Walter Benjamin’s Storyteller, Reflections on the Works of Nikolai Leskov, critiques the decline of artful storytelling. The lengthy essay, published over 80 years ago, scrutinize the newspaper and its overstimulation of information as one major cause for why less and less frequently are people able to tell a tale properly.

“Nothing that happens benefits storytelling; almost everything benefits information,” groaned the German philosopher, fed up with how experience had fallen in value. His ideal storyteller was of the oral tradition and spoke from experience, their own, or events reported by others. And they, in turn, made it the experience of those who listened. Benjamin died in 1940, missing the birth of hip-hop by 33 years.

If granted the chance to hear who bubbled up from the Bronx, or who emerged from Long Beach, or who grew to acclaim out of Atlanta all through rapping, he would have witnessed a storytelling revolution that took the standards he searched for and raised them to a new apex because rap, before the music was making headlines, took stories that wouldn’t make the news and made them the talk of neighborhoods, school yards, dance floors, barbershops, and jail houses. 

The music prevailed for several reasons, but one benefit is rap isn’t journalistic; to be a rapper doesn’t require fact-checking or a witness for legitimacy. What has to be true is how well they sold it. 

For example, by the release of his 1992 single, “It Was a Good Day,” no L.A. Times columnist would have pitched an editor an essay about Ice Cube and his good day. Why would their readers care about his momma not cooking bacon for breakfast, or him watching Yo! MTV Raps at Short Dog's house, or the alleged triple-double he got last week? They wouldn’t. But as a listener, the record works because he shared the experience with finesse. 

Finesse comes in many forms, and not every storyteller has the gift to get their stories bought. In what had to be one of the most critical reviews of The Game’s 2005 debut album, The Documentary, Village Voice culture critic Greg Tate believed Game’s cover story in the February issue of Vibe was better than the album because the Compton rapper was more compelling confessing in print than the “rep-building, played-out retread of gangbang reveries” that he spoke over beats. 

“And truth be told, just when I think the Game’s rhymes are about six degrees from totally artless comes “Start From Scratch,” where this plaintive, verge-of-tears quality magically enters his delivery,” Tate wrote, highlighting a record where drunken recollection creates a story that strikes with two verses about the night he was shot. “Homey, if I could rewind the hands of time, I would've cut off the PS2 at 12:49,” sets a scene you can see in a tone where the trauma rolls off the words. 

Game’s celebrity name-dropping and gangsta rap posturing took precedence over stories with personal depth. Who he knew mattered more than where he was from, prioritizing the artist’s ego over the art of storytelling. Seven years after The Documentary comes Kendrick Lamar, with a debut album that takes Compton and documents his hometown as a character, a setting, and a symbol of how he came of age as a good kid living in an ugly city. A description that appears on “Is It Love?,” the track that opens his 2009 Kendrick Lamar EP.

The first few lines introduce him as an all-day and night writer who was erasing lines while you were playing PlayStation. Then he adds the depth, sharing the name his momma called him by and how he was a kid who watched House Party and ate Apple Jacks, who sold Sega games while his cousin sold crack, who pumped Reeboks, while his uncles pumped packs, sharing all this without losing the rhyme, keeping the tempo, concluding with:

“Pump, fake, jumpshot, ball hit the back

Board dreams of being pointguard was off limits jack

That's because these Compton streets was built not to win.”

Of all the rappers to emerge in the 2010s Kendrick had the most foresight on how to sell himself and the descriptions necessary for a neighborhood story to have mass appeal. “Is It Love?,” much like the entire Kendrick Lamar EP, is where he starts to organize a sequence of scenes to form his life in song—connecting music status with personal history. To hear him was to know he had no money for a car of his own. No money to keep gas in his momma’s van. No debut CD to put in his father’s hand. He had nothing to his name. Nothing but the dream.

The details helped to curate an image that wasn’t based on the clothes he wore, brands he had dealt with, or the associates in his corner, but on specific events and the people involved. Short vignettes about memories, family, and faith left no question about his lifestyle and the feelings attached to actions and experiences, karma, and consequences. Revealing what he wouldn’t tell a journalist, but could journal. What he wouldn’t share with a judge, but could rap without fear of judgment. All without pretending to be someone he wasn’t.  

Two days before the tenth anniversary of Kendrick Lamar’s 2012 debut album, good kid, m.A.A.d city, Billboard reported how the album had spent 520 weeks on the Billboard 200 charts, a duration that equals a decade, earning him the honor of being the longest-charting hip-hop album in chart history. Of all the reasons why, I think back to October 22nd, 2012. 

I remember the anticipation. How the stakes around the album were high. Higher than the price of a new Playstation. I remember the question. Will you let hip-hop die on October 22nd? How he asked was serious enough to give a kid goosebumps. I remember the purchase. Bought the physical CD from Best Buy. Cost me twelve dollars. 

I remember the gut reaction. Enamored, excited, and other expressions of true enthusiasm for an album with an acronym. My Angry Adolescence Divided. My Angels on Angel Dust. Twelve tracks. The first about a girl. The last about Compton. In between are backseat freestyles and home invasions, killed vibes and trees of money, swimming pools, and shenanigans. All done within a concept based on a day from his childhood when he sought pleasure and found trouble.  

I remember hating “Poetic Justice.” Thinking Kendrick’s performance on Take Care deserved a better swap from Drake. I remember loathing how the album didn’t end with “Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst.” A perfect ending disrupted by Anna Wise and Dr. Dre. And yet, somehow, I felt the album still had no skips. Each song played a role that connects the tissue. To skip a track felt like skipping a chapter in a book or deleting an episode from a sitcom. It makes you want to live in each moment separately and enjoy them as a union of ideas. 

I think the story gave good kid, m.A.A.d city a staying power that goes beyond the songs being good. As a storyteller, Kendrick didn’t change hip-hop, but he did introduce a new character, one who knew that Prodigy was right, there is a war going on outside no man is safe from. You can run, but you can't hide forever. good kid, m.A.A.d city, a story about impulses, environment, and the experiences he couldn’t run from. A classic for what it offers musically, but timeless for how this music made a kid from Compton a world-renonwed rapper because he told the best story. 

Sometimes that is the best lesson an artist can be reminded of when celebrating a major album anniversary: Tell your story, it might change your life. 

“I’ve been planning this for years. Everything was premeditated. I already knew what I wanted to talk about, what I wanted to convey. I had that album cover for years. I knew I was going to use it and that it was the best description of what I was talking about in the album. It’s a long time coming. Everything we dwelled on is coming to light.” – Kendrick Lamar (The Making of Kendrick Lamar’s ‘good kid, m.A.A.d city.)

-Yoh