Wrapping up 2024, it's plain to see: Kendrick Lamar was an undeniable force this year. And since I've been spending plenty of time working on cataloguing the 100s of compilations and 10s of 1000s of tracks I've shared on this humble little blog since '07, I decided to trace back all the earliest Kendrick songs I ever listened to. Consider this a re-introduction to the introduction. Though he dropped his very first mixtape back in 2003, I only started hearing K.Dot in 2009. Between '09 and 2010, he released C4 and Overly Dedicated. Plenty of Overly Dedicated tracks were on heavy rotation in The Tape Deck, but I've featured none of those tracks here. Instead, I was focusing on promos, loosies, features, etc. Plenty of tracks I haven't heard in years! Cover art pays homage to both Illmatic by Nas and Infinite by Eminem, just because. I think of Kendrick as something of a mix of 'em, anyway. Anyway. Enjoy... and turn it up!!
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