(10/03/14 7:12pm)
Last Tuesday, Kendrick Lamar dropped “i”. In this age of Internet music, the release of a new single is a fairly unremarkable event, but Lamar’s “i” is easily one of the most hotly anticipated drops of the year. Following Lamar’s electric 2012 album, “good kid, m.A.A.d. city,” rap fans have watched and waited through a K.Dot (one of Lamar’s many stage names) dry spell of nearly two years. While Lamar has remixed, toured and dropped several memorable guest verses until now (“Control,” anyone?), not a single track — let alone an album — has emerged from his studio at Top Dawg Entertainment.Lamar is much like musical artists of days past (i.e., pre-iTunes, Spotify and Soundcloud) in that he appreciates the value of the album as a full body of work, meant to carry the listener on a wild ride through whatever world he wishes to create.