Kendrick Lamar Discusses Self-Doubt & Witnessing A Murder When He Was 5
When you look at all the year-end lists that have come down the pike this month, Kendrick Lamar‘s To Pimp A Butterfly is the one that seems to have had the biggest impact. The overwhelming, art-damaged hip-hop opus is as hopeful as it is fatalistic, and now in a new interview with NPR, Lamar explains the real-life pain and bracing experiences that informed the project.
Specifically, he talks about how witnessing a murder at age five shaped his whole worldview.
“It was outside my apartment unit,” he recalled. “A guy was out there serving his narcotics and somebody rolled up with a shotgun and blew his chest out. Admittedly, it done something to me right then and there. 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?”
Throughout TPAB, Lamar returns to the spoken passage, “I remember you was conflicted, misusing your influence. Sometimes I did the same, abusing my power, full of resentment, resentment that turned into a deep depression.” He told NPR that refrain comes from a doubt and depression that has been eating at him, since he goes on tour and lives as a famous artist while his family and friends in his hometown of Compton continue to perish.
“What was the feeling? The feeling was missing home,” Lamar says. “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. 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.”
He added: “I don’t talk about these things if I haven’t lived them, and I’ve hurt people in my life. It’s something I still have to think about when I sleep at night.”
Read the whole thing here.
