He may be straight outta Compton, but that's the only cliche you'll ever pin on Kendrick Lamar. Hip-hop's brightest new star talks to JIM CARROLL
THE REIGN OF King Kendrick has begun. It’s halfway through an energetic, exuberant, explosive show at Dublin’s Vicar Street. It sure doesn’t feel like a Monday night on Thomas St in the middle of January .
Every song is greeted with explosive, tumultuous hollers and noise. Every song – every banger from Section 80, every anthem from Good kid, mAAd city – has been yelled back at the stage with gusto. This is an audience who know Kendrick Lamar’s canon inside out and back to front and are eager to let him know. The fact that Lamar isn’t relying on a wingman or live-show cliches to move the crowd just adds to the frenzied atmosphere.
Midway through, Lamar pauses for a moment for a breather and to take it all in. It’s shows like this, shows far away from home, which demonstrate just what he has tapped into with his music. This is a scene which is going to be replicated again and and again worldwide in 2013.
An hour earlier, a Nando’s dinner under his belt, Lamar does some talking backstage. He’s quiet and polite, a man who doesn’t yet have to travel with an entourage to keep him company or placate his ego.
Right now, says Lamar, the show is about him proving himself. “It’s just me and DJ Ali up there,” he says. “I don’t want to add the band too soon because I really want to go out and show people I can stand alone onstage first rather than showing that I have all this extra help. I still feel I have to prove myself. That’s why I’ve haven’t done the band yet.”
Lamar knows that the ante for hip-hop shows has been upped enormously in recent times. “My first concert, the first show I purchased tickets to go to, was Watch the Throne, he points out. “It was a bittersweet sensation. Man, it’s an amazing show, but how do you top that? What show is going to top that? I jumped straight into going to concerts with a crazy live show.
“To be able to compete with that is going to be a challenge. By the time the Good kid, mAAd city tour comes along, I might have a three-piece band with me onstage to show different sides of the music.”
Good kid, mAAd city is the album which drew the hordes tonight. Sure, there are people here who’ve been digging Lamar since his first mixtapes dropped, but it’s the expansive, ambitious and audacious album from last year that has really put him in line for a close-up.
The tale of a day in the life of a teenage Lamar in Compton, Good kid, mAAd city is a wild, powerful, significant and astonishing thriller, an album which heralds the arrival of a major talent on the scene. His observations about being one of the boys in the hood – and how he managed to go against the grain when it came to peer pressure – makes for an album of finely finessed drama.
“I knew what I wanted to do with my debut album from years ago,” Lamar says. “I wanted an album like All Eyez On Me, Reasonable Doubt, Doggystyle or The Chronic. All of them were full bodies of work rather than one or two big songs and a lot of filler. They were full projects and that’s what I wanted to do.
“I wanted people to turn on the album and get into my world. I didn’t want something too drawn out; I wanted 12 tracks and out. That one day occurred numerous times during my teenage years. I’d take the van and end up getting into all kinds of crazy stuff. I always knew that I wanted to write that up.”
There’s a superb cinematic blur to the album’s narrative and it’s not surprising that Lamar has had approaches about turning it into a movie. “People have approached me about the film but I’m waiting for the right opportunity and, to be honest, the time. I’m moving around so much at the moment that I just don’t have time. I was in Australia and America and now Europe in the last few weeks that I don’t have the time to take those meetings. I need to put my all into it just like I do with the music.”
Though born in Chicago, Lamar called the Californian city of Compton home and its landscape, environment and inhabitants have had a huge influence on much of the album. He doesn’t live there anymore, though he’s keen to point out how much Compton has informed him as a person.
“Compton gave me a sense of integrity and showed me how to be independent. You can’t depend on anybody out there to do things for you. You have to be your own person and have a strong mind because you can be influenced easily. I don’t think Compton has changed. You have the younger generation coming up who think it’s different but it’s the same visuals, just different individuals.”
One of Lamar’s most abiding Compton memories is his dad taking the then 10-year-old kid to see Tupac and Dr Dre shoot the video for California Love near their house. That’s where Lamar’s dreams of being a rapper came into being and he’s keen to pass on that kind of inspiration to the would-be Lamars kicking around in Compton today.
“People don’t believe you unless you come from where they come from or think like they do,” he says. “My whole point is to show these kids that I thought the way they do, the way they’re thinking now. They feel there’s no opportunity, that they can’t trust anybody, that they’re the entire world. I felt the same way and now, look, I got past those obstacles, they didn’t hold me back.”
Good kid, mAAd city is out now on Aftermath records. For a full review of last Monday's gig, see irishtimes.com
