Top 10 Best Kendrick Lamar Songs Of All Time

Counting down the best tracks in King Kendrick's catalogue.

Kendrick Lamar's transcendent lyricism has him holding the torch as the leader of the new generation in hip-hop. The TDE rapper's certified double-platinum fourth album DAMN. postured itself at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 -- solidifying the cathartic LP as his highest-ranked yet.    

Still, K-Dot has been delivering more than Shakespearean conscious raps and Compton-based visuals. After notching five Grammys, including a sweep in the major rap categories.

-Billboard.com

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Here we have complied a list of K.Dot's greatest tracks, the Compton rapper has had a healthy amount projects for us to consider and browse through during our creation of this catalog. With it concluding in the list below

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Honorable Mentions:  HiiiPower, DNA, Momma, Cartoons and Cereal, M.A.A.D City, Westside Right On Time

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• 10. Unititled 2

Album: Untitled Unmastered  (2016)

• 9. Alright

Album: To Pimp A Butterfly (2015)

This Pharrell Williams co-produced jazzy hip-hop infusion finds Lamar, despite all his bad trips and hard times, ready to face another day. With God on his side, he is confident everything will be "Alright." This was one of several songs on To Pimp a Butterfly that were inspired by Lamar's time in South Africa during 2014. He told MTV News: "When I got to Africa and saw other people's problems, their struggle was 10 times harder and was raised crazier than what I was. Going out there really inspired - I wrote a lot of records off the album just by visiting South Africa. That was the moment I knew, OK, I could either pimp this situation or fall victim to it. That was a turning point."

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• 8. The Heart Pt.2 

Mixtape: Overly Dedicated (2010)

To this day The Heart Pt.2 is easily one of Kendrick's most heartfelt and lyrical masterpieces.The first track off Overly Dedicated finds Kendrick Lamar rapping over an extended version of The Roots' How I Got Over cut "A Piece of Light." Speaking with Rolling Stone, the Compton MC explained what led to this song:"I remember saying to myself, 'I just wanna show a spew of emotion on a record. I don't care how long the bars are, but people are literally gonna have to feel me.' I told myself that if I can't connect that way, then it ain't no point in me just putting a bunch of good words together. So that spaz-out toward the end, where I just choke up and lose my breath – I wanna keep all that."

LISTEN HERE

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• 7. Money Trees

Album:  Good Kid M.A.A.D City (2012)

Lamar explained the meaning of this Good Kid, M.A.A.d City cut to Complex magazine: "That's about temptation," he said. "After the ride of going on 'The Art of Peer Pressure,' you listen to that, and that was the mind state of thinking everything is about a dollar. That's where we were at the time. Everything was about money. We didn't care about nothing else truthfully."The track features Lamar's Top Dawg Entertainment labelmate Jay Rock whose verse is also about how the desire for success provides the motivation for hustling. "Honestly, he was like already done with the album [before I got on it]," said Jay Rock to Complex. "When I heard it that was one of my favorite records. Every time he played it, I'm like, 'Run it back.' He was keeping the album real personal, he didn't want that many features. Not even from us. When bro get in his zone, he gets in his zone. He's so into his craft. He don't do it intentionally."He just so happened to hit me," continued Jay Rock, "like, 'I want you to do a verse for 'Money Trees.' I was honored so I took my time with it, wrote it down, and finished it up. When he heard it he was like 'Man, you took it to the next level.'"

LISTEN HERE

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• 6. Ignorance is Bliss

Mixtape: Overly Dedicated (2010)

The eighth track on Kendrick’s mixtape “Overly Dedicated” is titled after a popular idiom, which translates to “what you don’t know can’t hurt you”. Kendrick raps the first verse without taking a single breath. This has become something of a trait for Kendrick as he has repeated this feat on “Look Out For Detox” and “Rigamortus”. Lamar goes all out on a hard hitting bass describing the gritty street life of Compton, and how h or the character his portraying performs a drive by. Its also worth noting that this is the song that got Kendrick noticed by Dr.Dre

LISTEN HERE

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• 5. FEAR

Album: DAMN. (2017)

This slow-burning track is a layered opus that features several revelations pertaining to Kendrick Lamar's personal life. The song is a portrait of an artist terrified of his mom, losing his life and failing in his career.The song is split into three verses, which find the Compton MC learning to cope with fear at ages 7, 17 and 27. Before the first verse there is a recording of a call from Lamar's bible-fearing cousin Carl Duckworth who refers to the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy. This voicemail is only on the streaming version of the song.

LISTEN HERE

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• 4. Mortal Man

Album: To Pimp A Butterfly (2015)

Probably one if not the most prolific sing Kendrick has ever released. The grand closing to an absolute classic Mortal Man is a 12- minute long question that only the fans can answer. When shit hits the fan or you still a fan? Reportedly inspired by a trip Lamar took to Nelson Mandela's cell on Robben Island during a visit to South Africa in 2014, this song finds the Compton native hoping that he continues the legacy of the South African icon. Lamar explained to MTV News: "We're so confined with hatred and want to point out people's flaws that we don't see the big picture in what they're doing. And it's been done with leaders way before my time. They did it to Jesus Christ, the Lord and Savior, feel me? So who am I? I'm just a man, that's why we call it 'Mortal Man.'" 

LISTEN HERE

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• 3. DUCKWORTH

Album: DAMN. (2017)

Kendrick Lamar concludes his DAMN.album with a true tale of a chance encounter back in 1984 between the rapper's father Kenny "Ducky" Duckworth and his label boss Anthony "Top Dawg" Tiffith before the two men knew each other. He recounts how the future Top Dawg Entertainment CEO nearly killed Lamar's dad when he was planning on robbing the KFC drive-thru spot that "Ducky" worked at. The story telling on this track is impecable, being able to paint mental images of Top Dawg's earlier gang life mixed the adventurtre of his parents coming across country to begin a new life for him, and the fact that all of this happened in such a way amkes this more then a song. Its a glimpse into how karma works...... and how funny god can be.

LISTEN HERE

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• 2. Sing About Me, I'm Dying of Thirst

Album: Good Kid M.A.A.D City (2012)

Taking the cake for for Lamar's best story-telling is Sing About Me. The Bill WIthers sampled song has a relaxing bass heavy beat. This is one of the deepest, most personal tracks on Good Kid, M.A.A.d City. "Just life, in general, is the meaning behind it," Lamar explained to The Boombox. "It's a certain situation that I had to go through; I had to bump my head a few times to know what I had to do to get back right." "It's probably one of the deepest songs on [the album] that I've written," he added. "It's real short though, probably only a minute or two. When people listen to the album a few more times, and go back ad forth, they really understand the setting and the actual position that it has in the album and why it's in that track listing."

LISTEN HERE 

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• 1. Rigamortis

Album: Section 80 (2011)

Now we know its not Kendrick's most impactful song, or even a heart wrenching story. This song exemplifies what Kendrick is at his core. A hungry hardcore lyrical juggernaut that can rip any beat or rapper at anytime or place. With an upbeat drum pattern coupled with the blaring trumpets the instrumental was made for Lamar to dig into. Death can be so beautiful at times. Boasting bars as mad as Marilyn Manson, one grim rapper emerges to hold hip hop ransom. Hailing from Compton, Los Angeles, one of America’s most neglected graveyards, Kendrick yields his sickle (ballpoint pen) to pry open the caskets of lyricism, musicianship, and tradition. The emcee, once known as K. Dot, hence displays an air of irony in his verses, murdering the fraudulent with the same weapon used for shedding light on realness. 

LISTEN HERE

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