Like many, I find myself disgusted with the current state of hip-hop, and I was anxious to give “Section.80” a listen and see what the 24-year-old lyricist had in store. Lamar was being touted by many as the next big emcee, someone who understands and embodies the idea of real hip-hop. At first I was slightly embarrassed, given that Lamar is quickly becoming a hot name in hip-hop and was named to XXL’s 2011 Freshman Class, but my embarrassment quickly turned to excitement as I scrolled through the user reviews of the album. Its best moments ("Rigamortis", "HiiiPower", "Kush & Corinthians", "A.D.H.D.") are simply dope as fuck, no qualifiers necessary.I pride myself on generally being up to date with the latest hip-hop news and album releases, both mainstream and underground, but I’ll admit I had never heard of Kendrick Lamar until I stumbled across “Section.80” while browsing iTunes last week. But self-serious flaws and all, Section.80 still stands as a powerful document of a tremendously promising young guy figuring out his voice.
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Dre hasn't yet taught Lamar how to hone all his best ideas into a few absolutely killer pieces of music maybe he still will. And certain moments just make me wince so hard, like this one, from "Hol' Up": "I wrote this record while 30,000 feet in the air/ Stewardess complimenting me on my nappy hair/ If I could fuck her in front of all these passengers/ They'd probably think I'm a terrorist." Those few lines add up to a repellent cauldron of horniness, persecution-complex fantasies, exhibitionism, and plain old youthful Bad Idea Jeans indulgence. Section.80 is an hour long, and it could drop probably a quarter of its running time without anyone missing anything. Given that Lamar is a talented and earnest young man with a lot to say and no big label nudging his music toward accessibility, it's only natural that he'd lose his way every once in a while. When he talks to girls, he sometimes recalls the supportively sincere Goodie Mob of "Beautiful Skin", actually counseling against cosmetics on "No Make-Up (Her Vice)": "Don't you know your imperfections is a wonderful blessing?/ From heaven is where you got it from." (Somehow, the redundant double-"from" makes the sentiment all the more adorable.) And he also recognizes self-destructive tendencies in himself: "I used to wanna see the penitentiary way after elementary/ Thought it was cool to look the judge in the face when he sentenced me." But it's not like he's some preacher/prophet figure he says "suck my dick" often enough that it gets boring. When he looks around, Lamar sees self-hate, nihilism, institutionalized oppression.
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Everywhere he looks, Lamar sees generational symptoms of the kids who came from the era of crack and Ronald Reagan. "You know why we crack babies cuz we born in the 80s," Lamar raps on the excellently emo relationship-song " A.D.H.D.", and that's a theme that comes up over and over. It's a young thinker attempting to describe the world as he sees it. A couple of guys from Lamar's Black Hippy crew- those guys really sound like Souls of Mischief when they get together- show up, but the album isn't a guest-heavy affair. The production, mostly from relative unknowns like THC and Sounwave, is almost uniformly excellent- a spaced-out blur of astral horns and blissed-out Fender Rhodes, with drums that only knock when they need to.
Instead, it gives him a chance to chase his muse wherever it runs. Section.80, Lamar's new album, arrives on a wave of blog-based buzz, but beyond a couple of ill-advised choruses, it doesn't make much attempt to present Lamar to major-label A&Rs or to a wider audience.
Instead, he's very much within the tradition of 90s groups like Souls of Mischief or the Pharcyde- self-deprecating and insanely talented kids who routinely ripped dizzy, slip-sliding flows over mellow jazz breaks. Lamar does exist within a strong West Coast continuum, but it has nothing to do with Dre.
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