SO HOT RIGHT NOW: KENDRICK LAMAR
The Compton rapper is ruling the charts with his fourth hit album, Damn.
1 Kendrick (29) is quite the hitmaker! His latest disc topped the US Billboard 200 album chart, all 14 tracks on it charted on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart and he made Billboard history when he became the first artist to score nine concurrent songs in the top 10 of Billboard’s On-Demand Streaming Songs chart. His catchy tune Humble also landed him his first No 1 as a solo artist on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
2 The album is a star-studded affair with collabs with big names like Rihanna and U2.
3 While his previous album, To Pimp A Butterfly (2015), focused on the state of the world, Kendrick’s latest shows some introspection. “Damn is the idea of, ‘I can’t change the world until I change myself’,” he says. “So when you listen to songs like Pride, Humble, Lust and Love, they’re all just human emotions and me looking in the mirror and coming to grips with them.”
4 He faced a backlash with the video for Humble in which he’s dressed as the Pope and sits at Jesus’ spot at the Last Supper. The vid also features a woman with stretchmarks, which sparked a debate about natural beauty.
5 He never forgets his roots. Kendrick, who reportedly has $35 million (R472,5 million)
in the bank, splashed out $550 000 (R7,4 million) two years ago on a modest home for his parents east of Compton, Los Angeles.
6 He hails from the same area as rappers Snoop Dogg, Dr Dre and Ice Cube. Kendrick had a tough childhood. There were times when his family lived on welfare and food stamps. At eight he’d already seen two murders in his violence-ridden neighbourhood. Yet he was a straight-A student!
7 His birth name was inspired by American singer-songwriter Eddie Kendricks. In his teens his stage name was K-Dot.
8 As a youngster he dreamt of becoming a basketball player like Michael Jordan. “I’m a small guy . . . I deferred my dreams to write in rhymes, and I pinned that [dream] somewhere else,” he says.
9 Although he indulged in everything from liquor to dagga and other illegal substances in the past, he’s not a fan of drugs and alcohol these days. He also doesn’t like to rap about partying. “You may have certain artists portraying these trends and don’t really have that lifestyle, and then it gives off the wrong thing. And it becomes kinda corny after a while,” he says.
10 He loves the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and the ’90s animated Batman series. He once walked out of an interview after he mentioned the ‘90s sitcom Martin and the interviewer didn’t know it!