Select a country or region

Africa, Middle East, and India

Asia Pacific

Europe

Latin America and the Caribbean

The United States and Canada

Apple Music 100 Best Albums

Content not available in your region

good kid, m.A.A.d city (Deluxe Version)

Kendrick Lamar

7

Hip-hop storytelling at its most visceral and vivid.

A few days after releasing 2012’s good kid, m.A.A.d city, the then-25-year-old Kendrick Lamar deemed his sophomore studio album “classic-worthy”. He wasn’t lying: Lamar’s sophomore album is one of the defining hip-hop records of the 21st century. On the surface, good kid, m.A.A.d city is a hood tragedy, with Lamar painting a vivid picture of Black and brown youths growing up in underserved communities. But the album is also powered by faith and hope, with Lamar chronicling his turbulent coming-of-age through a cast of compelling characters that portray the trauma, familial guidance and relationships that led to his inevitable ascent.

West Coast hip-hop elders like Snoop and Dre anointed Lamar to carry on the legacy of gangsta rap, and his second studio album—conceptual enough to be a rock opera—certainly uplifts the genre with its near-biblical themes: religion vs. violence and monogamy vs. lust.

Content not available in your region

Sitting just a few miles from Compton, where much of good kid, m.A.A.d city takes place, Lamar pieced together tracks alongside collaborators Sounwave and Dave Free, both of whom had known the prolific rapper since high school. Throughout the writing process, Lamar would frequently return to his childhood neighbourhood to relive the “mental space” he was in during the early days of his rap career, unearthing the deeply personal tales that came to shape the monumental artist.

From the album’s opening scene—a collective prayer of gratitude—Lamar’s approach is entirely theatric (he even gives good kid, m.A.A.d city a subtitle: “A Short Film by Kendrick Lamar”). And he never misses an opportunity to hold listeners in his grip, unspooling a series of vulnerable confessions over the album’s 12 tracks. Graphic scenes of violence, addiction and disillusionment are pervasive here. But Lamar makes even the harshest truths easy to swallow, as he does on “Swimming Pools (Drank)”, a vivid tale of alcoholism. good kid, m.A.A.d city’s legacy is a crucial example of American storytelling that established the future Pulitzer Prize winner as perhaps his generation’s most accomplished writer.

Content not available in your region

Songs in the Key of Life

Stevie Wonder

6

The most ambitious, adventurous soul album ever made.

In 1974, Stevie Wonder was the most critically revered pop star in the world; he was also considering leaving the music industry altogether. So when Songs in the Key of Life was released two years later, demand was so high that it became, at the time, the fastest-selling album in history. All was forgiven.

Wonder positioned himself as the benevolent overlord of a vast self-drawn cosmos, one with a remarkable cache of songs: Songs in the Key of Life, which runs nearly 90 minutes, is effortlessly melodic, broad in scope, deeply personal—and often just plain weird. In the era of the overblown rock epic, Wonder had created the most searching and sprawling soul album ever released.

Start with the brassy, hook-filled and positively effusive chart-topping singles “Sir Duke” and “I Wish”, both of which have soundtracked countless barbecues and wedding receptions for decades. At the other end of the spectrum: the stark reality-soul of “Village Ghetto Land” and “Pastime Paradise”, on which Wonder leaves the bandstand for the op-ed pages to decry the abandonment of the civil rights dream. Then Wonder’s daughter Aisha shows up in the sugary Girl Dad anthem “Isn’t She Lovely”.

As Songs in the Key of Life nears its conclusion, Wonder clears the dance floor for 15 minutes of sumptuous gospel-disco in “As” and “Another Star”. But the album’s defining moment might come on a bonus track, one originally issued as an extra 45 with the album’s vinyl release. It starts in deep space with the Afrofuturist fantasia “Saturn”, but as its last synthesiser chords fade out, Wonder zooms light-years to an urban playground where we can hear the sound of Black children skipping Double Dutch. Sonically, culturally and emotionally, Songs in the Key of Life is much more than a gigantic collection of songs—it forms an entire world view.

Songs in the Key of Life by Stevie Wonder