Lamar told Complex in October 2012:

If you listen to ‘Poetic Justice,’ it’s a song about a chick saying these legs are poems. On the back end of that, is really the Sherane joint, so it’s a dedication song for Sherane. And that’s going into ‘good kid’ and ’m.A.A.d city’'which completes the story. Me and Drake had been working for a while off the fact that I was on his tour and I was on Take Care. We were talking about what joints we wanted to do. When Scoop shot me the track, I immediately came up with the concept of doing that vibe and the first person I had in mind was Drake. Drake killed it and it came out crazy.