Kendrick's conceptual aptitude is part of what makes him stand out, but he thrives most at relating defiance in dealing with his circumstances - the effects of coming up in an environment with drugs and gangs as present as oxygen - and bucking life expectancy.
Introduced early in the album with 'No Make-Up' ('Don't you know your imperfections is a wonderful blessing'), the empathically spun storyline clashes with demeaning terms the rapper frequently uses elsewhere, though he preemptively counteracts criticism by recognizing the existence of the bad and good, the 'evil and spiritual' in him. A portion of Section.80 is linked by recurring narrative threads, including a tragic story about a young woman sexually abused as a child and later slain as a sex worker. Kendrick Lamar Duckworth's proper debut album followed mixtapes dating back to 2003, when the Compton rapper was a teenager known as K-Dot.
