Video will appear as you scroll through the story
Kendrick Lamar · S2 E4
The TDE Family
Jay Rock, Ab-Soul, ScHoolboy Q. Four kids from the streets building something together
The Carson house, 2006. Four teenagers rotate through the same makeshift booth in a converted bedroom, each one convinced he is the best rapper in the building, and none of them are wrong.
Kendrick Lamar ft. Jay Rock, Money Trees. The quintessential TDE collaboration. Two label brothers from neighboring neighborhoods, trading verses over a Beach House sample that sounds like California sunlight filtering through bulletproof glass.
The Roster
Jay Rock from the Nickerson Gardens projects in Watts. Ab-Soul from Carson, the philosopher who raps in riddles. ScHoolboy Q, a former 52 Hoover Gangster Crip who traded the set for the studio. And K-Dot from Compton, the quiet one who writes more than all of them combined.
TAP TO REVEAL: Which TDE member was an active gang member when he started recording?
“We would just rap at each other all day. Not on a song, not for a project. Just in the living room, trying to murder each other with bars. That's how we all got better. Iron sharpens iron.”
— Ab-Soul, interview with HipHopDX, 2012
Money Trees ft. Jay Rock, Kendrick Lamar (2012)
DJ Dahi built the beat around a pitched-down sample of "Silver Soul" by Beach House, a dreamy indie rock band from Baltimore. The contrast is the entire point: this gorgeous, floating production underneath verses about drug deals, robbery, and survival. Jay Rock's closing verse hits like a freight train after Kendrick's more reflective delivery. Listen for how the beat never changes but the emotional weight shifts completely between the two rappers.
Black Hippy: The Four Corners
What indie rock band's song was sampled for "Money Trees"?
Hood Gone Love It, Jay Rock ft. Kendrick Lamar
From Jay Rock's Follow Me Home (2011). This is where you hear the TDE brotherhood at its purest. Jay Rock and Kendrick trading energy over a beat that sounds like cruising through Watts with the windows down. The track became an underground anthem and proved that TDE wasn't just Kendrick.
The crew is locked in, but K-Dot is about to take a detour that nobody at TDE expects because a rapper from New Orleans is dominating every radio in America. Next: Lil Wayne, the C4 tape, and the mixtape that taught Kendrick what he did not want to become.
0 XP earned this session