Kendrick Lamar
Albums that read like novels and singles that swallowed whole summers.
- Albums graded
- 8
- Critic’s grade
- Highest grade
- Average grade
- Graded S
- 2
- Span
- 2011 to 2024
No. 4 on Top 10: Rap Discographies, graded A as a body of work.
Kendrick Lamar in the ShowcaseEvery album
8 albums, 2011 to 2024, each placed by its grade, then sorted onto the board.
The records
Newest first, each with the line its review opens on.
2024GNXThe one where he stops explaining himself and just raps, and it is the most fun he has ever been.
2022Mr. Morale & the Big SteppersFive years of therapy poured into seventy three minutes, brave and exhausting in roughly equal measure.
2018Black Panther: The AlbumKendrick Lamar and various artistsKendrick Lamar turned a film tie-in into a real album: fifty dark, tight minutes of TDE and friends that hold together as a record.
2017DAMN.He stopped building museums and made a record with hits on it, and the writing lost nothing in the trade.
2016untitled unmastered.Eight demos from the To Pimp a Butterfly sessions, released as found: superb in flashes, and a sketchbook rather than an album.
2015To Pimp a ButterflyExtraordinarily played, seriously written, and a record this desk almost never actually reaches for. The vibe grade is the verdict.
2012good kid, m.A.A.d cityA short film about a teenager, a van and one very bad night, and the best constructed rap album of its decade.
2011Section.80The blueprint for everything after it, made on a tiny budget by a young man determined to prove he can write.