← DISGRACELAND
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- [00:05]
Jake Brennan
Double Elvis.
- [00:08]
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- [00:37]
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- [00:52]
Jake Brennan
What do you have to lose?
- [00:54]
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- [00:57]
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- [01:08]
Jake Brennan
Is a production of Double Elvis. This is a story about a good kid. A story about a mad city, about Compton, about chaos, about drive bys, missed funerals, red hats, blue laces, blacked out impalas, and the devil on both shoulders. This is a story about hip hop and about the rapper who didn't just survive it, he saw through it. He told the truth, and somehow he lived. This is a story, though, about violence and about trauma and about the long, slow, brutal climb toward mercy. Mercy for yourself, for your city, for the people who nearly killed you and the ones who still might. This is a story about Kendrick Lamar, a man who makes great music, unlike that music I played for you at the top of the show. That wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my melotron called Northern Exposure MK2. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to One more Night by Maroon 5. And why would I play you that specific slice of oh man, who gives a shit? Cheese? Could I afford it because that was the number one song in America on October 22, 2012. Then that was the day Kendrick Lamar released Good Mad City and changed the rap game forever. On this episode setups the streets near trauma, more mercy and Kendrick Lamar. I'm Jake Brennan and this is disgrace. They were just kids really, barely old enough to be able to live on their own, to make their own mistakes, but wise enough to know that change didn't happen overnight that it took time and energy to swing the pendulum away from the darkness toward the light. Try as one might, it's impossible to make that change with a positive mindset alone. You have to use physics. Each action having an equal and opposite reaction. You know all the rest. You have to grab the pendulum and pull that motherfucker yourself. Fill it with your energy, your will, and your strength. And so, while Paula Oliver saw the Gangster Disciples as a means to an end, there on the south side of Chicago, where she and Kenneth Duckworth were trying to make ends meet, the pendulum weighed heavy. She didn't want him to be affiliated anymore, even if that's all it was. An affiliation, some adjacent relationship to a notorious criminal organization. The streets, the drugs, the tough guys like Gangster Disciple leaders Larry Hoover and King David. Well, Paula wasn't about to knock the hustle, but it wasn't a hustle she wanted a part of anymore. The Disciples were a darkness that the young lovers had to get away from if they wanted to survive, even if that meant cutting ties and starting fresh from the bottom. But again, they were young. They had time to do it over. Paula gave Kenneth an ultimatum. He was leaving the Disciples and they were leaving Chicago, or else she was leaving him. So Paula Oliver and Kenneth Duckworth grabbed hold and swung. Days later, they were boarding an Amtrak train, $500 to their name, with all their belongings stuffed into two large garbage bags, they rode the train all the way to the west coast, to Los Angeles, more specifically to the city of Compton, where Paula's sister helped them settle into their new life. Three days later, in 1987, they walked out of the Dominguez Hospital with their newborn baby boy. They called him Kendrick, named for the smoothest member of the Temptations, their favorite Eddie Kendricks. They buckled little Kendrick into the back seat, and during the car ride back to their little three bedroom house on 137th street, they christened his tiny ears with the hip hop gospel of Big Daddy Kane. Hold up. This is how the Kendrick Lamar origin story has been told. That the first thing he ever heard after the sound of his own cries at his parents voices was Big Daddy Kane's Ain't no Half Step and East coast bounce booming from the shitty speakers of the family car. But this was June 1987, and the juice Crew, icon's debut album didn't even hit stores until one whole year later. So it's highly unlikely that Big Daddy Kane was the soundtrack to Kendrick's first day on earth. But that's just a minor detail in the grand scheme of things. Because in addition to heavy rotation staples like Marvin Gaye and the Isley Brothers, contemporary rap music was the soundtrack to the Duckworth household that Kendrick Lamar grew up in in the late 80s and 90s. Kendrick would later remember hearing Biggie, Tupac and Jay Z playing during his parents house parties, which were frequent and which underscored Compton's deep sense of shared community. It was a community that propped up their own like the drug dealer turned rapper Eazy E, whose debut single Boyz N the Hood could be found at the Compton Fashion center, better known as the Swap Meet, a local flea market that sold Eazy's hot wax when more traditional outlets refused to touch, was a community of like minded families, all of them trying to make sense of their own heavy pendulums. The uncles slinging drugs, the friends tossing up gang signs. For Paula and Kenneth, it was like Chicago all over again. Only this time they weren't going to run from it. This time they didn't want to run from it. This was their home. This was Kendrick's home now too. And it was the home that they taught Kendrick through their actions and through their words and through their deeds, to honor values and morals above all else. Above the narrative that there was no free will, that the pistol was the only logical choice over positivity in times of real struggle. And the struggle was right here in Compton. Rolling down Crenshaw, the US Marines going slow as shit in their camouflage Humvees while the city burned. And LA's biggest gang, the LAPD, lived that thug life out in the open. Or at least that's what white America saw when they sat down in their faux wooden panel dens and living room rooms and turned on their TV sets. The things that were happening right in your neighborhood in front of you, shaping the person you were going to become, that was so personal it was almost impossible to put into words. 1992. 5 year old Kendrick Lamar pedaled his bike up the street, turning around at the top of the block and coming back down again. And the bike's plastic training wheels rattled behind him, up against an apartment building. One of his uncle's friends, one of his uncle's associates, the affiliated kind, was looking to unload some dope a car around at the corner and began to approach. Real slow, methodical. And then it stopped in front of the apartments. The passenger side window came down and Kendrick stopped his bike to watch the scene play out. The affiliated associate, the one with the drugs. He looked around to make sure the coast was clear. And then he began to walk towards the car, ready for that deal to go down, make that money. And then Kendrick jumped at the sound of the shotgun blast, hopping back onto his bike seat and flying back to his house as the family friend lay on the ground, his chest blown open, the baggie still gripped tight in his dead hand. Fast forward three years later, 1995 Kendrick was eight. He was walking home from McNair elementary, passing through the parking lot of the legendary Tam's Burger Joint. His stomach started to rumble as he caught a whiff of the burgers sizzling on a grill. A car pulled up to the drive through. Its brake lights came on as the driver stopped to place his order. Right then another man came tearing around the block on foot, brushing past young Kendrick as he trudged through the lot with his backpack slung over one shoulder. That's when Kendrick saw the flash of steel in the man's hand. He froze, watching as the man ran right up to the car in the drive through, raised his gun, aimed it through the car window and pulled the trigger. This was the realness of Compton. It was so real that after witnessing this kind of violence up close and personal a few times, Kendrick, just a little kid, 8 years old, plainly accepted it as part of his life. These weren't random acts. These were to be expected. It was the unexpected aspects of Compton life that made all the difference. Like the day Kendrick's father threw him up on his shoulders and walked them briskly down to the Compton swap meet, not to buy an easy E record, but to watch history being made there. Surrounding the former Sears building, an unassuming cultural landmark, a crowd had gathered and Kendrick could see lights. He saw cameras. And then he saw why Tupac Shakura walked by in his white tank top and black Fedora, flanked by Compton's own Dr. Dre wearing a button down black shirt, both looking fly as fuck and every bit the cultural icons that they were in this moment. Kendrick squinted from where he was perched high up on his dad's back, looking at Dre and Pac, both ascendant, both separated from the bullshit of the streets. At least for now. And as they shot the music video for Tupac's California Love. Kendrick didn't know it at the time, but at that moment, at just 8 years old, he was grabbing the pendulum in his mind and pulling it to the opposite direction with all of his might.
- [12:19]
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- [12:54]
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- [13:23]
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- [13:54]
Jake Brennan
The KFC off Rosecrans was like a beacon in the night, a greasy oasis frequented by the hungry in the stone, but also by those looking to escape the shadows of Compton for a beat. For Anthony Tiffith, the fast food joint was an easy mark. And this is not Anthony Tiffany, the music mogul that I'm talking about. Not yet, at least. At this moment, he's already known on the streets as Top Dog. But this was years before we founded Top Dog Entertainment, the mega successful hip hop and R B label. This was the mid-90s, and so Anthony was still just another known neighborhood threat. Hoodie up, Glock tucked, nothing to lose. He pulled his car to the side of the street and put it in park, the big red KFC beaming down from on high and reflecting off the car's windshield. He stepped out and walked to the joint's front door with purpose. Purpose that went way beyond scoring a bucket of Original Recipe. Anthony was a known quantity, nearing 30 years old, street certified, handled his business with a certain level of finance personality. And at this particular kfc, he was best known as the guy who liked to walk in, take no shit, and then take money from the register by force if necessary. He knew this to be true as he walked inside now. And the dude working the register instantly clocked the menace, better known as Top Dog. But this particular employee didn't seem to be phased by Anthony's presence. The guy didn't even flinch. He just went through the motions, went through this little song and dance in which Anthony ordered some food, this scripted overture to the reason why he was really there. And then, before Anthony could reach for his piece and tell the poor bastard pulling down five bucks an hour to hand over the cash and the till, the employee looked Anthony in the eye and said, you want some extra biscuits with that? They're on the house, man. Anthony paused. He wasn't expecting this at all. He clocked the dude's tone, his lack of fear. It wasn't a softness. It was something else, something stronger. Anthony couldn't pinpoint it at the time, but it completely disarmed him. He took his food, took the extra biscuits, too, the ones that were on the house, and turned around and walked out. No stick up, no confrontation. Just this strange quiet in his chest and a feeling that there was a bend in the road up ahead. Anthony kept this particular story close to the vest. But some years later, news of his personal redemption, his complete 180 from street hustler to hip hop executive, was the kind of thing that teenage Kendrick Lamar was watching very closely. There were very few ways to dodge some of life's inevitabilities, but Anthony had cracked one of them. Music was salvation. Poetry, rhyming. For Kendrick, that was salvation. That was an escape hatch, just like the one he'd glimpsed as a kid on his father's shoulders down at the swap meet. And so when the rest of his crew ducked down an alley in the neighborhood, Kendrick ducked into a room with a pen and paper or into a studio with a microphone in his hand. But leaning into his music didn't immediately lift Kendrick or K Dot, as he was now being called out of the fray. And he was squarely in the fray as a teenager in Compton. Even if you weren't affiliated as Kendrick wasn't, even if you didn't identify as a Blood or a Crip, you still found yourself caught up in it all. It was impossible not to be. You were stopped for no reason by the lapd, who were all too ready to reach for their guns when they pulled you and your friend Moose over in that dope green Camaro. And Moose took a little too long for their liking to locate his driver's license. You watched as your friends got jumped and as your friends got shot. You watched people die in the street and in the hospital. You cradled your best friend's brother's head in your arms. This kid that everyone called a delinquent, the kind of kid that all those talking heads on the idiot box would say had it coming. But in your eyes, he was a reflection of you. And now here he was, bleeding out from a gunshot wound, drawing his final breath, but doing so with the faith in the knowledge that you were going to avoid such a fate, that you were destined for something else. That your first mixed tape was on the horizon. And so as this kid died in your arms, he looked at you and he said that if he didn't make it, tell his story, sing about him. Some would call that a burden, but shit, man, you took it as an honor. Still, that's when that survivor's guilt really started to sink in. Why in the hell were you still here? So many of the people you came up with were either locked up or six feet under. But the moment of your greatest crisis was also the moment you decided to do something about it all in the way that only you knew how. You were above all else, a student, an observer, an absorber. And so you took it all in. The lifestyle, the violence, Compton realness. And you wrote it all down. Not to glorify it, but to preserve it and to survive it. And he studied how the best of the best prepared and delivered their own own shit. Not just Dre and Tupac and Jay on your parents stereo, but Nos and Eminem and dmx. You dissected their flows like you were performing surgery on one of those fatally wounded friends you could never save. For Kendrick, the game, the rhyme game, the spitting versus game, the mixtape game. It was a hustle, a grind, and it was loaded with this constant fear of being ignored, of failing, of recognizing in the most sobering way that you were creating music in a city where talent alone didn't guarantee success or survival. In 2003, at just 16 years old, K Dot released his first mixtape, which made the rounds throughout Compton. Unsurprisingly, it wound up in the hands of Anthony Tiffith, the one time stick up man who had just graduated from the streets and launched Top Dog Entertainment. In the Top Dog studio, which they affectionately referred to as the House of Pain, Anthony laid down the gauntlet by playing increasingly difficult beats and asking Kendrick to get on the mic and flow. He changed the beats up on the fly and he suddenly split into double time. Anything to trip the kid up. Kendrick went hard. He met each challenge like a seasoned pro well beyond his years. Top Dog gave Kendrick studio access, and that gave him structure. The streets didn't go anywhere. They were still there, still calling out. But Kendrick had a different kind of crew now. Guys like J Rock and Absol and Schoolboy Q, the foundation of the hip hop collective that would be known as Black Hippie in an Anthony Tiffany, Kendrick had found a mentor, a guy who could pass down his own mistakes and his own lessons. Early on in their professional relationship, Anthony sat Kendrick down and said he wanted to tell him a story. It was a true story, but one that he rarely told anyone. It was about this one night years ago when Anthony went into a kfc, planning to rob the place and shoot anyone stupid enough to get in his way. Instead, he was stymied by an unexpected act of human kindness. It sounded goofy as fuck, but again he reiterated that it was true. Kendrick paused. Wait, he asked. What KFC are you talking about? Anthony shrugged. The one over on Rosecrans. Real quiet. Motherfucker behind the counter gave me extra biscuits on the house. Almost like he knew something may have saved his life that day. Sure as fuck saved mine. Kendrick leaned back in his chair. Time came to a slow crawl. That was my pops, Kenneth. They call him Ducky. He used to work at that joint. For a moment, Kendrick and Anthony were silent, each thinking the same thing. That they were both at these inflection points in their lives because of Kenneth Duckworth, a man of morals, of values, a man who acted the way other men wanted to act. Men who aspire to true greatness. And if it wasn't for Ducky, not only would Kendrick and Anthony not be the men they were, but the entire course of hip hop would have been altered. Sometimes fate doesn't need a pendulum. Sometimes just needs a couple of extra biscuits on the house. We'll be right back after this. Word Work Work.
- [23:00]
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- [23:30]
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- [23:57]
Jake Brennan
She said her name was Shereen. Long hair, gold hoop earrings, looked good in low rise jeans and 17 year old. Kendrick took one look and felt like he'd been smacked in the face. He went loopy. Suddenly she was the only thing at this house party that mattered. They talked and he got her number, but she played hard to get. Days went by and Kendrick tried to get an address. They texted back and forth, flirting, Kendrick trying to play it cool but knowing deep down that she knew she was driving wild. Finally she told him where she lived and said he should come through. He borrowed the Dodge Caravan from his mom and drove it down Central, past Tam's Burgers, past the liquor store with the sign that was always busted through, a neighborhood that he knew wasn't neutral. None of this mattered in his current state of mind. At this moment there was only Shirin. He pulled up on the side of the street across from the apartment complex where she said she lived and he got out of the minivan and he could see her out front waving at him. His heart raced, his blood was pumping. He looked both ways and then jogged through the street to the other side, coming up on the sidewalk, getting closer now, already smelling her perfume, her hair. And then right there, coming up fast on his right, out of nowhere, two dudes, their hoods up, hands in pockets. They didn't ask who he was, didn't ask who he was there to see. They were just dead set on getting their hands on him. Kendrick averted his gaze from Sheraine where she was standing just a few hundred feet away. He wasn't about to stick around and find out what happened when these two dudes got any closer, so he spun around and ran. His feet pounded the cracks in the pavement as he fled back across the street, a car nearly missing him, laying on the horn, and he tripped and almost hit the ground but regained his balance and made it back to the Caravan, dove inside and peeled out the tires, screaming, his heart jackhammering inside his chest. There were no punches, no shots. He knew a setup when he saw one, and he knew when he was being tested because Compton tested you constantly, made you choose between instinct and ego, survival and pride. Kendrick passed the test that day, but he never forgot it. In fact, he wrote it down. This story may have been fictionalized to an extent, but like all of Kendrick Lamar's stories, it's based in truth. And it served as the inspiration for the opening track on his 2012 breakthrough album, Good Kid Mad City. The whole record is a coming of age story, a document of Kendrick's teenage days navigating Compton's streets and cruise, and about how time and again he made the choice to observe instead of act, to write instead of retaliate. And this is not softness. In fact, it's the opposite. Just like his father Ducky at that kfc, to be able to fight the urge to, as Kendrick himself once put it, make the next family hurt because they hurt your family. But this is the thing about Kendrick, and it's what everyone saw in him. Long before Good Kid Mad City was universally embraced by critics, fans and the hip hop world at large, including Compton's own resident tastemaker, Dr. Dream, Dre saw how Kendrick wasn't a showman. He wasn't flashy, but he had that hunger, that control, the way the kid could tell a story, like he was building an entire scene and walking you through it, transgression by transgression, body by body, beat by beat. Most remarkably, though, he did this by not following a hip hop blueprint. He flipped the script that had been written by all those who came before him, from Dre, Snoop and Tupac to Big E, J and Eminem. Instead of defining himself with braggadocio and Persona, Kendrick turned inward, deconstructing the streets where he remained, if not a participant in all things, then certainly a witness. The next year, in 2013, he bore witness to the entire hip hop game, which in his eyes, needed a swift kick in the ass. He jumped on Big Sean's track Control for a three minute verse of Biblical Fire and Brimstone, simultaneously putting respect on and calling out the names of other rappers, from J. Cole and ASAP Rocky to Mac Miller, Tyler the Creator and Drake. Kendrick wanted the bar raised, and he dared everyone and anyone to meet him there. The verse sent a seismic shock through hip hop. It did what Kendrick had intended to do, to shock, but to shock in a positive way. To shock other MCs out of a slumber and out of complacency. Kendrick topped himself a few years later in 2015 with his album To Pimp a Butterfly, which boasted a completely different production style than its predecessor and was heavily influenced by the music of Miles Davis and Parliament Funkadelic. It took the small scale of Good Kid Mad City and transposed it onto a national scale, delivering a state of the union for a Post Trayvon, Post Ferguson, Black America. And two years after that, Kendrick's album Damn, which, in addition to being his second number one album in a row, earned him the Pulitzer prize for music. No easy feat seeing that in the history of the Pulitzer Prize, no artists outside the classical or jazz genres have ever won it. As of this recording, it still holds that distinction. By the dawn of the 2000 and twenties, Kendrick had established his domination over the charts, the airwaves, and the intelligentsia alike. And he'd landed an illustrious prize, one that had always seemed far beyond hip hop's league. But despite all this resounding acclaim and unprecedented achievement, there was room for misinterpretation like those who were still on this stupid trip, that hip hop was destructive, not constructive, that it was tearing communities apart rather than bringing them together. I'm thinking in part of the samples of news anchors you hear at the beginning of Damn, but I digress. And then Kendrick saw an opportunity to make himself perfectly clear. He saw it in the public Persona of one of the rappers he targeted in his control verse, Drake. But Drake wasn't just another rapper. He was the opposite of Kendrick in almost every way. Drake was a brand. He was a performer. He was Toronto's slickness to Kendrick's Compton grit. He was also the biggest star on the planet. In Drake, Kendrick saw a target. And so Kendrick the observer, chose not to stand by and observe anymore. Kendrick got Drake in his sights, aimed, and fired. All right, so we had Drake versus Meek Mill. A lot of people were tweeting that to me. We kind of know the outcome of that. But if Drake and Kendrick Lamar got in a rap battle, who you think would win? Gotta go with Kendrick. I'm just saying, I think Drake is an outstanding entertainer, but Kendrick, his lyrics, his last album was outstanding. Excellent. All right, that's the best album, I think, last year. Gotta go with Kenner, Gotta go with Ken. Gotta go with Kendrick. There's no better sign of weakness than to actually show your opponent to the. But they've rattled you. And Kendrick knew that he had Drake good and rattled. It only took two weeks for the Canadian rapper to respond to President Barack Obama's 2016 take on social media that Kendrick would trounce him in a rap battle. Drake's comeback. Yo, Barry, you got it wrong. He was bulletproof. Yeah, right. Tell that to your ego. Tell that to your pride, which just took one to the chest. And wait, what's up with that? Using words like bulletproof. Had Drake actually seen a bullet before? For real? Kendrick smelled blood in the water, bad blood that had gotten worse over the years. And Once upon a time, there was no beef. Actually, that's not it exactly. There's always beef. It's baked into hip hop's DNA. But once upon a time, Drake was guesting on Kendrick's tracks. And that was before Control, before the Cipher at the BET Hip Hop Awards where Kendrick dropped that line about tucking a sensitive rapper back into his pajamas. Before things got really bad between Kendrick and Drake, there were all these subliminal hints they both started taking out on each other. Stealth verses that, well, if you knew, you knew. Kendrick liked to think that he had better evasive maneuvers, better counter attacks when those hits came at him. And those hits didn't always arrive as expected. They were smuggled inside Trojan Horses. There were wolves dressed in sheep's clothing and all that. On Drake's 2023 track, first person shooter J. Cole rapped that he, Drake and Kendrick were the big three in hip hop. Kendrick course corrected in early 2024 in a verse on Future and Metro Boomins like that my motherfuck, the big three, it's just big me. It didn't matter if Kendrick believed it. It was good for the dialogue, good for hip hop, and best of all, it got under Drake's skin. Kendrick didn't run marathons, but you can only assume that the high he got from fucking up Drake with his words was exactly what those lanky ass dudes felt when they crossed the finish line. But Kendrick wasn't at the finish line. Not yet. In April 2024, Drake came at him, responding to the Future verse with the tracks Push Ups and Taylormade Freestyle. Kendrick hit back on April 30 with Euphoria, which quickly racked up over 9 million streams on Spotify. And then with Six Sixteen in LA on May 3. And yes, the dates are important. Just bear with me here. The flurry of activity was part of it. To get Drake to react quickly, to overheat and to overwhelm, Kendrick made sure he was overly prepared. He had producers like the Alchemist and Mustard working on beats in the background. He didn't stop writing, plotting, planning. And so when later that same day, May 3, when Drake responded to 6:16 in LA with the track Family Matters, Kendrick was ready. By the time Family Matters hit, the days of the subliminal D discs were long gone. The gloves were off, tossed in the trash bin and rotting in the landfill. On Family Matters, Drake accused Kendrick of domestic abuse and claimed that his son wasn't even his son. Kendrick wasn't rattled. Kendrick didn't get rattled. Kendrick got inspired and As I said earlier, Kendrick also got prepared. So prepared, in fact, that 20 minutes later, Kendrick dropped Meet the Grams, his response track, which accused Drake of being a sexual predator. But he wasn't done. The very next day, May 4, Kendrick released not Like Us. The track was dripping in that LA G funk bounce, and it was catchy, hooky. And at its core, it was a cold, calculated, and, yes, funny masterstroke of character assassination. Not Like Us took everything that Drake built, the myth, the image, the sheen, and burned it down. And it delivered on the promise of the leader of the free world from eight years earlier. You gotta go with Kendrick. The real point of Not Like Us, however, was to separate the Drakes of the world from the Kenneth Duckworths, those men of values and morals, men who Kendrick held in high regard and aspired to be like. And in doing so, Kendrick made it clear this was his culture, his people, his city. If you go ahead and let some outsider or some insider turned outsider, a charlatan like Drake, fuck with all that, grab onto your pendulum and swing, well, that would be a disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgrace. All right, hope you dug this episode. Apple podcast listeners, make sure you got auto downloads turned on so you never miss a drop from Disgraceland. This week's question, what's the greatest act of mercy in music history? Okay. Was it Kendrick Lamar choosing peace rather than life on the streets? Was it Johnny Cash at First Folsom? Was it Brian Wilson forgiving his father? Or was it something smaller, something personal? Text me. Leave me a voicemail. 617906-6638. You'll hear your answers on the after party. It's up next in the feed. And if that's not enough, you want the real deep cuts, the dirt we don't put into the main feed? Then become a member@gracelandpod.com membership. Get all kinds of free perks, including a bunch more content, because some stories are just too raw for the wide release. All right, you know what we do here at Smith? We work. We uncover the truth, confront the story, reclaim the music. Kendrick Lamar did that, and so do you. Every time you listen. Thank you, Discos. Here comes some credits. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page@gracelandpod.com. if you're listening as a Disgraceland All Access member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if you. If not, you can become a member right now by going to Disgracelandpod.com membership rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and Facebook Disgracelandpod and on YouTube@YouTube.com Disgracelandpod Rocka Rolla He's a bad, bad man.