When he was eight years old, Kendrick Lamar had his first brush with rap royalty. Tupac Shakur and Dr Dre were shooting the “California Love” video in the Compton neighbourhood of Los Angeles, and Lamar’s father took him to watch the action unfolding not far from their home. “It was like pandemonium . . . He put me on his shoulders, and there they was: Dr Dre and Tupac right there [with] a white Bentley,” Lamar later recalled.
Fifteen years later, Lamar had the chance to recount that story to Dre in a recording studio, a full-circle moment he described as “very surreal”. Yet he also believes that seeing the two rap legends in 1995 had led him to that studio. “It was already designed and destiny.”
Today, the 37-year-old Lamar stands without peer in the rap world. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his 2017 album DAMN., which the committee called “a virtuosic song collection unified by its vernacular authenticity and rhythmic dynamism”.