Good Kid, M.A.A.D City: Oct 22 2012

(The Kendrick Classic that I still can’t kick)

Alaor Khadir’s proselytizing worked and right on time. Alaor exhorted me to listen to every K-Dot mixtape and had I not gotten over my detestation for shrill voices then I would have never been susceptible to the greatness that is Good Kid, M.A.A.D City.

Everyone experiences music differently. Two people can listen to the same album at the same exact time and have a totally different interpretation of what they’re hearing. That’s the beauty of art. OD and Section 80 didn’t really move me. There were songs that I may have nodded to — “Ignorance is Bliss” and “Rigamortus” come to mind — but those projects didn’t seem cohesive to me.

I liked Kendrick enough that when I saw Good Kid available for download, I purchased it. This was a week before Hurricane Sandy hit, when I was working a night shift in the Village.

New York may be the city that never sleeps but it takes naps and you realize that when you have to wait fifteen minutes for the 1 or 2 train that normally runs every three to five (minutes). Then if that train ain’t synched with Metro North, fuggetaboutit.

But I had a new album to listen to so hey…I was down.

The Christopher Street-Sheridan Square Station was closed as per normal so I hoofed it up to Union Square.

To be honest, the first time I listened to GKMC I never stopped to look and see what song was playing. I just let it ride and as I did memories of my High School days in Park Hill (Denver)rushed to my head.

I’m talking things that I had suppressed for decades, traumas that I never fully recovered from. I’ve heard it said that listening to that album made folk feel like they were in Compton.

I’on’t know about that. But sadly, you ain’t have to be from Compton, Watts, Long Beach or any of them places to have been traumatized by gang violence.

Following the trajectory of the album, all it takes is one bad decision to send your life spiraling out of control.

A quick story to illustrate that.

My brother, Adebayo, is two years my senior, we’ve always been close, many of his friends became surrogate big brothers to me. One of these brothers was Cameron.

Cameron wouldn’t let nothing happen to me. He and I had weights together. When Seniors were giving Freshmen wedgies, Cameron kept them from making me a victim. When those same Seniors pretended they were spotting you only to drop their nuts in your face, I ain’t have to go through that.

We were close.

So when I had heard that he had been killed in a drive-by two blocks from my house, I was broken. First, I was deeply saddened, and that soon made a way for rage.

Cameron was wearing Oklahoma Sooner gear, Maroon. Cops said Crips had mistaken it for red. I went to a Crip school. Damn near everyone I knew was a Crip. And none of them believed that. They believed that Bloods recognized him as an affiliate of some Black Hole Posse Crips and shot him based on that alone.

When I found out that they were going to go looking for the person they believed did it, I wanted in. There was only one objection to it. My boy Leroy Grimes told me, “stay your Public Enemy ass out of this, nigga” (or something to that effect).

He wouldn’t let me no where near what he saw people planning. I don’t know what happened after that. But I’m grateful that I wasn’t there and never found out what, if anything did (happen).

That’s what came to my mind when I listened to Good Kid, M.A.A.D City, and it’s why nothing that he’s released since as moved me the same way.

By the time I made it home an hour and a half later, I still hadn’t looked at which song was what. All I knew was it was a classic.