Shortly after being challenged by Dr. Dre (who had the most ornate video of the challenge thus far), K. Dot accepted the dare and nominated Serena Williams, Ellen DeGeneres and Samuel L. Jackson in the process.
While fans anxiously await for a new project from Kendrick (which may or may not feature beats from Flying Lotus and Pete Rock), the entire TDE crew may also be in the stages of planning a world tour (which would start sometime after Ab-Soul’s These Days Tour ends. Either way, it doesn’t look like Top Dawg Entertainment’s momentum will cease any time soon.
Meanwhile, Kendrick Lamar’s universally-acclaimed good kid, m.A.A.d city is now a subject of discussion in an English class at Georgia Regents University in Augusta (in addition to having an eponymous short film debut at the Sundance NEXT Fest a few weeks ago). The class’ instructor, Adam Diehl, spoke to XXL about incorporating the album into his lectures.
“I was given the opportunity to create my own theme for the class,” Diehl says. “I decided to center the class on good kid, m.A.A.d city because I think Kendrick Lamar is the James Joyce of hip-hop–i.e. in the complexity of his storytelling, in his knowledge of the canon, and in his continuing focus on the city of his upbringing—Compton.”
He continued, “The course is a freshman composition course, so I am teaching these works (i.e. [James Joyce’s] A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Gwendolyn Brooks’ Selected Poems, James Baldwin’s Going to Meet the Man, Boyz N The Hood, and good kid, m.A.A.d city) in the context of writing a research paper about one of the issues involved in the texts (e.g. gang warfare, police brutality, racism, incarceration rates, human trafficking, etc.). The class will hopefully produce much discussion about the issues that Joyce/Baldwin/Brooks/Singleton/Lamar raise, and hopefully the content of the class will inspire students to find an outlet to bring some sanity to our own mad city–Augusta.”
Who said you couldn’t learn anything from hip hop these days.
