The album features guest appearances from Drake, Dr. Dre, Jay Rock, Anna Wise and MC Eiht.

Good Kid, M.A.A.D City was recorded mostly at several studios in California, with producers such as Dr. Dre, Just Blaze, Pharrell Williams, Hit-Boy, Scoop DeVille, Jack Splash, and T-Minus, among others, contributing to the album.

Good Kid, M.A.A.D City received widespread acclaim from critics, who praised its thematic scope and Lamar's lyrics.

The album was supported by five singles – "The Recipe", "Swimming Pools (Drank)", "Backseat Freestyle", "Poetic Justice", and "Bitch, Don't Kill My Vibe".

[6] On August 15, 2012, Lady Gaga announced via Twitter, that she had collaborated with Lamar on a song called "Partynauseous", for the album, and would be released on September 6.

Good Kid, M.A.A.D City has a low-key,[13] downbeat production,[14] with atmospheric beats and subtle, indistinct hooks.

[12] It eschews contemporary hip-hop tastes[15] and generally features tight bass measures, subtle background vocals, and light piano.

[17][18][19] Andrew Nosnitsky of Spin cites the music's "closest point of reference" as "the cold spaciousness of ATLiens-era Outkast, but as the record progresses, that sound sinks slowly into the fusionist mud of those sprawling and solemn mid-2000s Roots albums.

"[20] Sasha Frere-Jones of The New Yorker finds its use of "smooth" music as a backdrop for "rough" scenarios to be analogous to Dr. Dre's G-funk during the early 1990s, but adds that "Lamar often sounds like Drake ... whose various dreamy styles have very little to do with the legacy of the West.

"[21] Okayplayer's Marcus Moore writes that its "expansive and brooding" instrumentals eschew "California's glossy West Coast funk" for a "Dungeon Family aesthetic.

[24] The songs address issues such as economic disenfranchisement, retributive gang violence[25] and downtrodden women,[26] while analyzing their residual effects on individuals and families.

[25] Lamar introduces various characters and internal conflicts,[26] including the contrast of his homesickness and love for Compton with the city's plagued condition.

observes a "transformation" by Lamar's character "from a boisterous, impressionable, girl-craving teenager to more spiritual, hard-fought adulthood, irrevocably shaped by the neighbourhood and familial bonds of his precarious environment.

"[27] David Amidon of PopMatters views that the album provides a "sort of semi-autobiographical character arc",[28] while MSN Music's Robert Christgau writes that Lamar "softspokenly" enacts a "rap-versus-real dichotomy".

"[29] Lamar exhibits a tempered delivery on the album[15] and raps with dense narratives, internal rhyme,[30] double and triple time flow[31] and multiple voices for different characters.

[24] Music journalist Jody Rosen characterizes him as "a storyteller, not a braggart or punch-line rapper, setting spiritual yearnings and moral dilemmas against a backdrop of gang violence and police brutality.

[36] The cover artwork for Good Kid, M.A.A.D City features a child Lamar, two of his uncles, and his grandfather, with the adults' eyes censored, possibly for privacy reasons.

[45] The music video for the song, "Backseat Freestyle", was released on January 2, 2013, which included Lamar's father in a cameo appearance.

[44] The music video for the original version of the single was released on May 13, with comedian Mike Epps making a cameo appearance.

It featured a cameo from Juicy J, and a bonus clip of a new song by Schoolboy Q from his own respective major label debut album, Oxymoron (2014).

[75] It was certified triple platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in June; for combined sales, streaming and track-sale equivalents of three million units in the US.

[24] Jaeki Cho of XXL hailed Good Kid, M.A.A.D City as "one of the most cohesive bodies of work in recent rap memory" and wrote that each song sounded "both complexly arranged and sonically fitting, foregrounding Kendrick's vivid lyricism and amazing control of cadence".

[31] In The Irish Times, Jim Carroll viewed it as an entertaining and forward-thinking that nonetheless echoed the past era of West Coast hip-hop.

[83] In the opinion of AllMusic editor David Jeffries, the album was "some kind of elevated gangsta rap"; he wrote of its subject matter: Besides all the great ideas and life, this journey through the concrete jungle of Compton is worth taking because of the artistic richness, plus the attraction of a whip-smart rapper flying high during his rookie season.

Hazel Sheffield of NME believed the album "might lack the raw appeal of" Section.80,[86] while Alex Macpherson of The Guardian found "Lamar's depiction of downtrodden women" to be "unnecessarily prurient and unconvincing".

[87] In December 2012, Complex also named Good Kid, M.A.A.D City one of the 25 classic hip-hop albums of the previous 10 years.

[104] Its loss of the Best Rap Album award to Macklemore & Ryan Lewis' The Heist and was dubbed an "infamous snub" by Rolling Stone's Andre Gee.

[115] In 2014, it was reported that Good Kid, M.A.A.D City was being studied as a text in the freshman composition class of Georgia Regents University professor Adam Diehl, alongside other coming of age works such as the James Joyce novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Gwendolyn Brooks' Selected Poems, James Baldwin's short story "Going to Meet the Man", and the John Singleton film Boyz n the Hood.

The theme of the class was meant to "inspire students to find an outlet to bring some sanity to our own mad city–Augusta", Diehl told HipHopDX.