![]() ![]() "The message I'm sending to myself - I can't change the world until I change myself first," he adds. It's something I still have to think about when I sleep at night. "I don't talk about these things if I haven't lived them, and I've hurt people in my life. "It's not me pointing at my community it's me pointing at myself," Lamar says. Lamar insists he was singing about himself, but some think he's calling on people to look at their own behavior before they take out anger on the police. In "The Blacker the Berry," there's one line that created a lot of controversy - "So why did I weep when Trayvon Martin was in the street, when gang-banging make me kill a n**** blacker than me? Hypocrite!" - especially because he'd become such a hero in the Black Lives Matter movement. He got shot."Īs much as Lamar makes the songs on To Pimp a Butterfly personal, people have taken the music to mean much more. But, you know, things happen where sometimes the good are in the wrong places, and that's exactly what happened. And him just always telling me to make sure that Chad is on the right path. "I was actually best friends with his older brother, which is incarcerated right now. He was like my little brother we grew up in the same community," Lamar says. The feeling was, 'How am I influencing so many people on this stage rather than influencing the ones that I have back home?' That's the feeling: being inside the hotel room, and these thoughts I'm just pondering back and forth while I look at the ceiling all night."īack home, Lamar says, he "probably lost more friends in this past summer than any other summer." One sticks out. "The feeling was, I should be with my family right now when they're going through hardships, with the loss of my dear friends that's constantly passing while I'm out on this road. "What was the feeling? The feeling was missing home," Lamar says. Sometimes I did the same, abusing my power, full of resentment, resentment that turned into a deep depression." Then there's a night in a hotel room, where he describes himself literally screaming out in agony. There's a refrain that he keeps coming back to, a spoken-word piece of sorts: "I remember you was conflicted, misusing your influence. On To Pimp a Butterfly, Lamar confronts these emotions. "When you go inside these places, no matter how much money you have, no matter how much success, when you still feel like you're not comfortable, where's the feeling in that?" "You can have the platinum album, but when you still feel like you haven't quite found your place in the world - it kind of gives a crazy offset," Lamar says. But for a young man who grew up in Compton, sudden success was overwhelming. Music saved him: He spent long nights in the studio instead of on the streets, and two years ago, his album good kid, m.A.A.d city went platinum. Kendrick Lamar doesn't have a rap sheet himself, but he says he's hurt people. Most of the times, when they were involved in these acts of destruction, I was right there. So no matter how much of a leader I thought I was, I was always under the influence, period. And you have their trust, and you have their loyalty. ![]() "You grow up inside these neighborhoods and these communities, and you have friends, friends that you love, friends that you grew up with since elementary. It let me know that this is not only something that I'm looking at, but it's something that maybe I have to get used to - you dig what I'm saying? Admittedly, it done something to me right then and there. "A guy was out there serving his narcotics and somebody rolled up with a shotgun and blew his chest out. "It was outside my apartment unit," Lamar tells NPR's David Greene. He says he witnessed his first murder at age 5. Lamar grew up in Compton, Calif., in the '80s and '90s, surrounded by poverty and gang wars. To Pimp a Butterfly recently scored 11 Grammy nominations, more than any other artist, and "Alright" became an anthem for the Black Lives Matter movement against police abuse. When you think of music in 2015, you have to think of Kendrick Lamar. ![]()
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