Training Day is Kendrick Lamar’s second mixtape. It was released on June 1st, 2005. He was 18 at the time and went under the name “K-Dot.” It is reminiscent of a film of the same name.
On this mixtape, young Kendrick raps to beats that were popular from the 80s-2007, such as Jay-Z's "Show Me What You Got", Notorious B.I.G's "Who Shot Ya", Slum Village's "Players" as a tribute to late producer J-Dilla, and Andre 3000's "Prototype". Here, all the songs features a Lil Wayne copycat flow, but the mixtape gets Kendrick to rap to some killer old skool/new skool beats. Luckily, to make it all better, features come with Jay Rock, EmJae, Punch, and more. During the mixtape, a story kind of starts to build up as you listen to the mixtape from scratch, where skits before the song plays come up. On the cover, it has a byline that says "In the next 26 tracks, you'll learn about the streets", and this is where you know that a story builds up. There are interviews in the middle of the mixtape with fellow DJ, DJ Dave about his flows, lyrics and life.
