Backseat Freestyle

Album: Good Kid, M.A.A.D City (2012)
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Songfacts®:

  • Lamar lays boastful rhymes over Hit-Boy's menacing soundscape. "It's about me and my homeboys really getting in the backseat and starting our day," Lamar explained to Complex magazine. "Sometimes we'll rap, it takes away from everything else. That's one of the feelings that the record produces."
  • The song's black and white video was directed by Lamar with Dave Free and JeremeD. The clip is set in both Compton and Paris and introduces K-Dot's dad whom we see smoking some weed while getting on his son's case over his misplaced domino set. We also see his mom teasing her husband about his hat. The rear-shaking girl is meant to be Sherane, the young seductress whom Lamar raps about on "Sherane a.k.a Master Splinter's Daughter" and "Poetic Justice." She is played by a model who bears a strong resemblance to K-Dot's teenage crush.
  • Taylor Swift is a big fan of the song. During an interview with Rolling Stone, the country-pop princess said this is her "go-to" tune that she listens to when she wants to "immediately go from feeling victimized to feeling awesome."

    Swift added with a wide smile, "I know every word."
  • Hit-Boy was very impressed with Kendrick Lamar's rapping on this track. "I ain't pictured nobody snapping like this on that beat," he told a Rolling Stone podcast. "This dude is really who he thinks he is. He's on some next level."

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