Kendrick Lamar’s debut album “Good Kid, M.A.D.D. City” contains the basic, essential elements of a novel: a protagonist faced with an antagonistic outer world, plot and its arc—from opening scene to crisis to climax on down to denouement, a narrative connected through scenes, and character development and expression through dialogue. It follows the structure of a coming-of-age story—a sub-genre defined by a young person growing with the knowledge, the realization, that there is a larger world that equally responds to and is unconcerned with the young person’s actions. If listened to from beginning to end, it displays a widening perspective as Kendrick matures, like a camera’s aperture opening for more light.
Over at Lit Hub, Mensah Demary writes about the literary genius of Kendrick Lamar.
