It has so much to offer musically, lyrically, and it introduced us to Snoop and Tha Dogg Pound.” I can just remember when I first heard it and I felt like a blaxploitation film, present-day, you know what I’m saying? It just had that feel to it. Any party, any club, people still gonna turn up and go up like the music just came out yesterday.” When I heard the whole album, I was like, ‘Whew.’ It’s The Chronic, man. I knew it was gonna be dope, knew it was gonna be hard. So yeah, that was my first reaction when I saw that cover. Everybody else played their role, but Dr. What the hell they gonna do now?’ Ice Cube left, but I felt like Dr. When he left the group, I was like, ‘Damn, man. Dre was like a creator because he made all the beats so I felt like he was the creator. Because N.W.A was big, but I just felt like Dr. He’s the best, not because he’s the best rapper, but because he has a real understanding of music history.“It just felt - when I seen the cover, it just felt like it was about to be big. The all-round producer Terrace Martin, who has been with him since his first record Section.80 (2011), sums up the rapper’s interaction with his influences well: ‘The spirits of jazz and hip-hop came together and made a baby, and that baby is Kendrick Lamar. It is in part Lamar’s abilities to appropriate a wide range of influences that represent the entire spectrum of African American culture that has enabled him to establish himself as one of the world’s most influential rappers. For the catchy “i”, Lamar wanted to sample The Isley Brothers – he even went in person to ask Ronald Isley for permission and gave him a role in the video that followed – Lamar’s way of cementing his steps along a long aesthetic continuum. Without recognising this it is impossible to understand To Pimp A Butterfly (2015), the masterpiece upon which the Californian rapper surrounds himself with funk legend George Clinton, jazzman Kamasi Washington, and electronic wizard Flying Lotus. And not forgetting the legendary Stax label – home of Otis Redding, Carla Thomas, Isaac Hayes, Wendy Renee and the seminal 24-Carat Black – long admired by TDE, the collective founded by Anthony ‘Top Dawg’ Tiffith who has been around Kendrick Lamar forever. But there’s also John Coltrane, Sly & The Family Stone, Parliament and the soulful anthem “Only The Strong Survive” featured in the film Menace II Society. We can of course find DMX, Ice Cube, Kurupt and X-Clan in his DNA.
We risk missing out an essential element of Lamar’s personality if we only consider hip-hop as a factor in his growth as an artist. So much so that the Californian rapper once said ‘I see myself as a jazz musician’. As he grew older – and through his encounters with Terrace Martin, Thundercat and Robert Glasper – he was introduced to the whole catalogue of great music being made by artists of colour. The Compton kid was named after the legendary Temptations singer Eddie Kendricks. Yet, as relevant as this selection is, it missed out a big part of Kendrick Lamar’s musical background: his parents listened to a lot of funk and soul. Even New Orleans rap has been important in his development: he has often recalled how Lil’ Wayne, Juvenile and the Hot Boys were his role models. We learn that he worships Californians DJ Quik and 2Pac as much as New Yorkers like the Notorious B.I.G and Jay-Z.
They’re not really classified but are punctuated with comments and memories from ‘the good kid’ of the West Coast. What follows in the article is a very instructive list of 25 albums. Nor would you suspect that, as time went on, Kendrick Lamar would become more and more secretive, giving interviews only in dribs and drabs – although for Complex magazine he agreed to answer that million dollar question: what are your favourite hip-hop albums?
– has a future, a resourcefulness and an intelligence, but you can even begin to imagine to what extent. Dre, you get the sense that this kid from Compton – the Los Angeles suburb known for spawning N.W.A. He is 25 years old and has just released Good Kid, M.A.A.D City. in 2017), neither was he the man with 13 Grammy Awards, nor the first rapper to win the very prestigious Pulitzer Prize. Kendrick Lamar is not yet the rap superstar capable of putting Rihanna and U2 together on the same record ( DAMN.
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