Kendrick Lamar

• 1. Introduction

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  Kendrick Lamar Duckworth was five years old when he watched a teenage drug dealer get killed in a drive-by shooting outside his apartment in Compton, California. "It done something to me right then and there," he later told NPR Music. "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." That moment, and the neighborhood that shaped it, would become the raw material for one of the most decorated careers in the history of recorded music. How does a child from Section 8 housing who struggled with depression and a stutter become the first musician outside classical and jazz to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music? How does a rapper from Compton headline the most-watched Super Bowl halftime show of all time? And what happens when an artist who spent years avoiding the spotlight finds himself at the very center of a cultural reckoning?

• 2. Compton's Gravity

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  Kenneth "Kenny" Duckworth and Paula Oliver were teenagers when they left South Side, Chicago for Compton in 1984, driven there by Kenny's affiliation with the Gangster Disciples. Their son, born on the 17th of June 1987, was named after Eddie Kendricks of the Temptations. Paula described him as a "loner". His cousins include former basketball player Nick Young and rapper Baby Keem.

  The family lived in Section 8 housing, relied on welfare and food stamps, and experienced homelessness. Lamar grew up alongside close affiliates of the Westside Pirus, though he was never a member of any gang. He attended school with a noticeable stutter, yet excelled academically. His first grade teacher at Ronald E. McNair Elementary School told him to become a writer after he correctly used the word "audacity" in class.

  At Vanguard Learning Center, a seventh grade English teacher named Regis Inge introduced Lamar to poetry as a deliberate response to growing racial tensions among students. Inge wove poetry into the curriculum, and through its connection to hip-hop, Lamar fell into rhymes, metaphors, and double entendres. "You can put all your feelings down on a sheet of paper, and they'd make sense to you. I liked that," he recalled. His initial writing was entirely profane, and it helped him manage the psychological trauma and depression he carried through his adolescence. At 16, following the death of a friend, he was baptized and converted to Christianity. He graduated from Centennial High School in 2005 as a straight-A student, setting aside plans to study psychology and astronomy.

• 3. The TDE Years Begin

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  During high school Lamar performed under the name K.Dot, freestyling and battle rapping, with his earliest shows held at what he described as a "super hood" comedy club and behind a tattoo parlor. A fellow student named Dave Free traveled from Inglewood specifically to watch him rap; the two became fast friends over their shared love of hip-hop and the television sitcom Martin.

  Free, working as a computer technician, introduced Lamar's first mixtape to record producer Anthony "Top Dawg" Tiffith while repairing his computer. Tiffith invited the teenager to audition. Lamar freestyled for Tiffith and executive Terrence "Punch" Henderson for two uninterrupted hours, a move that impressed Henderson and bewildered Tiffith. He signed with Top Dawg Entertainment in 2005, the label's first signing alongside Jay Rock, and purchased a minority stake for an undisclosed sum.

  The bond Lamar built at TDE with Jay Rock, Ab-Soul, and Schoolboy Q produced the hip-hop supergroup Black Hippy. He briefly signed an artist development deal with Def Jam Recordings in 2006 and was dropped after an encounter with the label's then-president Jay-Z, which he later called "one of those situations where I wasn't ready." A publishing deal with Warner/Chappell Music followed, and his fourth mixtape, Overly Dedicated, released on the 14th of September 2010, became his first project available through digital retailers. Its music video for "Ignorance Is Bliss" caught Dr. Dre's attention on YouTube, and Dre reached out hoping to bring Lamar into a collaboration with Snoop Dogg.

• 4. Good Kid in a M.A.A.D City

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  Section.80, released on the 2nd of July 2011, was Lamar's first album and his first to appear on the Billboard 200, peaking at number 113 and selling approximately 5,000 copies in its first week. Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, and the Game dubbed him the "New King of the West Coast" during a performance in West Los Angeles. Ogden Payne of Forbes called it "the genesis to successfully balancing social commentary with mass appeal."

  The follow-up, Good Kid, M.A.A.D City, released on the 22nd of October 2012, debuted at number two on the Billboard 200 with 242,000 copies sold, the highest first-week total for a male rapper that year. He worked with producers including Pharrell Williams, Hit-Boy, and Scoop DeVille to build an atmospheric West Coast record with heavy gangsta rap influences. Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune praised Lamar for giving gangsta tropes a "twist, or sometimes upending them completely" on a record that "brims with comedy, complexity and the many voices in Lamar's head." The album surpassed The Eminem Show to become the longest-charting hip-hop studio album on the Billboard 200, and in October 2022 became the first hip-hop studio album to spend over ten consecutive years on the chart. Rolling Stone named it the greatest concept album of all time.

  The touring that followed was personally grueling. During promotional events in 2013 Lamar learned of the deaths of three close friends and struggled with depression, survivor's guilt, and suicidal ideation. He opened for Kanye West's Yeezus Tour despite opposition from his own label and management, was baptized for a second time at the tour's start, and suffered a nervous breakdown near its end. His verse on the Big Sean and Jay Electronica track "Control" that year was described as a "wake-up call" for the hip-hop industry, and Rolling Stone called it one of the most important hip-hop songs of the past decade.

• 5. To Pimp a Butterfly

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  To Pimp a Butterfly, released on the 15th of March 2015, arrived at a moment of rampant police brutality and racial tension across America. Billboard noted that "twenty years ago, a conscious rap record wouldn't have penetrated the mainstream in the way" Lamar achieved. Selling 324,000 copies in its first week, it became his first number-one album on both the Billboard 200 and the UK Albums Chart. Pitchfork wrote that the album "forced critics to think deeply about music."

  To capture the sound he was after, Lamar recruited producers Sounwave, Pharrell Williams, Terrace Martin, and Thundercat, weaving jazz, funk, and soul into a record he shaped into what critics have read as both a poem and a blank letter exploring the responsibilities of being a role model and documenting African American life during Barack Obama's presidency. David Bowie's producer Tony Visconti later disclosed that Bowie's final album, Blackstar (2016), was directly inspired by To Pimp a Butterfly, praising Lamar as a "rulebreaker" in the music industry.

  At the 58th Annual Grammy Awards, Lamar received 11 nominations, the most by a rapper in a single night. He won five, including Best Rap Album for To Pimp a Butterfly and Best Rap Performance and Best Rap Song for "Alright". His performance at that ceremony, a critically lauded medley of "The Blacker the Berry" and "Alright", opened with a scene staged inside a prison. After receiving a personal request from LeBron James to release unfinished material, Lamar put out Untitled Unmastered on the 4th of March 2016, a collection of eight self-written tracks meant for the album; it debuted at number one with 178,000 album-equivalent units.

• 6. Damn and the Pulitzer

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  Damn was released on the 14th of April 2017. Its lead single, "Humble", debuted at number two on the Hot 100 and reached number one in its second week, making it his first song as lead artist to top the chart. The album debuted with 603,000 units sold and spent four non-consecutive weeks atop the Billboard 200. All 14 tracks debuted on the Hot 100. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry ranked it the seventh best-selling album of 2017, with "Humble" landing at sixth among singles. By June 2018, it became the first album by a rapper or solo artist to have every song earn at minimum a gold certification from the Recording Industry Association of America.

  The Damn Tour ran from July 2017 to July 2018 and grossed $62.7 million in worldwide revenue. Then, on the 16th of April 2018, Damn won the Pulitzer Prize for Music, the first time any musical composition outside classical and jazz received the honor. His Pulitzer win was widely read as the American cultural establishment formally acknowledging hip-hop as a legitimate artistic form. Senior figures including Nas, Bruce Springsteen, Eminem, Dr. Dre, Prince, and Madonna had already praised his musicianship publicly.

  Lamar also curated and executive produced Black Panther: The Album, released on the 9th of February 2018. He contributed lead and background vocals to every track regardless of credit. The soundtrack spent two consecutive weeks atop the Billboard 200 and earned the most single-week streams for a soundtrack album in history at the time of its release. Its song "All the Stars" earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song.

• 7. The Drake Feud and GNX

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  In March 2024, Lamar reignited a decade-long conflict with Drake by appearing on Future and Metro Boomin's track "Like That". The song spent three consecutive weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100, his first song to debut at the top spot. From April to May he released a series of Drake-aimed diss tracks, culminating in "Not Like Us", the first rap song to lead the Hot 100 with a limited tracking week. A celebratory concert, The Pop Out: Ken & Friends, was held on Juneteenth.

  "Not Like Us" swept five Grammy Awards at the 67th Annual Grammy Awards on the 2nd of February 2025: Record of the Year, Song of the Year, Best Rap Performance, Best Rap Song, and Best Music Video. His sixth album, GNX, arrived as a surprise release on the 22nd of November 2024, with the title track shared exclusively on YouTube before the album hit streaming the same day. The album was a tribute to Los Angeles, prominently infusing G-funk and regional Mexican compositions, and spawned the number-one singles "Squabble Up" and "Luther". "Luther", featuring SZA, spent thirteen non-consecutive weeks atop the Hot 100, his longest-charting number-one in the US.

  On the 9th of February 2025, Lamar headlined the Super Bowl LIX halftime show, joined by SZA, Samuel L. Jackson, Serena Williams, and Mustard. The performance drew 133.5 million viewers, surpassing Michael Jackson's 1993 Super Bowl XXVII show to become the most-watched halftime performance in history. On the 17th of February he became the first rapper to accumulate over 100 million monthly listeners on Spotify. The Grand National Tour with SZA, which launched in April 2025, broke the record for the highest-grossing co-headlining tour of all time. As of the fall 2025 semester, Temple University began offering a course on Lamar's life, cultural influences, and legacy.