Kendrick Lamar: Hip hop's sensitive soul But the unique selling point of 2012"s biggest breakthrough hip-hop act - platinum-tongued, 25-year-old Los Angeleno, Kendrick Lamar - was a sensibility which prioritises vulnerability over braggadocio and the emotions of victims of crime over the ambitions of perpetrators. Either way, Lamar "s second album good kid, m.A.A.d city showed a disdain for rap's macho etiquette still more cavalier than its disregard for the conventions of lower and upper-case typography, and registered higher first-week US sales than the new Rihanna album in the process. Lamar's fresh lyrical approach was all the more remarkable for benefiting from the patronage of gangsta-rap-godfather cum headphones-mogul Dr Dre - previously mentor to Snoop Dogg, Eminem and 50 Cent. None of those performers has been renowned for his propensity for turning the other cheek. But the secret of Lamar's success is that far from the deracinated space cadet the name of his one-time LA rap collective - "Black Hippy" - suggests him to be, the dysfunctional family snapshots on his album sleeve prove his upbringing in the gang-culture hothouse of Compton to have been just as perilous as those of his less pacifically inclined predecessors. Having been taken to watch the filming of Dre and Tupac's California Love video at the tender age of eight, Lamar has grown up to offer the music he loved a way out of its homicidal impasse. Kendrick Lamar tours the UK from Tuesday; kendricklamar.com