Unless you are living under the most gargantuan rock on the planet you are most likely aware that today is the day that Kendrick Lamar has released his highly anticipated MAJOR debut, Good Kid M.A.A.D. City. This album is one of the most highly anticipated hip-hop albums in recent memory and honestly it is well warranted. When the Compton native first came to Houston by way of Scoremore in February of 2011, I had never heard of him before and honestly only shot the show because I was told I could and I was taking any shows I could get into. After witnessing a room of 150 people who seemingly couldn’t care less about the previous acts explode into applause once Kendrick graced the stage I knew he was something special for the shear fact that outside of a few blogs here and there, there was really nobody majorly backing the emcee. At that particular show Kendrick ran through countless freestyles and cuts off of his Overly Dedicated project and even sat down to walk the crowd through his life growing up by taking on the roles of his parents with nothing but a stool and Schoolboy Q as a supporting actor. I personally thought this was amazing and showed a side of the artist that you usually don’t see from rappers today in that he REALLY wanted you to see what shaped him not only as a rapper and artist but as a MAN by showing the utmost amount of transparency as humanly possible. Since this small show in the Studio at Warehouse Live I have been lucky enough to cover Kendrick Lamar in Austin during SXSW of ’11 as well as earlier this year when he came back to a packed Ballroom at Warehouse Live and everytime he touches a stage I feel like he gets better and better. This post is meant to be the visual progression of Kendrick as an artist through my eyes in the past 18 months and to hopefully spark enough interest to help this man sell a few extra albums because I honestly can’t name an artist who deserves it more.

**Fun fact: After this show I received a random call from Kendrick’s manager Dave asking to use some of my photos for a magazine article that Kendrick was to be featured in and since then these particular shots of Kendrick Lamar performing in the Studio at Warehouse Live have become some of the most widely used performance shots of him in the past year and a half or so with coverage on every blog from 2DopeBoyz to Spin Magazine and the video recap I did of Kendrick’s show this past January was my first visual to eclipse 7,500 views so he has helped my career out vastly to say the least.

Congrats the entire TDE team and Kendrick Lamar himself for all of their successes in the past and in the future to come now enjoy some awesome pictures while you’re here…then go buy Good Kid M.A.A.D. City.