Ahead of Kendrick Lamar's headline performance at the Super Bowl half-time show in New Orleans, we explore the rapper's journey from the unforgiving streets of Compton to pop culture ubiquity. "I'm not sure why I'm infatuated with death?" ponders a fiery and fed-up Kendrick Lamar on fan-favourite song Sing About Me, I'm Dying of Thirst. Sounding like he's on his knees pleading to the man in the sky, the always-probing rapper finally answers his own question: "Maybe it's because I'm a dreamer and sleep is the cousin of death!" The song considers how an inner-city experience within a racially-divided US tends to be based around constantly grappling with feelings of impending doom: a toxic cycle that's difficult to break free of.
Filled with chest-deep empathy; a combination of hyper-animated lyrical perspectives (including a hopeless young man lost in gang activity as well as a sexually-abused girl damaged due to the foster care system); and an underlining morose wit, these raw, confessional lyrics signify why the Compton, Los Angeles rapper is regarded as one of hip-hop's greatest ever songwriters. The esteemed North Carolina rap producer 9th Wonder – who composed arguably the 20-time-Grammy-winning MC's most experimental song with the three-act psychodrama of DUCKWORTH – told me back in 2023: "Kendrick Lamar is more like a documentarian than an MC. Kendrick chooses to rap about everything and everyone across the social strata.
People might call it 'woke' or 'deep', but I .
