Make an album as critically and commercially adored as Kendrick Lamar’s 2012 studio debut good kid m.A.A.d city, and you’re setting yourself up for mad hype, speculation and expectations when record no. 2 rolls around.
On September 23, Lamar dropped the first piece of his as-yet untitled follow-up (out late 2014 or early 2015). The lead single, i, finds an ultra-positive Lamar shouting “I Love Myself!” between dark verses about growing up with low self-esteem and little confidence. The beat comes via musicians who recreated Who’s That Lady’s funky R&B grooves. It’s totally fair to call it Kendrick’s catchiest, danciest track to date. It’s totally not fair to compare it to Pharrell’s Happy. And, although, we knew that everyone with a twitter account would feel some typa way about the lead single, we didn’t anticipate the amount of debate and influx of think-pieces the song would inspire.
In town for Toronto’s edition of We Day, sitting in a lower-level Air Canada Centre room just down the hall from the Raptors’ dressing room, Lamar opened up about the song’s autobiographical nature (depression, Compton, self-love), talked about learning from Prince, and dropped a few hints about the new album.
Julia LeConte: I just watched this documentary that Nas executive-produced called Shake The Dust about b-boys and b-girls around the world, and the kids – particularly teenaged boys in Uganda – were articulating how much they lacked self-esteem. That was the first time I heard young boys, or anyone in hip-hop, really, talking about that. Until your single, i, came out.
Kendrick Lamar: It’s the truth. That record comes from going through something. Going through a lot of pain, a lot of stress, a lot of depression. That was something that my fans probably never knew about me as a person. They hear it in the music a little bit, but they don’t know how deep it really is. I have an old soul, and I’ve been through a lot of things in life, so in order to make that song, I had to come from that place – a real, real, super, super dark place. As the story unfolds, they’ll understand even more.
I always looked at my community, and going back to my neighbourhood, I said, “What’s the fuel behind the gang culture?” I have a fellowship with my friends in the neighbourhood and we said, “Why can’t we have a bond with this neighbourhood over there?” And we broke it down. It’s because we don’t love ourselves. How we gonna love them over there when we don’t have no self-respect for ourselves? And that started when we was kids. The things that we were exposed to wasn’t love. Parents strung out. Fathers in jail. Mother on dope. That’s not love. We were getting love from the older homies sand the older siblings, but they wasn’t taught love, so the way of them giving us love wasn’t something that we could work with going out into the world, because we still had this amount of tension built up inside of us.
I looked at that, not only in my community, but around the world. This year, we’ve heard about so many suicides. So many suicides. So many people killing each other over senseless things. And it all starts from within self. You don’t know what artists go through or people go through who want to do these things. But it all stems from self. And that’s how I came about this record.
JL: Rappers are expected to have a tough persona. But if lack of self-esteem is such a rampant thing, are you surprised no one’s rapped about it before?
KL: Yes. I’m very surprised. Cause when I came up with the idea and the concept, it kind of blew me away. Something so simple, man. It’s so simple. Something so relatable. And I think that does come from the image a rapper or a hip-hop artist upholds. I mean, hip-hop is tough and it comes from, you know, hardships. But who’s to say loving yourself is not a hardship? You know what I’m saying? That’s the hardest thing for someone to do, is to look in the mirror and say, “This is who I am and I trust and believe that.” So it definitely blew me away. But now I’m in a situation in my life where I really just want to consider myself a writer at heart. A writer. Where nobody can really classify me in one particular lane of music, because it all comes from being a student of writing.
“I mean, hip-hop is tough and it comes from, you know, hardships. But who’s to say loving yourself is not a hardship? You know what I’m saying? That’s the hardest thing for someone to do, is to look in the mirror and say, ‘This is who I am and I trust and believe that.'”
JL: The theme of the song is pretty dark, but it’s the most upbeat production you’ve ever had.
KL: Probably my life is a little bit darker [laughs]. Dealing with things, dealing with change. Change is the hardest thing in life. Obviously my change has been a little dramatic. There comes hardship and there comes balance. Writing this song came out of true-life experiences. But, like I said, as the story unfolds, it will probably make a lot, lot more sense.
JL: By the story, do you mean the new album?
KL: Yeah.
JL: So can you talk about the album a little? Gimme some scoops?
KL: I can’t. It’s still in the process of being created. If I could say anything about how it’s different – I’m in a space now where I’m really not confined to no industry standards. So when you think Kendrick Lamar, someone that everybody knows from rapping, rapping, rapping, rapping, rapping, hard, rapping – I come out with a song like this and it throws everybody for a loop and they can’t believe it. But my point is, I’m a writer. That’s who I am. I been that way since third grade. Actually, the first word I used in first grade was the word “audacity” and my teacher couldn’t believe it, and I knew the definition of it.
So I think that’ll be the difference: just me growing as an artist and me really, really, really, really, really, really believing in the word creativity. And meeting with Prince last night was a real confirmation of creativity and what I should be doing.
JL: Rahki produced this song. And he also produced Black Boy Fly from good kid, m.A.A.d city. How did you know he would be the right guy for it? Thematically they cover a lot of the same territory – being unsure of yourself as a kid in Compton – but Black Boy Fly is such a completely different track, sonically.
KL: That’s a good question. I’ll tell you how the record came about. I was going through a lot of my favourite Isley [Brothers] record joints, just trying to grab inspiration from them, and I came across Who’s That Lady and I said to myself, “I don’t really want to sample it. I want to have the best musicians go in and we’ll create and replay this joint.” And the person I said I wanted to call was Rahki, cause he’s not just a beatmaker, he’s a musician. You know: keys, little bit of drums, little bit of everything. But he has this team of musicians around him. He’s just a great guy and a great inspiration. So we went in the studio, replayed it and I wrote the lyrics and that was it.
JL: And Rahki picked the musicians? Cause I could have sworn Thundercat is playing bass on that track.
KL: No, the bass is Thundercat. Thundercat is on the tail end of the song. You cannot run from that Thundercat sound. His signature sound is crazy and everybody knows it. He’s a good friend of mine as well, you’ll be hearing from him [quietly chuckles].
JL: So Thundercat and Flying Lotus on the new record, maybe?
KL: Hopefully.
JL: Incidentally, i’s message fits perfectly with We Day, which is why you’re in Toronto. Why did you want to be a part of this celebration?
KL: It’s the timing and everything. And that’s something I had to learn growing up. I always wanted everything fast. And that’s what leads you to do terrible things. Things that I’m not proud of. It’s patience, having that patience of creating this record, and it coming out, and We Day coming up – I can’t run from that. We Day is something I always wanted as a kid. Being able to go out and be around individuals that are a little more inspired than I was as a kid. And not only that, but being able to see your favourite artists – or artists that you like and love – performing, speaking to you, mentoring. Me coming out here is not only for them, but it’s for myself. I look at those kids out there and I get inspiration from them as well.
JL: How can you bring that vibe back to low self-esteem kids in Compton?
KL: Really taking the experience of being here, seeing these kids’ faces and being inspired and going back and doing the same thing – my little We Day in Compton, you know? And telling it to the kids who I feel need to hear it. It just comes back full circle.
