The 16 Best Kendrick Lamar Songs of All Time

The lead single to Lamar’s “Black Panther” soundtrack, “All the Stars” previewed the vision he and TDE had for the sonic companion to Ryan Coogler’s Marvel movie. It’s one of the more lowkey of the album’s tracks, yet a standout: Lamar’s stoic delivery matches SZA’s otherworldly vocals on the main hook (“This may be the night that my dreams might let me know / All the stars are closer”), all over a propulsive, synth-heavy and string-embellished beat. A ubiquitous radio smash, “All the Stars” was also a critical hit, earning the usual recognition at the Grammys and MTV VMAs, plus netting Lamar his first Academy Award nomination for best original song. In a sense, the “Black Panther” experiment was Lamar’s formal entrée into cinema, as he and PGLang’s Dave Free continue with their comedy film co-produced by “South Park’s” Matt Stone and Trey Parker. — AJ

By opening with a reference to Alice Walker’s seminal novel “The Color Purple” (“Alls my life I has to fight”), Lamar makes a statement: “Alright” is a work of Black genius — emphasis on Black. Released as the fourth single off “To Pimp a Butterfly,” the track became the protest song of a generation as Lamar examined the duality of the Black experience. He sat on the Pharrell-produced beat for six months before he found the right lyrics, landing on an approach he described as “uplifting but aggressive” — calling out police brutality with biting (and woefully misunderstood) lyrics like “And we hate po-po / wanna kill us dead in the street fo sho,” while offering a message of hope that, despite it all, “we gon’ be alright.” — AJ

One of Lamar’s greatest instincts is knowing when to switch from a pensive flow to a growling roar, and “Backseat Freestyle” revved up the snarl to maximum effect. The Hit-Boy-helmed track is skeletal compared to the rest of “Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City” — “Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe,” this isn’t — which is precisely why it cuts through. There are no bells and whistles to distract from this ode to Compton, just the knocking clang of metal and well-earned demands for respect, a celebration of what he’s accomplished with the prescient caveat that he’ll never take his eye off the ball: “My mind is livin’ on cloud nine and this nine is never on vacation,” he raps. — SH

By the time this fifth single was released from Lamar’s breakthrough album “Good Kid, M.A.A.D City,” Lamar had already delivered two certified bangers with “Swimming Pools (Drank)” and “Backseat Freestyle,” as well as a hot collaboration with, yes, Drake on “Poetic Justice.” Originally conceived as a team-up with Lady Gaga, the song would evolve into a meditation on his status in the industry and his mindset as an artist — a declaration of Lamar as an iconoclast, and a glimpse at the integrity and passion he’d use to set himself apart from his peers. — TG

If there’s one thing Kendrick’s fans learned early on, it’s that he makes you put in the work. He can drop bangers any time he wants, but he’d rather challenge listeners — and himself — with something unexpected. As if the jazz fusions of “To Pimp a Butterfly” weren’t enough of a curveball, you get one in a single song with the mind-melting “DNA.” It starts off with a catchy, swampy groove and bounces along, until it suddenly starts getting weirder and weirder and there are suddenly three totally disparate elements happening at once that your brain can just barely keep in the same frame. Yet there’s little mystery — although plenty of nuance — in the lyrics, which showed his deep self-awareness and recognition of the conflicts within himself even then: “Realness, I just kill shit ’cause it’s in my DNA / I got millions, I got riches buildin’ in my DNA / I got dark, I got evil that rot inside my DNA / I got a troublesome heart inside my DNA.” — JA

Lamar’s first Drake diss track may not be the cultural juggernaut “Not Like Us” became, but it’s a brutal attack that dismantles the pop star through three increasingly aggressive beats. With a low-key intro that starts with some great veiled threats (“Know you a master manipulator and habitual liar too / But don’t tell no lie about me and I won’t tell truths ’bout you”), “Euphoria” escalates into some pointed barbs (the accusations of absentee parenting that follow “I got a son to raise, but I can see you don’t know nothin’ ’bout that” are especially brutal). Every line is a shocker and set the stage for “Not Like Us” to inevitably break the internet. — WE

Lamar’s curated soundtrack for “Black Panther” culminates with this explosive hip-hop team-up between himself, Jay Rock and Future. Even if Future’s verse leaves a bit to be desired in terms of sticking to the themes (much less plot) of Ryan Coogler’s film, Lamar and Jay Rock more than elevate the track to the epic level deserving of a king, whether he’s alive or dead (so much so, in fact, that Jay made it the lead single to his next album). Even within the confines of a superhero movie soundtrack, Lamar evidenced his ability to rule whatever creative challenge he faces. — TG

Over a woozy beat courtesy of DJ Dahi and Hit-Boy, Lamar delivers a call-and-response flow that evokes the nostalgia infused throughout “Good Kid, M.A.A.D City.” Obsessed with both music and tragedy, he drops references to Usher and E-40 as casually as the violence he sees outside. In the chorus, the profundity of “Everybody gon’ respect the shooter/But the one in front of the gun lives forever” becomes a theme for this sprawling album. Jay Rock’s taut featured verse is also a career-best, with urgent rhymes about drug dealing, filled with enough specifics to lay the blueprints for a small business. — WE

Even before it claimed five Grammys, “Not Like Us” was a near-instant classic in Lamar’s illustrious catalog of timeless hits. It aimed at all the right targets – mainly Drake, but it also catered to a starving fanbase of West Coast hip-hop that hadn’t had a superstar serve up a ubiquitous anthem in years. (Younger acts, ranging from Shoreline Mafia to Mike Sherm, have long been party starters for Downtown Los Angeles and Bay Area warehouse parties.) “Not Like Us” filled that niche, showcasing two acclaimed artists — Lamar and DJ Mustard — at the top of their game, doing what they do best. Built on a foundation of borderline aggressive syncopation, the beat is clean-cut and minimalistic with Lamar rapping feverishly ahead of typical phonetic patterns, creating that classic West Coast sound. There’s a lot to be learned from the success and freshness of a song like “Not Like Us,” but the most important theme here? Embrace your inner hater. — Thania Garcia

Framed around a sample of Janet Jackson’s honeyed vocals from “Any Time, Any Place,” “Poetic Justice” featuring Drake is presumably the only love song on “Good Kid, M.A.A.D City” – and it’s a great one. Being that it’s one of his most commercially successful songs to-date, “Poetic Justice” ultimately relies on the timeless sensuality of Jackson’s original, and once you get past the Canadian elephant in the room, it’s clear that the now-foes once had strong chemistry. The cherry on top is in the beauty of the song’s visually-striking one-liners – “If a flower bloomed in a dark room would you trust it?” — TG

Anchored by a chorus featuring the lyric “Stop playin’ with me ‘fore I turn you to a song,” Lamar offered a FAFO warning with this track from “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers” that would be fulfilled two years later with his historic (and now Grammy-winning) beef with Drake. At the same time, it also feels like an admonishment for himself — particularly in the context of verses where he examines his accomplishments — and responsibilities in the music industry and relationships with a growing circle of confidantes, collaborators and even supposed loved ones (“And my cousin tried to sue me like he got the privilege”). All of this, he notes, is increasingly complicated by his success. — TG

“Section.80” was an introduction for those who hadn’t been tapped into the spark of Lamar’s mixtape run. His 2011 debut album crystallized his foundational strengths as an emcee — equally adept at examining the pain of street life while extolling the vices that come with escaping it. “Rigamortus” found a middle ground by focusing on his skills as a lyricist, sending caution to his rap colleagues that his wordplay was a weapon. He doesn’t just tell it, either — he shows how nimble he can be as he skates across the horn-powered instrumental, toying with double and triple meter while firing warning shots at every turn. If there ever was a starting line for Lamar, it’s hard to deny that it was partly drawn here. — SH

Lamar was a relatively new artist, making his Interscope label debut, when he released this introspective party song. In it, Lamar tackles the issue of alcohol abuse through rhyme, and in hindsight, the track is an obvious and excellent precursor to Lamar’s widely regarded political approach to rap music. Right away, he establishes the allure of a drink – “Some people like the way it feel / Some people wanna kill their sorrows / Some people wanna fit in with the popular” – only to introduce a warning from his conscience mid-way through the song. When we arrive at the end of “Swimming Pools (Drank),” Lamar has unspooled a precautionary tale, one that’s deeply personal, and representative of a cycle of violence in Compton. — Thania Garcia

Although this track is light-hearted, and less lyrically complex than what we’ve come to expect from the Pulitzer Prize winner, “TV Off” is an irresistible and catchy victory lap of a song. Starting with a sample of MacArthur Park’s “Monk Higgins,” Lamar incites and calls for action against conformity, telling listeners to “turn the TV off” to fight off being unconsciously influenced. From its triumphant horn section to the meme-worthiness of “Mustaaaaaaaaaard!” and “Crazy, scary, spooky, hilarious,” Lamar builds on the success of “Not Like Us” with another classic Mustard production. — TG

Lamar’s craft is razor-sharp on this bleak lamentation on class. In the first verse, his character is at the end of his rope (“Once upon a time I used to go to church and talk to God / Now I’m thinkin’ to myself, hollow tips is all I got”) and commits a shocking act of violence, nested inside a jazzy chorus from Anna Wise and a creeping Thundercat bassline. Lamar sounds raw vocally and emotionally, and passing the mic to Punch and Jay Rock during the following verses only heightens the intensity. These lines stick, even more so because they’re on a demo album: Bars like “Justice ain’t free, therefore justice ain’t me / So I justify his name on obituary” end up being precise throughlines in Lamar’s storytelling. — WE

Lamar tackles the American Dream and religion in this ambitious track. Changing up his flow to align with several variations of the beat, the latter half of the first verse finds Lamar in breathless mode, rhyming about the futile nature of comforting a friend whose child was killed over money: “‘I can’t sugarcoat the answer for you, this is how I feel / If somebody kill my son, that mean somebody gettin’ killed,” he raps, as police sirens threaten to overtake the beat. Soon, the song downshifts to a jazzy vibe, with Kendrick’s verse bouncing off the thematically appropriate voice of Bono. Big ideas arrive like a flood: “It’s murder on my street, your street, back streets, Wall Street / Corporate offices, banks, employees, and bosses with / Homicidal thoughts, Donald Trump’s in office.” — WE