Kendrick Lamar is the rare musician to enjoy being called the "greatest rapper alive," a testament to his uncanny power as a verbal pugilist, his intoxicatingly complex lyrical themes and no small amount of pop savvy. But the MC didn't emerge as a fully formed virtuoso. Instead, much like Jay Z in the years before his 1996 debut, Reasonable Doubt, Lamar honed his technique out of the
This article originally appeared on www.rollingstone.com: Mixtape Primer: Reviewing Kendrick Lamar’s Pre-Fame Output