Kendrick Lamar boasts an element that most of his fellow freshmen ignore: urgency. He sounds like he’d be rhyming even if no one were listening—a commendable trait amidst the swarm of “I’m not a rapper, I just happen to rap” caricatures that currently dominate blogspots and Billboard. Kendrick’s urgency is the fuel behind Section.80, the latest release from the Dr. Dre-cosigned Compton native on his TDE imprint, and he produces an engaging, dense, and gloomy comment on a generation’s identity crisis and the complex social and historical factors that have contributed to it. With its lofty concepts, baroque production, and striking allusions, Section.80 quickly establishes itself as a transcription of an era, and a young man’s frantic race to get it all on paper.

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