Kendrick Lamar - m.A.A.d city (feat. MC Eiht) by jamesjan3

alright bitch lets do this i got one more in me

it should not be a surprise to anyone that jamesjan has been the single biggest influence in my own mapping style. furthermore, i’d like to assure you that the purpose of this review is a bit more complex than just being a dedicated flower factory for the way this guy maps. it is really important to not treat any single work as your definitive bible in any creative discipline, which is a trap i probably fell into with this map at some point in time.

in a similar vein, a LOT of the maps i’ve rated on here have changed greatly in my eyes. looking at all my ratings from one, two, or god forbid three years ago as one collection has almost no merit whatsoever to me. but one thing i did three years ago was give this map a 5, and it became sort of the pillar that every other map has to compare heights with. nothing about that has changed. i’d like to take some time to explore why.

00:14:805 (1,2,3,4) - rule 1 of placing objects on sick ass beats. its important to be able to make decisions like this. shows an understanding of the context you’re working in. the hihats might seem like a boring thing that juts out here, something that could’ve been mapped more passively, but the hihats are the glue in the song that keeps the flow feeling continuous even over this full beat pause. showing that you understand that is meaningful to me. i would even say i think its a cooler choice than what he did at 02:10:694 (5,6,7) -, but thats ones fine too

00:06:430 (13) - this is kind of like a signature to me. no ones making curves like this. its a little silly. its got that spongebob in it. this is one of a few endearing things throughout this map that make me feel like james lowkey just places whatever makes him smile, and i take that as an important reminder that your best work is often your most unbothered. i still sort of can’t place objects without the goal of impressing someone and i know my maps instantly got better when i was able to let go of some of that.

i always love a good playfield gimmick, it wakes me right up. james LOOOOVES a good playfield gimmick. the ones in this map especially are so nice because they are so simple and organized, if we’re just looking at them in a vacuum. with respect to the song, they get even more interesting (as things usually do.) i’m like 60% sure i took this thought from someone else, but the development of different playfield ideas over the course of this map creates such a strong sense of “progression”. that word is so whatever and i wish i had a less vague one but it seems to jive with mappers and i think it’ll get people sort of on the same page. when you consider that in tandem with the narrative of the song, where kendrick’s world is crumbling around him in real time, it hits so good. to have a tool at all that can feel like it represents storytelling in some sort of abstract way is sweet.

the “circle in the middle” gimmick at 00:38:949 is cute, and something i’ve done too. might be a blunder that 00:41:564 (2) isn’t also in the center, since that’s the only example stopping it from just being on every kick drum, but i dunno. where it really heats up, though, is 01:17:578. has to be my favorite part of this whole map. the introduction of the cymbals in this part of the song is so incredibly important to the feel and yet it’d be so easy to ignore in the way we typically think about patterning. i would not blame someone at all for brushing right past a detail like that. but james REALLY cares about these cymbals and that is so deeply vindicating. the pattern “walking” across the bottom of the screen, along with the lyrical imagery of “pickin up the fuckin pump”, makes this pattern really feel like you’re dragging your feet across the floor. every return back to the bottom carries so much gravity.

i’m still not done with this thought. the way this part ends, 01:22:408 (1,2,1,2,1,2,1) -, totally flips this on its head. it speeds way back up all of a sudden. it’s kinda like putting a video in slow-mo for a few seconds and then going into fast forward to catch back up. in that sense, this pattern sort of creates a phantom transition into the next section. he totally could have just mapped this the exact same way he had mapped the last 3 lines. the song doesn’t ask for anything more. but by speeding up the frequency of the emphasis, he kind of gets you to hear the bar the way he wants you to hear it. molding the song certainly isn’t a new thing, and some of the most acclaimed maps even just on this website are built around improvisation, but this is such a subtle application of it, taking place entirely in the movement. i adore that.

and hey guess what i’m STILL not done with this thought. i think my least favorite part of this map is actually where he does this pattern again at 01:54:599 (1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2) -, because i think the flow of this bar (and even the synth in the background!) is way too different the second time around to reasonably try to run this back. on some level it’s really funny that he just rips it again but i would have definitely gone for something else here, and it goes to show how fragile the idea was in the first place. one variation and it’s a completely different story. okay seriously that’s it we’re done with this part. moving on:

do people look forward to mapping record scratch sounds? i think they’re so fun, but it’s really hard to find fun existing examples of record scratch patterns. this map has at least a couple great ones. at 05:23:062 (1,1,1) -, unraveling the slidershapes as the pitch of the scratches descend is such a slam dunk. once you see it on your screen it’s like “oh yeah, obviously,” but nobody does this! i’ve never seen this before. the one right after at 05:25:641 (1,2,3) is even simpler - dare i say the sliders making a full rotation is like the motion of a record spinning around? you see it, right? cmooooon i know you see it

01:01:483 - the fact that he’s able to map this pattern seamlessly to the vocals and the backing sample at the same time might actually be more of a testament to the genius of this sample than anything else. but the most important decision he made here by far was to focus this syncopated hit 01:02:892 (8) -, the single point where the two vocal tracks diverge. if he chose to map the main vocals here, he’d actually just end up mapping to both tracks again. this choice is what allows you to feel through the map what the song wants you to feel even though the map only has one “layer” to accomplish that and the song has two. that’s so cool. that’s what makes me tick. yes i am getting excited over the literal lack of an object and you are well within your right to make fun of me for that.

it seems like the single most divisive aspect of this map is the beat switch, or the 1/3 section, but really let’s call it the beat switch because it’s like half the song. i want to be really clear that i don’t intend to just pick on fiery’s old comment here - i bring this up because i’ve seen how people approach approximated rhythms in this game and it seems like a complaint that many others probably silently have with this map if they have it with so many others. i want to offer respect to those people in that i think we just play the game for different reasons, no value judgment intended. i can understand being disappointed in a pattern that’s less intuitive, or less conducive to an immediate goal of full accuracy, and i would even say that mental model is closer to what this game was originally intended to be. this especially comes up when we’re talking about the section from 04:42:136 to 05:24:323. it’s a legitimate technique he’s using there for sections like this - you map to the vocals when you can and switch to a different layer (guitar/strings in this case) when you can’t, but i can absolutely understand it being cumbersome to follow.

however. what i always say about stuff like this is if that’s gonna be your issue, i’d at least like you to be able to devise a better way to do it, and man, i don’t think there is one. you could always say just don’t map the song, and like, fair play, but you should understand that my entire career has been specifically based around not listening to that take. mapping rap constantly introduces situations of negotiating between the vocals and the beat, and 1/3 swing is very much baked into this second beat. listen for the swung string note at the end of each bar, leading into the next one. the stabbing strings directly on the beat already create so much tension, but you can literally imagine the swing as if it’s a ship swinging back and forth in a storm. this beat feels DIRE.

i realize the flow isn’t precisely snapped here, but kendrick & mc eiht absolutely use that 1/3 grid as a base, and the urgency of this part just dissipates if you don’t maintain that swing feeling most of the time. when they drift far enough off of it, there’s always a solution - some of the coolest parts of this whole section are the intermittent 1/4s, like 03:16:092 (7,8,9,10) and 04:16:751 (6,7,8,9). if it puts you off to need to follow those switches, i really get it. but that’s exactly what i love about it. i love that when you learn this map, it’s NOT like anything you’ve ever played before - it’s like learning to rap along with the song. that’s fucking awesome, man.

so what’s the conclusion here. for me? well, i kinda went all over the place here, didn’t i. there are SO many more details of this map i could talk about, and i really just wanted to give people a brief window into some of the things i see in it (if there’s any universe where 2300 words can count as brief.) but that’s a point in itself. what this map means to me is being a single demonstration of almost every type of beauty that rap can incite in this medium. and while that is a huge part of what motivated me in this game personally, i was still just hopping on trends much of the time. my mapping kendrick’s euphoria as fast as i could wasn’t really much different than everybody else’s arms race to rank the first shikanoko or whatever. i thought i could be cool just because of the content that i associated myself with, and it takes more than that. in my heart of hearts i wanted to create a map like m.a.a.d city - a map that feels like it has a plot.

for you, and the community as a whole? what i’ll tell you is that hip-hop in mapping is the origin of some of its most lush and creative ideas and it is a damn shame that it continues to drown in the waters of obscurity. fun fact: have you ever been to the featured artist track search webpage? it has 54 genre sort buttons that were specifically programmed into the site to showcase the different types of licensed music that osu has to offer. there is exactly one of those buttons that brings up zero results. i’m not kidding, you can go to https://osu.ppy.sh/beatmaps/artists/tracks and click on literally any other button, whether it’s jazz, neurofunk, hyperpop, technical metal, something i’ve never heard of before called “Full Flavour”, or whatever you like, and find officially sanctioned music to map. you’d just better hope it’s not hip-hop. that button returns nothing.

when maps like m.a.a.d city exist, i get really tired of people telling me that this is because hip-hop “isn’t compatible” with rhythm games, or was never a part of rhythm games. did you know that the rap group de la soul made a song for parappa the rapper 2, which was the sequel to the first rhythm game ever made? that was 25 years ago. did you know that the first three genres you could select in the original beatmania for the ps1 were ambient, reggae, and hip-hop? that was 29 years ago. every barrier to that joy since has been completely optional. if you have the strength to carry that message through the doubt, the contempt, and even the racism that people have directed at this genre, you have my respect. it was my single biggest cause as a bn & a mapper and my only regret is that i don’t still have it in me to carry the baton.