Kendrick Lamar’s favourite verse on ‘good kid, m.A.A.d city’
The release second album Good Kid, M.A.A.D City is arguably when Kendrick Lamar truly came of age as an artist. Telling the story of its maker’s adolescent days in Compton, the record depicts the dangers and tragedies of LA gang culture in vivid, visceral detail—and a highlight is undoubtedly the two-part track ‘Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst.’
The song, the tenth on the tracklist, was never released as a single, but it nonetheless is representative of Good Kid, M.A.A.D City as a whole. Split into two parts, ‘Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst’ touches on the themes of loss and grief, gang culture and violence, and faith and rebirth. These, indeed, are themes that Kendrick has returned to again and again throughout his career.
At 12 minutes and three seconds, the song represents one Kendrick’s lengthiest, with part one lasting for roughly seven minutes and part two ending just shy of the three-minute mark. The rest of the song’s duration is made up of skits. It marks a major creative achievement for Kendrick, and the man himself has always seemed to recognise this. The track’s first verse is one of his favourites from his own career.
As he revealed in a conversation for the Decoded series hosted on Jay-Z’s Life+Times website, ‘Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst’ is based on a real event from Kendrick’s young life. One of his friends was shot and killed right in front of him, and the song focuses on this moment.
“It’s an obvious true story,” Kendrick said. “It hits home, as far as the past members of tragic situations that happened in my life. That one particular situation is my homeboy getting smoked while I’m right there, and I’m being the last one right there just seeing him take his last.”
Given the bleak drama of what Kendrick witnessed that day, it might have been expected that he would write about it in the first person. But that opening verse of the song is actually written from the point of view of his stricken friend’s brother, “a street cat,” as Kendrick characterised him.
The verse is about this older brother, who has himself become deeply embedded in a life of crime, expressing gratitude to Kendrick for being present during his little brother’s dying moments. In Kendrick’s words, it’s “him just thanking me for being right there, and wishing that he could’ve found a passion in something—maybe music, maybe sports—but [it’s] him recognizing the fact and truth that he was already in too deep.”
The verse ends with a request from the brother, which Kendrick revealed was based on an actual favour that his friend’s brother had asked for. “The craziest part about that verse,” he said, “and in real life [is] him saying, ‘If something happens to me before your album drops, just make sure you mention and tell this story in a positive light,’ and that’s exactly what I did and he definitely passed, too.”
The brother, it seems, eventually succumbed to the same violence that had taken his younger sibling away. Kendrick didn’t explicitly say that this is how the brother died in the Life+Times interview, but the song itself makes things clear enough. When Kendrick, embodying the brother’s perspective, raps, “Just promise me you’ll tell this story when you make it big / And if I die before your album drop, I hope—,” he is cut off by the sound of gunshots.
“That’s why that’s one of the final songs on the album,” Kendrick said. “Out of 12 songs, that’s closer to the bottom because when the reality check really hit, a lot people know Kendrick Lamar for who I am today, but for me to think [of] what I had to do to come from a dark space, and that was the turning point right there.”