Kendrick Lamar: Inside the Year's Best Album
Del Cowie, Exclaim!, 26 November 2012
KENDRICK LAMAR celebrated his 24th birthday performing a concert in Toronto. At the end of the show on a summer night in 2011 at the Sound Academy, the Compton, CA MC sported an ear-to-ear grin as he blew out the candles on a birthday cake brought to him on stage while Stevie Wonder's 'Happy Birthday' played. Earlier that night, he'd previewed songs from his then yet-to-be-released Section.80 album, acting out the verses of 'A.D.H.D.' and 'Hol' Up' with non-verbal mannerisms as if he were playing charades. Another segment of the show featured a chair-bound Lamar in an endearingly profane mini-play, recreating a scene from his childhood; he played both his mother and father bantering over a "gangsta rap and oldies" playlist with ribald selections from West coast pioneers like Snoop Dogg's 'Ain't No Fun.'
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