All-Time Dodger Records Vol. I: “dodger blue” — Kendrick Lamar

In the wake of Super Halftime Show LIX, it felt like the right time to debut a segment that’ll unite my twin passions of Dodger Baseball and virtually all things music. In other words, it’s time for Dodger bass lines — and some gah gah gah gah.

All-Time Dodger Records will usually be a deep-dive into my collection of Dodger themed records; but every so often a song on an otherwise not-Dodger themed record will stop us dead in our tracks and demand our attention. Enter: Kendrick’s most recent ode to Los Angeles, dodger blue.

While ‘GNX’ will justifiably be remembered as Kendrick’s victory lap for The Beef™, the timing of the album drop (and the name-checking of Dodger Blue) made it feel like a victory lap for Kenny’s beloved and newly-minted champion Dodgers, too — especially after the team used They Not Like Us as their quasi-official anthem en route to their first full-season ring since 1988.

Although it lacks the venom and vitriol of the more robustly beefy dishes on Kendrick’s menu of this era, dodger blue is a more sophisticated, subtle attack— but make no mistake, behind the lush orchestration and angelic supporting vocals, the beef’s still well and truly simmering.

Instead of the full frenzied boil found elsewhere on ‘GNX’ and the singles that preceded it, Kendrick’s lyrics luxuriate here amidst a heady broth of shimmering 90s R&B textures and choral elements to create a borderline symphonic interlude that allows him to reflect on his own Angeleno bonafides while further chipping away at Drake’s big label appropriation of a laundry list of other cities’ scenes, starting right here in our own backyard.

“Don’t say you hate LA when you don’t travel past the 10…”

Can you think of a more honest line ever written about our city (besides “I love LA”)?

As someone who spent 10+ years living on the East Coast to start my career, I can’t tell you how many times I had to defend “The LAnd” from ornery New Yorkers disparaging it despite not really knowing it, having spent the majority of their trips in one of the city’s many insular bubbles (Santa Monica, where you at?) instead of branching out.

Here, though, the outsider is a Torontonian “pretender” who outwardly wraps himself in Hollywood’s finest trappings; more Erewhon less Vons, all-access, and all excess without the street cred to back it up. Subtle, but savage; don’t take it personal!

Final scoreline?

Dodger Blue — Kendrick Lamar
Lyrics: Home Run
Music: Home Run
Cover Art: Home Run
Dodgerness: Walk. He gets on base with the namecheck in the title, but a few more Dodger references in the track would have taken this whole thing to another level.

3–3, 3HR, 3RBI, BB; 1.000/1.000/4.000

An elite showing by any metric.