Kendrick Lamar's Debut is One of the Most Important Hip-Hop Albums of Our Era Editor: Tef Poe is an artist from St. Louis City. Through powerful imagery and complicated honesty, he has earned a reputation as one of the best rappers telling the story of St. Louis, which is about much more than one place. Poe has been featured in music publications such as XXL and Urb Magazine. His newest project War Machine 2 was released on June 5th and will be followed up by a full-length with DJ Burn One entitled Cheer For The Villain. Follow him on twitter @tefpoe . Get War Machine 2 here. I have been a Kendrick Lamar fan every since Allhiphop.com posted a freestyle from his crew entitled "Westcoast Wu Tang". This was a few years ago and his alias was still K. Dot. I didn't know much about him, but he spit an insane verse and dumbed out over a Wu-Tang styled instrumental with his fellow crew members (including Black Hippy). His career started to progress and his buzz within his hometown grew enormously and steadily spread throughout the country once it was revealed on Twitter that he was on Dr. Dre's radar. This all happened a few years ago, and now we're finally being gifted Kendrick's major label debut album entitled good kid m.A.A.d. city . The project is an experimental body of hip-hop songs about a good kid growing up and dealing with the pressures that come with being influenced by