The remarkable rise of
Rapper Kendrick Lamar deserves a more compelling book than this hyperbolic account
The Art of Peer Pressure, a standout track on Kendrick Lamar’s 2012 album Good Kid, MAAD City, is a nail-biting account of disaster averted. Billed as a true story, it describes an eventful day the 17-year-old Lamar spent under the influence of his more erratic
Friends in Compton,
Los Angeles. After they burgle a house,
police sirens enter the mix and Lamar imagines being arrested for the first time, but there’s a characteristic twist: “They made a right, then made a left/Then made a right, then made another right/One lucky night with the homies.” There’s a similar what-if quality to Duckworth, the final track on 2017’s Damn. Lamar recounts a potentially fatal altercation in the 1990s between his father, Kenny Duckworth, and Anthony Tiffith, the man who would later launch his career through Top Dawg Entertainment. “If Anthony killed Ducky,” Lamar concludes, “Top Dawg could be servin’ life/ While I grew up without a father and die in a gunfight.”
His albums aren’t gangster movies or political manifestos but morality plays