He is modern hip hop's messiah. He's not a very naughty boy. Kendrick Lamar's debut studio release, good kid, m.A.A.d city, has been lauded across the board, and might just be that white whale of a rap album that unites critics and fans in appreciation. But is it really the leviathan it's proclaimed to be?

The album's success owes as much to what isn't in the mix as to what is. Lamar's unaffected rhymes on The Art Of Peer Pressure and Good Kid are more charming than twenty ten-a-penny soul sensations, the unassuming detachment surely his signature sound. There's a noticeable lack of braggadocio, and he never sonically stoops to the level of MC-versus-beat. This is street journalism, simultaneously out of the mix and in it up to his Compton cap and jheri curl – metaphorically speaking. good kid, m.A.A.d city is Cidade de Deus on wax, and Kendrick is our Rocket.

A Frankenrhymer with talent to spare, Lamar is prodigious and understated in equal measure. good kid, m.A.A.d city has the narrative panache often associated with East Coast artists, the Crenshaw creep of Dre and The D.O.C, and the kind of smoked-out galactic weirdness first heard from OutKast, and later from Odd Future and Raider Klan. Like the Doctor's creation, the constituent parts add up to something unlike any of the above, but covetous hip hop aficionados beware – the not-so-little monster is already working with Lady Gaga.

Whatever happens next, this record will stand the test of time.