good kid, m.A.A.d city

The cover calls it a short film by Kendrick Lamar, and that is what it is: one story, told in order. Kendrick at seventeen borrows his mother's minivan to see a girl named Sherane, falls in with friends planning a robbery, and watches the night go wrong. His parents keep calling and leaving voicemails, asking about the van, and those messages stitch the scenes together. It was his major label debut on Dr. Dre's label, and it made him famous, but it plays like a memoir, not an introduction.