YMMV / Kendrick Lamar

• Award Snub:
  • Hoo boy. Despite receiving seven^note Best New Artist, Best Rap Song (as a featured artist on A$AP Rocky's "Fuckin' Problems), Best R&B Performance (as a featured artist on Miguel's "How Many Drinks?"), Best Rap Performance ("Swimming Pools (Drank)"), Best Rap/Sung Collaboration ("Now or Never"), Best Rap Album and Album of the Year (both for good kid, m.A.A.d city) nominations at the 2014 Grammys, Lamar didn't win one. Worse still, four of those awards were lost to the same act—Macklemore & Ryan Lewis.
    • Macklemore himself contacted Kendrick via Instagram, saying he didn't deserve the Best Rap Album award, and Kendrick should have won in his opinion.
  • Taylor Swift's 1989 beating out To Pimp a Butterfly for Album of the Year at the 2016 ceremony. At least he won Best Rap Album...
  • And again at the 2018 ceremony. Kendrick once again swept the rap categories but lost all the main awards to Bruno Mars. Kendrick however got something bigger with his "DAMN." album winning the Pulitzer Prize.
  • And, somehow, again in 2023. Kendrick got 3 of the rap categories, yet lost all the main awards - including a jaw-dropping loss in Album of the Year to Harry Styles.
• Awesome Music: "Rigamortis", most, if not all of good kid, m.A.A.d city and To Pimp A Butterfly, his verses on Big Sean's "Control", Pusha T's "Nosetalgia" and Eminem's "Love Game".
  • DAMN. in its entirety. That is all.
• Broken Base: Not on Kendrick himself but with the Pulitzer being given to DAMN. While some fans are happy Kendrick is the the first non-instrumentalist to win the prestigious award, some feel To Pimp a Butterfly and its political message were more worthy of the prize.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Quickly became this for hip-hop in general after albums like good kid, m.A.A.d city, To Pimp A Butterfly, and DAMN. are giving praise to both critics and audiences alike, most of whom who don't even listen to hip-hop to begin with, something that haven't been seen since Eminem at his peak.
• Even Better Sequel: While Section.80 was released to very mild critical and commercial success, GKMC received near-universal applause and commercial fanfare. Then TPAB came to even more acclaim and success. Then DAMN. was released to even greater acclaim than that.
• He Really Can Act: Kendrick had his acting debut on an episode of Power and, though it was just a bit part as a rambling drug addict, he played it quite well, making him a One-Scene Wonder for the episode.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: When HUMBLE. first dropped, there was a question as to whether or not the song's beat was inspired by the Suicide Squad soundtrack hit "Purple Lamborghini" by Skrillex featuring Rick Ross, which the answer to was suggested to be no. Eventually we got a remix of the song featuring Skrillex.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Many songs have gotten a boost in their streams and radio play simply because Kendrick had a verse on the track.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • YAWK YAWK YAWK YAWK!!!
  • The chorus of "Backseat Freestyle", in spades.
  • The album cover of DAMN., to the point where people began to parody it due to the simplicity of it all.
    • "ELEMENT.", one of DAMN.'s songs, has the highly exploitable chorus of "If I gotta slap a pussy-ass nigga, I'ma make it look sexy", prompting everybody to snowball it into "If I gotta [[X]], I'ma make it look sexy".
    • The line "Laughing to the bank like aaaa-haaaaa" from "GOD."
  • "Listen to DAMN. backwards" became one for fans when Kendrick bluntly said that the album has to be listened to in reversed chronological order. It endured Serial Escalation when Kendrick's label released a collector's edition of the album in reverse chronological order.
  • "MY LEFT STROKE JUST WENT VIRAL!"
  • "Girl...I know ya want dis DIH!"
  • His verse on "range brothers", a collaborative song with his cousin Baby Keem, where he repeats "Let's get this shit!" and "Top o' the morning!" ad infinitum, made for prime meme fodder among fans due to its bizarre nature. Many comparisons were made to a particular online personality who's known for saying "Top o' the morning".
  • From "Silent Hill": "Push these niggas off me like 'huuuuh'!"
  • From "Auntie Diaries": "My auntie is a man now", and by an extent, "Demetrius is Mary-Ann now".
  • The censored cut of "We Cry Together" has to be heard to be believed. Instead of recording a clean version, they decided to mute all of the curse words, so there's this awkward silence throughout the track.
    "I SWEAR I'M TIRED OF THESE EMOTIONAL-... UNGRATEFUL-... ....."
• Most Wonderful Sound: The Signature Line of "m.A.A.d city", "YAWK YAWK YAWK YAWK!" Guaranteed to make a crowd go apeshit every time. Even Taylor Swift isn't immune.
• Misaimed Fandom:
  • "Swimming Pools (Drank)" is not a song advocating the parties and events that it is frequently played at. It's a stark criticism of the drinking and partying lifestyle.
  • Much of good kid, m.A.A.d city's singles, especially "Backstreet Freestyle", have very sexualized and/or arrogant lyrics that are subverted later on in the album when K.Dot faces the harsh reality of the lifestyle he leads and learns faith and family is a better focus in "Sing of Me, I'm Dying of Thirst" and "Real". Those who haven't heard the whole album are doubtlessly going to miss the point of a young and ignorant K.Dot wanting to fuck the world with an Eiffel Tower-sized dick for three days without the later subversion.
  • "Auntie Diaries" features Kendrick using the word "faggot" as a way to point out his early years of ignorance over the word in order to illustrate how he learned to be more careful with it, in particular with two people he knew who came out as transgender, and criticize the usage of said word in hip-hop culture, even providing an argument over N-Word Privileges. While this point got across to many, there are still some who only fixate on Kendrick saying "faggot" and feel he's being homophobic in the song, despite a huge chunk of the LGBT community not only praising the song but pointing out that Kendrick still makes a strong point despite the usage of the word.
• Narm: The inexplicable clean version of "We Cry Together". What happens when you take one of the finest examples of Cluster F-Bomb in music and remove all the cursing? Pure comedy gold, that's what.
• Narm Charm: Kendrick's screams in "u" really, really shouldn't work, but they become sinister and even tear-jerking within the context of the album.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • Jay Rock, the only member of Kendrick's Black Hippy group to show up on a main track in good kid, m.A.A.d city, delivers an absolutely amazing verse on "Money Trees".
  • Kendrick himself on pretty much every guest verse he did in 2013.
    • Special mention must go to his verse on Big Sean's "Control" — not only did he upstage Big Sean and Jay Electronica, his verse briefly sparked actual responses from other rappers both by names he mentioned who were going on the defensive and by ones he didn't, irked that they supposedly didn't warrant mention.
• Tough Act to Follow: To Pimp a Butterfly is widely seen as Kendrick's opus, and his following albums — while definitely seen as good and winning tons of critical praise (DAMN. even won Kendrick a Pulitzer) — haven't received as overwhelmingly positive a reaction. The most common critiques of DAMN. and Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers are that they're not quite as thematically or narratively cohesive, and not quite breaking new ground artistically as the lightning-in-a-bottle experience that is TPAB. It's a bit telling that for Mr. Morale in particular, much of the year-end acclaim went not to any tracks from the album, but from "The Heart Part 5", a teaser single that did receive near-universal acclaim and set a very high bar for the album.
• The Woobie:
  • Kendrick in GKMC. He gets set up by Sherane, jumped by her cousins, and sees his friend die trying to get revenge for him over the same incident. And this was all a true story...
    • No wonder he says "Everybody gon' respect the shooter, but the one in front of the gun lives forever" in "Money Trees".
  • In-Universe, Keisha, the prostitute whose story he tells in "Keisha's Song" from Section.80.
  • Kendrick in "FEAR." as he showcases all of his fears throughout his life from a child (fear of disobeying his mother) to a teenager (fear of dying in the streets, never being able to live life to the fullest) to him as an adult prior to To Pimp a Butterfly (fear of losing all he has built up). DAMN.

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