Sing About Me, I'm Dying Of Thirst

This is one of the deepest, most personal tracks on Good Kid, M.A.A.d City. "Just life, in general, is the meaning behind it," Lamar explained to The Boombox. "It's a certain situation that I had to go through; I had to bump my head a few times to know what I had to do to get back right."

"It's probably one of the deepest songs on [the album] that I've written," he added. "It's real short though, probably only a minute or two. When people listen to the album a few more times, and go back and forth, they really understand the setting and the actual position that it has in the album and why it's in that track listing."

This 12 minute track in which Kendrick raps about the ins and outs of the harsh reality that his life has been is split into three parts. "'Sing About Me' is definitely a true song," Kendrick told MTV News.

The first section is from the perspective of Lamar's late homie, Dave, who when he was alive made the young rapper promise that he'll dedicated a song to his brother and himself. "First verse is speaking from my partner talkin' to me, speakin' on a story of how I was there when his brother passed," he explained.

The second part is from the perspective of the real-life sister of prostitute Keisha, whom Lamar rapped about on the tragic 2011 Section.80 track, "Keisha's Song (Her Pain)." Lamar tells us how Keisha's sister chastised him for revealing intimate and embarrassing details of her late sibling. " 'Keisha's Song' is a real song too, and what I didn't understand was the fact that she had a younger sister," he told MTV News. "I met her sister and she went at me about her sister Keisha, basically saying she didn't want her to put her business out there and if your album do come out, don't mention me, don't sing about me."

On the second half of the song ("I'm Dying of Thirst") Kendrick raps from his own perspective about opting out of this hazardous life. "And you're right your brother was a brother to me. And your sister's situation was the one that pulled me. In a direction to speak on something that's realer than the TV screen," he spits.

So why did Lamar combine the tracks "Sing About Me" and "I'm Dying of Thirst" into one song? He explained on Power 106's Big Boy's Neighborhood, that the events described on each track occurred on the same day. Because of that, he brought the songs together to symbolize a shift in perspective on the Good Kid, M.A.A.D City record. "That's a real turning point of the album," he said. "Before I became this person with a mature aspect on life, it was a dark place I came from, a place of negativity, a place of being unruly. 'Dying of Thirst' is actually a specific story about one of my homeboys passing away before my eyes. It really turned everything around full circle. So when you go to a track like 'Dying of Thirst,' and that same day we was getting a spoken word from an elderly lady telling us about God and getting some type of prosperity out of that... I really based them two tracks together because that was a situation that happened that exact same time. So when I say 'Dying of Thirst,' she's really talking about getting hit with holy water or saving yourself."