We always knew Kendrick Lamar could rap. But nobody expected his album to pimp a butterfly to be a staggering musical masterwork that galvanized Grammy voters and protest marchers alike. The big question now is: what will k.dot do next? We got Rick Rubin to ask him.
Here’s where Kendrick Lamar stands as 2016 comes to a close:
He is currently the best rapper alive.
He has busted his way into the conversation about the top five MC's of all time, dead or alive.
He is eliciting comparisons to musicians beyond the borders of rap. Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder: strident artists who shook up the culture and awakened the consciousness of their day.
Kendrick’s kept a pretty low profile in 2016. Yet his 2015 album, To Pimp a Butterfly—a multi-layered LP that unfurls slowly over many, many listens—is still percolating, especially as the single “Alright” continues to be the unofficial anthem of nationwide police-brutality protests.
In March of this year, Kendrick also dropped a surprise album called Untitled Unmastered. It’s really a compilation—a loose gathering of perfectly unpolished songs, death-defying rap verses, and improvised vamps from the sessions that birthed Butterfly. (Side note: We might have LeBron James to thank, at least in part, for the album. After Kendrick performed an untitled track at the Grammys, James tweeted at the CEO of Kendrick’s label, Anthony “Top Dawg” Tiffith, imploring him to release the music.)
Untitled held fans over for a while, but we’re starting to get antsy. So the real question right now isn’t where Kendrick belongs in the firmament—it’s where he’s taking us next.
To tease that out, we asked venerable producer and noted genius-whisperer Rick Rubin to interview Kendrick at Rubin’s own Shangri La studios in Malibu. The two had never previously met. They spoke on the lawn of Shangri La for an hour. Then they walked directly into the studio and started recording new music.
What follows are excerpts from their conversation.— WILL WELCH
This story is from the Holiday 2016 edition of GQ Style.
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This story is from the Holiday 2016 edition of GQ Style.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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