Miles Marshall Lewis - Promise That You Will Sing About Me: The Power and Poetry of Kendrick Lamar

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For Kalel and Lucas

Miles Marshall Lewis

K endrick Lamar sits back in a black leather armchair reading up on the quest for a black Christ. The twists of his kinky Afro freshly twisted, lounging comfortably in a gray athleisure suit, he flips through pages older than his twenty-seven years: a vintage 1969 Ebony magazine. Typical L.A. sunshine beams outside Milk Studios near Santa Monica Boulevard as the same publication photographs Kendrick for a summer 2015 cover. Someone on his Top Dawg Entertainment team replaces a carefully curated playlist of Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, and Parliament-Funkadelic with the latest Young Thug mixtape so he can loosen up, and it works. Kendrick stands to his full five-and-a-half feet and starts waving his arms animatedly for the clicking photographer as if onstage.

Ebonys editor-in-chief asked me to create that rejected playlist well beforehand, suggesting songs made up from the influences on Kendricks latest record, To Pimp a Butterfly. Media outlets had already reported specific jazz and funk inspirations behind the albumMiles, P-Funk, Sly Stone, John Coltranebut clearly hed already moved on. At Milk Id wanted to be a witness, a fly on the wall, knowing we wouldnt speak until much later at a Santa Monica recording studio. By the end of the photo shoot, Kendrick felt so comfortable in the Robert Geller suit chosen by the fashion director that he wore it to our meet-up at UMG Iovine Studio and into the night, never to return it.

My crash course in Kendrick Lamar Duckworth involved streaming a crucial MTV interview, a critical relistening of his first major label album good kid, m.A.A.d city, and looping the six-week-old To Pimp a Butterfly on iPhone repeat. Hit singles like Swimming Pools (Drank), Poetic Justice, and Bitch, Dont Kill My Vibe dominated radio for years, I knew them well. Black Lives Matter rallies across the country had not yet adopted Alright as an anthem, but it was my personal favorite from the new album. I never delved into his earliest mixtapes from the early aughts or his independent debut album, Section.80. My deadline was too tight, our interview meant to focus squarely on To Pimp a Butterfly.

That night I asked him, Youve been compared to Nas, and he once recorded The Unauthorized Biography of Rakim. If you recorded another MCs unauthorized biography, whose would it be?, not knowing hed already done Kurupted, an ode to the 1990s Death Row Records rapper Kurupt, four years earlier. The faux pasnot knowing my interview subject down to the smallest minutiaewas forgiven. For a millennial like Kendrick, Ebony was probably that staple of every black grandparents living room table, right beside the Jet magazine and the bowl of peppermints. Before good kid, m.A.A.d city in 2012, hed already been known all over the rap blogosphere and among hard-core hiphop fans for mixtapes like C4, Training Day, and Overly Dedicated. But he wouldnt have expected his grandparents pop culture bible to be as informed as, say, DJBooth. We touched on more universal areas instead. I asked him at one point about opening himself up as an African-American male.

Who do you feel truly comfortable talking to? As men, generally we speak to each other about sports, sex, music, movies, maybe politics, and thats it, I said.

Sitting behind an enormous mixing board full of equalizer knobs and levels, he leaned back thoughtfully. I cant even answer that, he admitted. With all the good things my father has taught me, this is one of the things he taught me that he shouldnt have: that I cant really confide to him in an emotional way, you know? My brothers and I were taught not to really show those types of feelings as men, especially toward another man, because then youre vulnerable. Its crazy. Most men will go to a woman. Three months back, Kendrick had just become engaged to Whitney Alford, his Centennial High School sweetheart. Its really about trust issues too, he continued. I still need to figure that out.

Top Dawg Entertainment general manager Roberto Reyesknown within the camp as retOnetransported me from the Hollywood photography studio to theSanta Monica recording studio, caravanning close behind Kendrick. The Uber gods were responsible for my trip back to the Montrose Hotel in West Hollywood. Right before thumbing in my coordinates on the rideshare app, we hit a groove about South Africa. In early February 2014 hed visited Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Durban for a trio of concerts, his first time on the continent. The trip influenced some of the rhythms and thematic breadth of To Pimp a Butterfly (as well as the Grammy-nominated soundtrack hed later curate for Black Panther, the top-grossing film of 2018). The album closer, Mortal Man, referenced his visit to Robben Island and what hed seen in the prison cell of the late Nelson Mandela.

It was just an overwhelming feeling to me, like we were really home, he told me. Thats why I called one of the tracks on the new album Momma, which symbolizes the Motherland. When we watch certain commercials, were shown the bad parts of Africa. That makes people born in the States feel like they shouldnt go there. Africa does have poverty-stricken areas and Ive seen that. But at the same time, we were never told that its also one of the most beautiful places on Earththe land and the people.

Some of the children I saw on my trip didnt have much, but they were so happy. They were playing like they were going to live forever.

I thought about how much we stress about in America, while those kids are enjoying life with no material possessions.

Making parallels with my upbringing in the urban-blighted Bronx during the 1970s and 80s with Kendricks native Compton in the 1980s and 90s, I explained how living abroad expanded my sense of self. My personal journey took me to France, relocating to Paris for seven years. Asking Where would you go? , his response was immediate. Where would I settle? If I left the States, I would go to Cape Town. Seriously.

To Pimp a Butterfly marked a genuinely artistic left turn, a creative gamble the young MC won hands down. With 2012s more mainstream, Grammy Award winning good kid, m.A.A.d city (number one on Billboard s album chart) and its catchy singles, no one expected a follow-up like To Pimp a Butterfly . The albums u dug deeper lyrically than anywhere near necessary to maintain his position as the torchbearer of West Coast hiphop, spewing self-critical barbs straight from his id that revealed bouts of depression and poetic self-doubt. For Free? (Interlude), produced by noted saxophonist Terrace Martin, featured bebop improvisation that sounded like an outtake from jazz legend Max Roachs 1971 album We Insist! (Martin had his hands in five songs on Kendricks sixteen-track album, joined by young lions like Thundercat, Kamasi Washington, Robert Glasper, and Flying Lotus.) I already knew that, growing up, his parents had mainly exposed him to the soul of Marvin Gaye and the Isley Brothers, the street reportage of Tupac Shakur and N.W.A. Whered the jazz come from?