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A Good Kid in a Mad City

          During my first semester of high school, a friend told me to listen to an album called   Good Kid, M.A.A.D City   by Kendrick Lamar. I did not know what to expect from it, but he made the statement that this is the greatest album he has ever heard. Naturally, I was intrigued and wanted to see how much of his claim was hyperbole. After listening to the album many times over, I started to agree with his very strong opinion. Obviously as years have went by I have listened to a lot more music, but the one thing that has stayed constant is that I could put many Kendrick Lamar projects in a greatest albums conversation and my claims would not be thought of as crazy.               Kendrick Lamar was a boy from Compton that began rapping around the age of 16. I have actually listened to some of his earlier mixtapes and they are nothing like the albums that he dropped in the last decade. They are forgettable club and radio songs, and they do not have any introspective nature to them.
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Always $trive And Prosper

     There are many artists that I have followed and grown with over the years, yet A$AP Rocky is a rapper that I will always consider as my personal favorite. I initially discovered Rocky during the summer before beginning high school with a single called “Goldie”. This track had an addictive beat with a whistle layered behind the bass, but the highlight of the track was the actual rapping of Rocky. His flow and rhyme scheme was like butter on this track, very smooth and complex throughout. He also utilized a deep voice filter on the hook which added to the overall hypnotic nature of the song. This was the lead up single to his debut album and once it was released I fell in love with what A$AP was going for in the album.               A$AP Rocky’s first project was a mixtape by the name of  Live.Love.A$AP  and I actually had to go back and listen to this after his debut album because I was not aware of it at the time. This mixtape is incredible and has popular songs on it such as “Pes
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Mr. Ocean's Masterpiece

                Frank Ocean has stood out to me as a once-in-a-lifetime artist from the first day that I listened to his music. My first exposure to Frank Ocean was with the single “Swim Good” which was released in late 2011. A friend told me to listen to the song, and then suggested that if I enjoy the single then I should listen to his whole mixtape,   Nostalgia Ultra , which was released earlier in the year. I ended up loving the song just upon the first listen, and I ended up indulging in the entire project that Frank released in 2011. In conclusion, I fell in love with Frank’s voice, production, and subject matter very quickly.               Then a little over a year later, Frank Ocean released a full length album follow up to his highly acclaimed mixtape. The album was called  Channel Orange  and it quickly became an album that everyone needed to listen to just due to the sheer talent displayed on the project. The highlight song for me is “Pyramids”, which is a deep analysis on h
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A Young Thug Comes to Life

               My first time listening to Young Thug was a truly revolutionary moment in my life. I heard his first song towards the end of the 8 th   grade going into my freshman year of high school. The song in question was “Check” off of the album   Barter 6 , and it was such an amazing mix off emotions when I first listened. Initially, I was quite confused on the exact lyrics that were being spoken due to the fact that it was utilizing a lot of Atlanta slang that I was not conditioned to. Yet, even without me knowing the lyrics I had an energy within myself that was indescribable. I realized very quickly that I was listening to an individual that was very special.               Young Thug’s upbringing was a very rough one for any individual. He was the tenth child born into a family of eleven children in total. That meant that he was under one mother with ten other siblings, which he has mentioned in interviews many times that “it was tough.” Along with that, he was expelled from s
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The King of The Fall

            The Weeknd has become the largest artist in the world right now. He has almost 63 million listeners on Spotify as well as being ranked number 1 in most streamed artist on the platform. Yet, I remember first listening to the Weeknd at the beginning of 2012, and he was far from the well-known celebrity he is today. There was a lot of mystery shrouding The Weeknd at that time and the music was the only window into his life. With him having such a commercially successful year thus far, I wanted to analyze why he is such a compelling artist and why he has remained relevant over the past decade.               The projects that put Weeknd on the map were his first three mixtapes  House of Balloons, Thursday,  and  Echoes of Silence . They would later go on to be released under a large compilation album in late 2012 under the name of  Trilogy . These three mixtapes have gone on to be legendary within The Weeknd’s discography because of how raw and unfiltered they are. They show a l
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A Savage is Born

            My first exposure to 21 Savage was at the start of my freshman year in college. He had just released an album that was called   Savage Mode   and it was all produced by Metro Boomin. The album gained immense traction in the mainstream due to the exhilarating single “No Heart”. The song was very cold and dark, both in lyricism and production. Just by listening to that one song, an individual could tell that 21 Savage had seen things in his life that most of could never imagine. As I went on to listen to the whole album, I was able to see a glimpse into a way of life that was far from ordinary and how such a brutal upbringing can shape a person.                21 Savage was bubbling around the Atlanta scene since 2015, but he really started to focus on the music in 2016 which was the turning point for his career.  Savage Mode  made him noticed on the map and he also would go on to be on the freshman list for the XXL publication. Yet, just having an exciting debut does not gua
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The Oxymoron of a ScHoolboy

                My first exposure to ScHoolboy Q was in 2012, which was my freshman year of high school. There was a song called “Hands on the Wheel” floating around by an upcoming artist that was named ScHoolboy Q. I am always open to new music so I decided to see if this song would be a track that I could add to my playlist. This song was not only added to the playlist, but it also made me listen to   Habits & Contradictions , the whole album which “Hands on the Wheel” was released under. I loved the entire record and it made me very excited to see what ScHoolboy would evolve into.                 ScHoolboy Q’s first official album release came in 2014 and it was called  Oxymoron . This album was absolutely spectacular and it was a true moment in time, both in regards to rap music and popular music. I remember going to school on the Friday morning once this album was dropped, and everyone was buzzing about it. The album was a tremendous piece of work because it had quality produc
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