To tell you my Kendrick Lamar stories I have to all the way back to early 2010 which is when I first read about K-Dot. Back then there weren’t any streaming platforms pushing songs to you through algorithms. Sure there were big record labels pushing music to radio stations and Pandora but there wasn’t a streamlined way to listen to up and coming independent musicians who weren’t signed to the majors. Hardcore music fans like myself lived on the blogs who were the purveyors of what was bubbling. I had 2 sites back then that I frequented… They were 2dopeboyz.com (shout out to Shake!) and smokingsection.net and they gave me a taste of all sorts of new rap from all over the country. I remember when I first heard Kendrick’s “Wanna Be Heard.” He was rapping over a Black Milk beat (who remains slept on) and he just sounded so driven. Kendrick was an unknown MC who had everything to prove.
The Kendrick Lamar EP dropped on 12/31/2009 and was good from front to back. I listened to that EP most of 2010. And for the record, it wasn’t what you think an EP would be. This was loaded with 15 songs. Kendrick put himself on the map with this EP. But Kendrick had more up his sleeve for 2010.
Kendrick’s name was bubbling in lots of music circles and it was “The Heart Pt. 2” where Kendrick took off. K-Dot rapped over the “A Peace of Light” beat from The Roots’ album, How I Got Over and you heard the emotion he had bottled up inside of him on the track. Right here was when I knew Kendrick was on his way to the top. This was the intro for his new mixtape Overly Dedicated which dropped on September 14, 2010. With this being the first track off the mixtape, I knew I was in a treat with the remainder of the album. and btw, Top Dawg, can we get all of the “The Heart” tracks on the DSP’s already?!
Not too long after the release of Overly Dedicated, Kendrick released a track where he was rapping over a Childish Gambino beat from his song off the Culdesac mixtape, “You Know Me.” Childish Gambino aka Donald Glover was just as underground as K-Dot at this time. So if you didn’t know, Childish Gambino made one of the hardest beats of the last decade. And then Kendrick dropped a video absolutely murking the beat. Kendrick was finally getting heard with all that he was doing. His TDE labelmates and Black Hippy crew were all on that same grind too and the music output was top notch. And the title of the track?? “Look Out for Detox”… If you don’t know what Detox is it was Dr. Dre’s long talked about album that well…. never came out. But for this banger to have a Detox reference it got people talking. Was Dre finally going to drop his follow up to Chronic 2001? Was Kendrick signed to Aftermath? The fans didn’t know but this track showed us all a different side of Kendrick and got us hyped.
Kendrick had all kinds of buzz around him but still hadn’t hit the mainstream yet. But I was trying to get him heard. For anybody I knew or encountered who was a hip hop head, I wouldn’t stop talking about Kendrick. How were people sleeping on songs like “The Heart Part 1?” Kendrick was too damn nice. He was next up.
And then his time really came…. On July 2nd, 2011 he dropped his mixtape Section.80 and the rest was history. It’s hard to believe that it’s the 10 year anniversary of this mixtape dropping. For a breakdown of the album, here is Anthony Fantano’s review. Favorite quote from the review is, “He’s getting bigger, but I’m not sure he’s for everybody.”
This mixtape was all that me and the homies would bump on our long drive to work. There were so many dope tracks on this project. I remember on the day it dropped, I was bumping “F*ck Your Ethnicity” with the girl I was dating and she was trying to conversate in my car and I refused to turn the volume down. We got into an argument on the way to the movie we went to watch but I firmly held my ground that it was the new Kendrick and you can’t touch the volume when I’m on one. When I listened to songs like “Poe Man’s Dreams,” nothing else mattered to me. When “Ronald Reagan Era” came on, I zoned out on life and went into Kendrick’s world. Within a week, me and my homies already memorized our favorite verses and our carpool trips into work turned into Section.80 performances because that’s about all that we cared about the summer of 2011. It’s so hard to pick one to track to include below but I’ll roll with “A.D.H.D” since it has the “Hol’ Up” intro. Shout out to Sounwave on the beat for both.
When I think of “A.D.H.D.”, I think of my homie Stro rapping/singing the first verse with me coming in on the background adlibs. If I hit Stro up right now and asked him to kick the verse he could go right into it. Lito could drop some lines from the album. Alan could spit some heat. To this day, I can’t go on a flight and not bump “Hol’ Up” while 30,000 feet in the air with my head nodding while giving zero f*cks who is around me or looking at me. Kendrick would hit my eardrums and that’s all I cared about. But sometimes he’d grab your eardrums, make your jaw drop, and force you to elbow the stranger next to you to mouth the words, “are you f’n hearing this sh*t?” That’s exactly what “Rigamortis” did to me when I first heard it. In the track, Kendrick turns his voice into a jazz instrument while he riffs off of the beat and shows you the definition of breath control. Dude is speeding up his flow all on one breath without falling off and even when you think he’s out of breath he slows it back down to end the verse.
I could honestly go track for track on Section.80 but you guys aren’t trying to read a 5,000 word essay. Let me just kick it over to my boy Pharrell so he can tell you about the impact Section.80 had on him. Pharrell loved all of the jazz in the mix just like many of us fans did.
While Kendrick really caught his mainstream buzz with GKMC, TPAB, and DAMN., the true OG fans will tell you it was the Kendrick Lamar EP, Overly Dedicated, and Section.80 that were his best projects. Some of you might even throw some older K-Dot mixtapes as well and I’m not mad at that one bit. Kendrick is just one of those special artists that’s greatness can’t be denied. While I think of who my top 5 emcees of all time are, Kendrick is always on that list. I’m not bumping him off for anybody. Pound for pound, he can go toe-to-toe with your favorite rapper. That verse on “Control” though??
And while most rappers fall off, Kendrick seems to get better with each album while never staying solely in one lane. He’s able to express himself over dope instrumentation time and time again. So on the 10th anniversary of the classic mixtape Section.80, I just had to give flowers to one of the dopest emcees to ever pick up a microphone.
I got to see him live in LA right after Overly Dedicated dropped with about 200 fans in attendance. I hit the Section.80 tour when it came to San Diego with about 700 fans in attendance. I saw him perform early in the afternoon on day 1 at Coachella in 2012 with about 500 watching. But the biggest regret I have was not going to see him back in 2011 when Snoop passed the West Coast torch to K-Dot up in LA. I was so close to going too… DAMN.
And Kendrick ain’t done…. There’s been some buzz that he’s working on music. And if that’s the case, you know it will be fresh when it drops because K-Dot is that dude. Props to Kendrick on the 10 year anniversary of Section.80. That mixtape is a front to back classic. Respect homie!