good kid, m.A.A.d city Review

The subtitle calls it a short film and that is exactly right. Every song is a scene, the sequence is a single day told slightly out of order, and the voicemails from his parents run underneath like a clock. Sherane is the setup, a boy driving to meet a girl and finding two men in hoodies instead. m.A.A.d city is the panic attack, two beats and two tempos and a voice that keeps climbing. Sing About Me is twelve minutes in three voices, two of them belonging to people who die inside the song, and it does not blink.

What lifts it above the rest of his catalogue is restraint. He already had every tool he would later use and he keeps them subordinate to the story, so the technique never becomes the subject. Money Trees is the one people put on, and it works completely divorced from the plot, which is the test a concept record usually fails. Nothing since has matched this balance of ambition and pure listenability.