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Kendrick Lamar · S1 E5
Centennial High
A quiet straight-A student in a school surrounded by gang territory
Compton, 2002. A quiet teenager sits in the back row of an English class at Centennial High School, not because he's disengaged, but because he can see everyone from there.
Kendrick Lamar, Bitch, Don't Kill My Vibe. The anthem of staying in your own lane when everything around you is chaos. This is the energy that got Kendrick through four years of high school between gang lines.
The Good Kid
Centennial High sits on the border between Bloods and Crips territory. Students cross gang lines just to get to homeroom. In the middle of all that, Kendrick Duckworth is pulling straight A's, turning in homework on time, and speaking only when he has something worth saying.
Centennial High School, Compton
The school where Kendrick spent four years observing everything and writing it all down. Sitting on gang boundary lines, it was a daily exercise in navigation.
“I was the quiet kid. I sat back and watched everything. I took mental notes on everybody. The hustlers, the athletes, the girls, the teachers. I was studying people before I knew that was called being a writer.”
— Kendrick Lamar, interview with GQ, 2016
Bitch, Don't Kill My Vibe, Kendrick Lamar (2012)
Sounwave built the beat around a sample from Boom Clap Bachelors' "Tiden Flyver," a Danish track so obscure it took fans months to find. The production floats: airy, meditative, completely at odds with the aggression of the title. Kendrick isn't angry on this song. He's protecting his peace, the exact survival skill that got a straight-A student through Centennial High without joining a gang.
TAP TO REVEAL: What was Kendrick's actual GPA in high school?
The Notebook
Between classes, Kendrick fills notebooks with observations. Not diary entries. Character sketches, street scenes, overheard conversations, fragments of verse. Every person who passes through Centennial's hallways is a potential song.
What is the name of the high school Kendrick Lamar attended in Compton?
Poe Mans Dreams (His Vice), Kendrick Lamar ft. GLC
From Section.80 (2011). A track about dreaming bigger than your circumstances, built on a hazy, soulful beat. Kendrick raps about the ambition that lives inside someone who has nothing but a plan and a notebook. This is the sound of high school Kendrick: sitting in the back row, imagining a life beyond the block.
The notebooks are filling up, but Kendrick hasn't found his voice yet. That changes in a lunchroom, on an ordinary afternoon, when he opens his mouth and his classmates go silent. Next: the first time Kendrick raps out loud, and the moment everything clicks.
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