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Kendrick Lamar’s two-part “Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst” depicts life in an urban ghetto. From beginning to end, Lamar breaks down the stories that pulled him away from gang culture, while also speaking on the spiritual rebirth that provided him with an escape from the streets.
In the first part, Kendrick takes the perspective of two different people before rapping from his own perspective to discuss the tribulations he has gone through. In the second part, K-Dot picks up where the outro skit of “Swimming Pool” leaves off—Dave gets killed and his brother is seeking retaliation. The song closes with the same prayer heard at the start of the album. In an October 2012 interview with Power 106’s Big Boy’s Neighborhood, Kendrick spoke on putting the songs together:
"Before I became this person with a mature aspect on life, it was a dark place I came from, a place of negativity, a place of being unruly. I really based them two tracks together because that was a situation that happened that exact same time."
Each part of the song is produced by different producers—the first half was done by Skhye Hutch and Sounwave. They sampled Grant Green’s 1971 record, “Maybe Tomorrow,” and lifted the drums from 1972’s “Use Me” by Bill Withers. The second half was made by Like of Pac Div, who sampled a vocal break from “My Romance” by The Singers Unlimited.
Kendrick split the music video into two parts for each half of the song, with “Sing About Me” premiering in December 2013, and “I’m Dying of Thirst” debuting in January 2014. It’s also worth noting that Lamar later mentioned this song on March 2015’s “These Walls,” off his sophomore album "To Pimp A Butterfly".
"First verse is speaking from my partner talkin' to me, speakin' on a story of how I was there when his brother passed and I got to watch him take his last breath."
–Kendrick (regarding the song’s concept)
The second verse is a continuation of “Keisha’s Song (Her Pain)” from Section.80, Kendrick’s first album, where he tells the tragic story of a prostitute who is raped and murdered.
In a November 2017 interview granted to Andrew Barker from Variety, Kendrick confessed it took him more than a year to write the record:
"Sometimes that process can take more than a year, as it did for Lamar’s 12-minute 2012 song, ‘Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst.’ (‘I started the idea, and then it manifested all these other ideas as it went on.’)"
According to Songfacts, K Dot explained on Power 106’s Big Boy’s Neighborhood, that the events described on each track occurred on the same day. Because of that, he brought the songs together to symbolize a shift in perspective on the Good Kid, M.A.A.D City record:
"That’s a real turning point of the album. Before I became this person with a mature aspect on life, it was a dark place I came from, a place of negativity, a place of being unruly. “Dying of Thirst” is actually a specific story about one of my homeboys passing away before my eyes. It really turned everything around full circle. So when you go to a track like “Dying of Thirst”, and that same day we was getting a spoken word from an elderly lady telling us about God and getting some type of prosperity out of that… I really based them two tracks together because that was a situation that happened that exact same time. So when I say “Dying of Thirst”, she’s really talking about getting hit with holy water or saving yourself."
In an interview with Life + Times, Lamar explained that he wanted recount the story in the first verse of his late friend’s older brother, who was trapped in a life of crime:
"That’s one of my favorite verses on the album.
It’s an obvious true story. It hits home, as far as the past members of tragic situations that happened in my life. That one particular situation is my homeboy getting smoked while I’m right there, and I’m being the last one right there just seeing him take his last. his brother being irrevocable, a street cat, and him just thanking me for being right there, and wishing that he could’ve found a passion in something – maybe music, maybe sports – but him recognizing the fact and truth that he was already in too deep."
“The craziest part about that verse, and in real life him saying, ‘If something happens to me before your album drops, just make sure you mention and tell this story in a positive light,’ and that’s exactly what I did and he definitely passed, too. That’s why that’s one of the final songs on the album – out of 12 songs, that’s closer to the bottom because when the reality check really hit, a lot people know Kendrick Lamar for who I am today, but for me to think what I had to do to come from a dark space, and that was the turning point right there."
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