Music With Michal

          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.

     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