The point of this weekly post is to highlight the free shit out there that’s most worth your time. Therefore, I can’t really recommend you get your hands on Kendrick Lamar’s major label debut good kid, m.A.A.d city and listen to it as many times as you can in your life.  So, instead, with him capturing our minds and hearts, let’s take a look at the free releases that helped bring Kendrick Lamar to this point.

These tapes show how Kendrick developed his style, talent, and creativity and serve as excellent prequels to his albums Section.80 and good kid, m.A.A.d city as they all hinted toward these triumphs in their own individual ways.  The first is 2005’s Training Day which is tied together by clips of the film it jacked its title from. From early on, it seemed as if Kendrick always wanted to have his projects carry an underlying theme or narrative, even when they were just a bunch of tracks with him purely rapping his young ass off.  On 2008’s C4, a Tha Carter III tribute, we get an example of how much young K-Dot loved the concept of creating a great hip hop album as he flipped Wayne’s masterpiece while showing his own growth as an MC. When he switched to using his own name, dropping the immature K-Dot sobriquet, on 2009’s self-titled EP (no matter what he says, it’s not actually an EP, it’s over an hour long), his knack for crafting songs comes to the forefront with tracks like “P & P” and “I Do This” that got his blog buzz racing into the new decade. And lastly, 2010’s Overly Dedicated hints at his incredible versatility as the ignorant braggadocio of “Michael Jordan” compliments the personal and introspective (also, perfect) cuts “Ignorance Is Bliss”, “Average Joe,” and “Cut You Off (To Grow Closer).” Snatch these tapes up if you don’t already have them, they are the seeds of Kendrick Lamar’s rap career, which, in such a short time, has already proven to be a very, very special thing.

DOWNLOAD TRAINING DAY

DOWNLOAD C4

DOWNLOAD KENDRICK LAMAR (EP)

DOWNLOAD OVERLY DEDICATED