Lamar continues using the techniques implemented on “Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe” and

“Backseat Freestyle” throughout the album and also reveals other prominent techniques. Throughout the album, Lamar uses desert, thirst, and hunger diction and imagery which culminate and climax on “Sing About Me, I’m Dying of thirst.” With this technique of development, Lamar uses the subconscious diction of K-Dot to illustrate that the tension between his faith and the profane is ever-present and deep-rooted, and he also uses it to explore his involvement with the profane. K-Dot constantly expresses subconscious dissatisfaction when he indulges in his vices. He thinks he is satisfying himself, but on “Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst” he finally sees the signs he has been missing over the course of the narrative and realizes he is “dying of thirst.”   

 

Lamar plants these seeds early on in “Sherane, a.k.a. Master Splinter’s Daughter.” In the song, K-Dot is thirsty for sex and lusts about Sherane. In just the third and fourth line of the first verse of the album, he describes Sherane, saying:

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“Ass came with a hump, from the jump she was a camel

 I want to ride like Arabians” (Kendrick Lamar 2012).

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“From the jump” K-Dot uses imagery that places him in a desert, and he looks to his vice, sex, to help him (Kendrick Lamar 2012). Sherane is the camel and K-Dot thinks that “riding” her, indulging his vice, will be beneficial like an Arabian would ride a camel to get places more efficiently (Kendrick Lamar 2012). Although the latter part of that interpretation may be unintentional, the use of desert imagery this early in the album is very intentional and Lamar uses it to plant a thematic seed. 

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Lamar continues to develop desert imagery in verse 2 with the lines:

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“I was in heat like a cactus, my tactics of bein’ thirsty

Probably could hurt me, but fuck it, I got some heart

Grab my momma’s keys, hopped in the car, then, oh boy” (Kendrick Lamar 2012).

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K-Dot is still in the heat of the desert and, like a cactus, tries to quench his thirst any way possible. He knows his desperation will likely result in trying to drink from polluted sources, but throughout the album he ignores his conscience and listens to his heart, which is corrupted by his environment. Ultimately, his ignorance and indulgence are what lead to the tragedy on

“Swimming Pools” when his friend, Dave, is murdered. On “Sherane, a.k.a. Master Splinter’s

Daughter,” K-Dot’s thirst is what compels him to get in the car and go to Sherane’s house, which results in him getting jumped, which is why he and his friends seek revenge, which results in Dave’s murder. So, although K-Dot and his friends’ corruption is largely a product of their environment, they also contribute to the madness and play along with the “murderous rhythm” of their city (Kendrick Lamar 2012). Through desert imagery in “Sherane, a.k.a. Master Splinter’s Daughter,” Lamar illustrates his complicity in the conflict between faith and the profane, where he fights alongside the profane. 

 

Lamar develops hunger, desert, and thirst diction further in “The Art of Peer Pressure,”

“Money Trees,” and “Poetic Justice.” In “The Art of Peer Pressure,” K-Dot says he is “hungry for anything unhealthy,” further adding to the idea that K-Dot is perpetuating the conflict by feeding his vices (Kendrick Lamar 2012). In the final verse of “Money Trees,” Jay Rock, a rapper featured on the song, raps: 

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“In the streets with a heater under my dungarees 

Dreams of me getting shaded under a money tree” (Kendrick Lamar 2012).

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This line adds a similar idea, but with a bit of nuance. Again, this person is in a desert-like environment and needs relief. It is ironic that Jay Rock is dreaming of relief from the heat and conflict in his environment through money because he says he has a “heater,” or gun, in his pants, which he wants to take into the shade with him (Kendrick Lamar 2012). The irony is that if Jay Rock brings the “heater” with him into the shade, then the shade will do nothing to relieve him (Kendrick Lamar 2012). He will still be hot and his need for relief will continue to grow. This irony has not been confirmed as intentional, however, the desert imagery of a hot environment is recurring and intentional. 

 

Thirst is a central motif in “Poetic Justice.” In the song, K-Dot is lusting about Sherane on his way to her house, planning to have sex with her. The song is an embodiment of K-Dot’s thirst for sex and shows how he schemes to get it by crafting a love letter. The song also confirms Lamar’s intentionality in crafting his lyrics and this album to speak on things much bigger than music. In verse three, he writes:

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“Every time I write these words they become a taboo

Makin’ sure my punctuation curve, every letter here’s true

Livin’ my life in the margin and that metaphor was proof” (Kendrick Lamar 2012).

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These are important lines because they urge listeners to pay close attention to the album like they would a movie or book. They describe Lamar’s intentionality and craftsmanship with his lyrics, or wordsmanship, his awareness of the finality of his music once it is released, then identify themselves as metaphor. Knowing Lamar tediously crafts the lyrics and organization of his music, listeners can safely assume the recurring desert, thirst, and hunger diction, and much more, is intentional. 

This is why researchers such as Molokov and Zueva, and teachers such as Tony Pozdol have studied hip-hop as literature. Molokov and Zueva studied three hip-hop albums, including Lamar’s good kid m.A.A.d. city, to identify their postmodern features such as intertextuality, impersonation, play and theatricality, pastiche, complicated organization of texts, allusions, fragmentation, paranoia, minimalism, maximalism, metafiction, fabulation, temporal distortion, and hyper-reality. They found Lamar’s good kid m.A.A.d. city has nearly all the postmodern features and specifically makes heavy use of intertextuality and fragmentation, as in “Backseat Freestyle,” to add layers to his message, make the album interactive, and reflect the chaos of the mad city of Compton (Molokov and Zueva, 2017). 

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These techniques bear the most fruit in the culmination of the thirst motif on the second half of “Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst.” Lamar identified this song as the climax of the album in an interview with Complex, and also added that it “represents being in a situation where all this happens throughout the day, but at the end of the day we run into this particular lady and she breaks down the story of God, positivity, life, being free, and being real with yourself” (Ahmed, 2012). Everything on the album builds up and K-Dot and his friends get thirstier and thirstier until they are given real water on this song. Using the thirst motif at the end of each verse in this song, Lamar further describes the tension between faith and the profane. 

Verse 1 ends with:

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“Hands on the wheel, who said we wasn’t 

 Dyin’ of thirst, dyin’ of thirst, dyin’ of thirst?” (Kendrick Lamar, 2012).

 

Verse 2 ends with:

 

 “I know I’m good at

 Dyin’ of thirst, dyin’ of thirst, dyin’ of thirst” (Kendrick Lamar, 2012).

 

Verse 3 ends with:

 

            “I’ll show you how to

            Dye your thirst, dye your thirst, dye your thirst” (Kendrick Lamar, 2012).

 

Verse 4 ends with:

 

           “Hereditary, all of my cousins

 Dyin’ of thirst, dyin’ of thirst, dyin’ of thirst” (Kendrick Lamar, 2012).

 

And verse 5 ends with:

 

“My momma say ‘see, a pastor gave me a promise

What if today was the rapture and you completely tarnished?

The truth will set you free, so to me be completely honest

You dyin’ of thirst, you dyin’ of thirst,  So hop in that water and pray that it works’” (Kendrick Lamar, 2012).

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With each succeeding verse, K-Dot identifies a different aspect of his thirst. First, he finally admits that he is thirsty. Second, he says he is good at perpetuating and worsening his thirst by indulging in his vices. Third, he says people dye their thirst, denying and disguising it, by tricking themselves into thinking that they are getting real water from their vices. Fourth, he says his cousins, and his entire community, are also dying of thirst. Fifth, he finally identifies the only source of water that will quench his thirst: “the blood of Jesus” as K-Dot puts it (Kendrick Lamar, 2012). 

 

The culmination of thirst throughout the album is self-inflicted by K-Dot giving in to the profane, ignoring the ever-present whispers of warning from his faithful conscience. When he finally hears the whispers from his subconscious, he sees the profane for what it is. Before this, he blurred the lines between the good and evil, but now he sees them more clearly. He begins to consciously understand their complex relationship and his involvement with both, and through Lamar’s music listeners can do the same. The profane has been tempting him throughout the day and disguising itself as good, but faith has been ever-present, telling him the truth about his vices by identifying them with dissatisfied diction through his subconscious. Both are deep-rooted in his and his community’s hearts and desires and are constantly fighting for attention. Now that the conflict is identified, K-Dot continues to struggle with them, but in a different way. 

 

In the final verse of “Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst,” K-Dot has a revelation that directly leads to the central question of the next song, “Real.” He asks how to live a real life of faith in a profane environment. Before asking this question, he realizes that his thirst, his wicked desires, need to change, but they cannot be changed by sheer will power. His only hope is to

“hop in that water and pray that it works” (Kendrick Lamar 2012). K-Dot finally begins his maturation into Kendrick Lamar and uses hip-hop as an intermediary between the two sides of the ever-present conflict between faith and the profane.