Lamar's major-label debut, probably the year's most significant hip-hop release, proves his talent to be as prodigious as his online output – the 25-year-old has released five mixtapes and one independent album to date. Like his mentor, Dr Dre, Lamar comes from Compton in California, but catalogues his experience of that neighbourhood with a lyrical precision and cool remove at odds with the "harsh realities we in". Syncretising old and new, he's right to conclude: "Now we can all celebrate/ We can all harvest the rap artists of NWA."