs due to the therapy session structure, allows for an incredible diversity between each song. This diversity allows an emotional vulnerability provided in heavy tracks such as “Mother I Sober” and “Auntie Diaries”, while simultaneously producing head bopping bangers like “N95” and “Mr. Morale”.
Mr. Morale’s only weak points come in its occasional inability to draw the listener back into the 78 minute endeavor, with songs like “Die Hard”, “Purple Hearts”, and “Silent Hill” not reaching the same peaks as other songs. But even then, these songs are integral in providing the variety of emotional sentiment that color this album’s virtuosity.
Best songs:
- “United in Grief”
- “We Cry Together”
- “Auntie Diaries”
- “Mother I Sober”
Worst songs:
- There are none!
Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers scores a 9/10.
2. good kid, m.A.A.d city
good kid, m.A.A.d city is undoubtedly Kendrick’s most monumental and well crafted narrative to date. Released in 2012, good kid, m.A.A.d city follows the story of a young Kendrick Lamar as he finds his identity through his traumatic and transformative childhood in Compton, California. The album’s narrative is just as nuanced and emotionally diverse as a novel or movie, with the grounded grandiosity of its chronological narrative feeling more akin to a film than an album.
Musically, the album subtly pays homage to the sonic traditions of west coast rap, while adding a certain stylistic flair that embodies Kendrick’s spirit and allows the album to exist in a novel middle ground between old and new. Kendrick’s musical style on good kid, m.A.A.d city explores a vast array of different rap environments, all tied together by his characteristic flow and narrative lyricism. The versatility of songs on good kid, m.A.A.d city is proven by its ability to provide some of Kendricks biggest commercial hits and most emotional personal confessions.
good kid, m.A.A.d city is in many ways irrefutable proof that Kendrick does, in fact, have classics, as he put bluntly in last spring’s Drake diss track Euphoria. Kendrick achieves a rarity in the music industry, as he created commercially viral songs that were simultaneously nuanced and emotionally charged. good kid, m.A.A.d city will go down in history as one of the most driven and high quality concept albums ever created.
Best Tracks:
- “m.A.A.d. city”
- “Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst”
Worst tracks:
- There are none!
good kid, m.A.A.d city scores a 9.5/10.
1. To Pimp A Butterfly
2015’s To Pimp A Butterfly has proved itself to be one of the best albums ever created, and for good reason. The ambitiousness and grandiosity that Kendrick brings to this album is otherworldly, exuding a confidence and purpose so potent that it is impossible to look away from.
Kendricks narrative prowess, vocal technical ability, capacity for collaboration, and sonic boldness creates an album which is overwhelmingly complex, but enthusing to listen to. The complex web of music that To Pimp A Butterfly weaves is one which a listener must throw themselves into with full force, allowing themselves to be tangled in its beautiful grandiosity. Once a listener allows themselves to be immersed into the world of To Pimp A Butterfly, a vast maze of pure artistry is revealed to them, with each path looping back into each other.
To Pimp A Butterfly transforms music into language, and language into music. The lush and intense jazz instrumentation croons to the listener, calcifying the complex history of black music into a monumental homage to its deepest roots. The albums music becomes more than background noise, becoming just as focal as Kendrick’s own voice through its craftsmanship and emotional resonance. Kendrick’s vocal delivery mirrors that of an instrument, shifting into styles reminiscent of drum fills, saxophone solos, and guitar lines. Kendrick’s lyricism is poetry in its deepest sense, with each song diving head first into the convoluted world of racial politics and emerging with a newfound sublime connection. Kendrick’s journey to some greater truth is not just demonstrated by each song, but by an engaging narrative that colors the entire album. To Pimp A Butterfly tells the story of black men and women, starving rappers, gang life, industry executives, systemic oppression, religion, intellectual theory– the list goes on and on, with every subject building perfectly off of the other.
The album’s most striking feature is its driving poem which is slowly introduced line by line in between each song. The poem’s conclusion offers one of the most conceptually elegant finishers in all of music history, one which is better experienced firsthand instead of by reading spoilers.
If good kid, m.A.A.d city is a movie, To Pimp A Butterfly is an opera, a movie, an album, a book, and a life all at once. Whereas DAMN. sets its goals so high that Kendrick couldn’t reach them, To Pimp A Butterfly’s goals were so incredibly organic and personal that Kendrick inadvertently created one of the best albums of all time.
Best songs:
- “Alright”
- “How Much A Dollar Cost”
- “The Blacker The Berry”
- “i”
Worst songs:
- There are none!
To Pimp A Butterfly scores a 10/10.
