Kendrick Lamar
Section.80

You find yourself sitting there, near Griffith Park, in the dead of the losangelina night. Together with your trusty companion, the Observatory, you overlook the aerial view of LA, the City of Angels that darkness makes appear anything but reassuring. A bench, a chilly wind, and a thousand thoughts. You could have been on Woodland Hills, with Topanga Park leading you steeply as it is straight to the shimmering Malibu, yet you are there, helpless, staring in the distance at Downtown LA. With its skyscrapers, so imposing in the barren night, that they appear like giants in the most apathetic nothingness of architecture that disperses in a vertiginous expanse. One is far from the concrete cages that squeeze Manhattan, but like New York City, Los Angeles too is a contradictory melting pot. In its vastness, you can feel like Vinz and his friend Hubert in La Haine. At the top of a building in the suburbs, staring at a nighttime Paris. An ant lost in the microcosm. So here you are, not in France. You're in California, and the night is infinitely more disturbing than Lynch's mind conceived in nearby Mulholland Drive. Your name is Kendrick Lamar, and you are a kid from the hood, like so many others, born under the sign of the West Coast rap/hip-hop scene.

You take your old Cadillac, drive through the city. So empty, so depressing. At the intersections, you only see small 24-hour shops selling a bit of everything. The sidewalks and bus benches are home to the homeless or the junkie wanderers of the night. American Dream, ppfff, you smile bitterly. You drive along Sepulveda Boulevard, glimpsing blurred and indistinct one after the other Marina Del Rey, Hermosa Beach, able to become anonymous and lonely in the blink of an eye. You change course, not wanting to reach Long Beach's terminus. You could head back toward the city center, moving away from the Pacific, trying to get a closer view of that coiled skyline that from afar reminded you of a palace. A conglomerate of offices, banks, flashing lights illuminating deserted streets with cold neon. You reach along Figueroa Street, there at the Staples, where Kobe plays every night with his Lakers, where celebrities parade a few steps away at the Nokia Theatre and next to it you find the ESPN building, the sports network par excellence: it should all be sparkling, like in a dream. Illusory. There's nothing. A short distance away, you could enter Skid Row, a place where they advise you to wear a kevlar vest at certain nighttime hours. You, Kendrick, feel close to the existential discomfort of that neighborhood, but you live a bit further south, still in the heart of Los Angeles: The Hub. Hub City. Compton.

At some point, I should also talk about the record. About music. About this "Section .80", an independent release that anticipated the swift consecration of "good kid, m.A.A.d city". The truth is I'm not capable of doing so. So why plunge into a review of a rap record? I think to step out of my comfort zone. Yeah, right. Every now and then, it’s a good idea. Besides, it's the storytelling. The damn storytelling. It's something that fascinates me too much, and it so happens that good Kendrick is a master of it. Telling the story of Los Angeles, of Compton. Actually, Compton is not Los Angeles. Compton is Compton. A territory torn apart by internecine gang wars: the Surenos, the Bloods, the Crips, where kids who smile at you from the next desk in high school quickly become your friends, and with equal speed, you don't know if they'll make it to the end of the day. A drive-by shooting, being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Bloodlines that cross and mark you for life. And from the window of your room overlooking Rosecrans Avenue, you hope for a better future. Maybe following sports idols who win scholarships to the prestigious UCLA and USC, trying for a professional career in basketball or American football. Or in the worst moments, you'd just like to cut through Inglewood to reach LAX, catch a flight, and change your life. But many, too many, cannot. Muffled voices that need to be told, trying to stay on a straight path in difficulty. Poverty makes it hard not to fall into the trap of perdition and easy street crime. Kendrick narrates. With extraordinary flow. Unique.

In the morning, you get up, let the thin smog mist dissipate to reveal what might be called one of the most classic Californian blue skies. You take your skateboard, head to Venice, watch the kids doing their tricks and acrobatics, hear the incessant noise of the wheels on the asphalt, the chatter and slang spreading profusely in the air. A generation, maybe even your peers that you've seen too often destroyed by drug abuse, false myths, divided in ridiculous ethnic feuds. And why not make it clear right away: "Now I don't give a fuck If you black, white, asian, hispanic, goddamit. That don't mean shit to me, fuck your ethnicity, nigga". Kendrick is like this. He reels off anecdotes at breakneck speed, where sacred and profane mix, as on the cover. Bullets and bibles, a bit stereotypical, yes, no doubt, but with a kernel of truth. You can't help but think back to the Ronald Reagan Era in the '80s when your Compton was, as one might say, messed up. Where police sirens were what lulled you to sleep, and cocaine ran rampant in every garden of the boulevard. It's a constant balancing act between morality and immorality, overcoming adversity, or giving in to temptation, especially when maybe you have uncles ending up in jail, a father struggling to hold down exhausting work hours, and in the meantime, you have to try to protect your little sister. It's oppressive to think how easily one day you might end up behind bars at Twin Towers. A simple fork in the road to choose from when you're still a teenager. Failures in relationships are ordinary things, insignificant drops in a neighborhood that lets you drown. The only thing is to know how to react, find inspiration to get out of it. "Section.80" is also and above all this.

Yes, then, we were saying... the music. Boh, ecccccheneso. I can't explain beats, bases, rhythms, or anything else. I only know I will always remember a guy on a Big Blue Bus in Santa Monica with whom I exchanged a few words in transit, and he told me I absolutely had to listen to the new record by this Kendrick, how it was absolutely a bomb. We talked about university, he said he didn't have the money to attend it. Not even his family with double jobs could afford to continue his studies. He had a resigned look, dull eyes, but he kept pointing out how this Kendrick told the truth in his way. Or rather, an aspect. A scenario of a forgotten world, but in Los Angeles, you breathe it on every corner, burning areas above areas. From the decay of Union Station reaching the glossy glitz of Bel Air. It's sub-urban gritty reality expressed at its best, in a distressing dualism between monotony and hope. That guy was trying to tell me this about Kendrick. And I listened. That evening, I got a hold of this "Section .80", and it was love at first listen. Instant connection. Maybe it’s worth 1 star, for me it will always be 5. Next stop: Wilshire Blvd.

You gotta get up off your ass and get it, man.