March Madness: Kendrick Lamar Edition
Want to skip the method and go straight to the final bracket? Click here.
Overview
Methodology
> Divisional Winners
> At-Large Bids
Bracket
2020 has been off to a wild start. Just within the first 3 months, USA and Iran nearly declared war, the world of basketball lost a legend (RIP Kobe), the market is down 35% year to date, and many countries are placing citizens in quarantine for COVID-19.
In the world of sports itself, all leagues in the USA have suspended play indefinitely, and that means we’ve lost one of our favorite hobbies this time of year — filling out a March Madness bracket.
Inspired by Carrington Harrison’s Kanye Madness Bracket in 2018, I took a stab at making a Kendrick Lamar bracket for all of us in 2020.
Methodology
The March Madness tournament allows teams to qualify one of two ways — an automatic qualifier or an at-large bid.
For the automatic qualifier path into the tournament, The way part of the March Madness tournament works is that each Division I conference receives an automatic bid, which the conferences give to the winner of their respective conference tournaments. These are known as automatic qualifiers.
Over the course of his career, Kendrick Lamar has published 7 albums (including mixtapes), which we will treat as Division I conferences in this metaphor. Therefore, each of those albums will receive an automatic bid into the tournament.
NOTE: Every mixtape and EP released under the moniker K-Dot was treated as a Division II conference, and thus did not qualify for the tournament.
Divisional Winners —
Overly Dedicated (2010): P&P 1.5
Section.80 (2011): ADHD
good kid, m.A.A.d city (2012): Poetic Justice
To Pimp A Butterfly (2015): Alright
untitled unmastered (2016): untitled 03 | 05.28.2013.
DAMN. (2017): HUMBLE
Black Panther The Album (2018): All The Stars
Coming back to the March Madness metaphor, the remaining tournament bids are handed out to a subset of the remaining Division I teams based on an at-large bid.
Typically, the Selection Committee for the March Madness tournament evaluates the teams for a wide range of factors including, but not limited to, their regular season results, strength of schedule, and performance against ranked teams. I attempted to do the same to ensure stronger albums had a stronger showing at the tournament in comparison to the weaker albums.
Based on album sales, critical reception, awards, and popularity, I ranked all 7 albums to determine the weight their tracks got in the selection process.
Albums based on ranking —
1) DAMN. Certified 3x Platinum, first non-jazz or classical work to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music, Best Rap Album at the 2018 Grammys, Album of the Year nominee at the Grammys.
2) To Pimp A Butterfly. Certified Platinum, Best Rap Album at the 2016 Grammys, Album of the Year nominee at the Grammys, a record 11 total nominations at a single Grammys, most by any rapper.
3) Black Panther The Album. Certified Platinum, Best Original Score at the Academy Awards, Best Original Score at the Grammys, 31 total award nominations across all competitions.
4) good kid, m.A.A.d city. Certified 3x Platinum, 5 Grammy nominations.
5) Section.80. Certified Gold, XXL Rookies of the Year accolade.
6) untitled unmastered. #1 on Billboard 200.
7) Overly Dedicated. A- rating by Vice, 12000 album sales.
Finally comes the question of seeding the entrants.
Admittedly, the process followed here also matched that of the Selection Committee, that is to say, it was biased and ultimately strayed away from quantitative analysis and into qualitative analysis.
I first ranked all tracks on every album against their divisional competitors, giving me something like the list below —
From there, I then used the strength of schedule as determined by the rank of each album and gave every ranking a weighted score.
Once every track had a weighted score, it was a simple ranking exercise, with a few minor adjustments for personal bias.
The Bracket
Without further ado, I give you the final result — the bracket.
Feel free to print and fill out! We won’t have a March Madness tournament, but I hope this still gives you some entertainment during the quarantine.