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With his debut #Section80 landing in digital stores on July 2 nd, Kendrick Lamar is reflecting on the album's advance leak "HiiiPoWeR." Speaking with The Come Up Show, the Compton, California native explained that the song has much deeper meaning than what's on the surface.

"A lot of people don't understand. They think it's just a song. It's really a big movement that we've got in L.A. that's spreading like wildfire," he said. "Hiiipower: the three i's represent heart, honor and respect. That's how we carry ourselves in the streets, and just in the world, period. Hiiipower, it basically is the simplest form of representing just being above all the madness, all the bullshit. No matter what the world is going through, you're always going to keep your dignity and carry yourself with this manner that it don't phase you. Whatever you think negative is in your life. Overcoming that and still having that self-respect."

He also explained that he sat in on 25 mixes for the track, which was produced by J. Cole. Kendrick also explained that the song was the first collaboration between the two, and that he was immediately wowed by Cole's musicianship. "His production is crazy, man. The first time we locked in, he played about 10 beats. I wanted 11 of 'em," he said.

Watch below for the rest of the interview, where he discusses his father's influence and more.

RELATED: Kendrick Lamar Reveals Tracklist For "#Section80," Features Colin Munroe, GLC & More

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Kendrick Lamar Speaks On The Meaning Behind "HiiiPoWeR," Working With J. Cole

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With his debut #Section80 landing in digital stores on July 2 nd, Kendrick Lamar is reflecting on the album's advance leak "HiiiPoWeR." Speaking with The Come Up Show, the Compton, California native explained that the song has much deeper meaning than what's on the surface. "A lot of people don't understand.

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Our season long analysis of To Pimp a Butterfly by Kendrick Lamar continues with the album's thirteenth track "The Blacker the Berry."

Listen now: iPhone, Stitcher, Google Play, iTunes

The song was the album's second single and released amidst the height of the Black Lives Matter movement. It's incredibly potent, packed with references to the historic oppression of the black community, race relations in contemporary American society, police brutality, the US penitentiary system, and the complexities of black identity, among many others.

Central to "The Blacker the Berry" is an idea known as "double-consciousness." Coined by writer W.E.B. Du Bois, double-consciousness describes the internal conflict experienced by the oppressed groups living in an oppressive society (see: black people in white America). Du Bois argued that attempting to reconcile your African heritage while being raised in a white European-dominated society posed psychological challenges.

In his book The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois writes:
"In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He does not wish to Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He wouldn't bleach his Negro blood in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of opportunity closed roughly in his face."
Double-consciousness runs throughout "The Blacker the Berry." On a small scale, it's expressed in lines like "I want everything black, I ain't need black." On a larger scale, it's expressed as the contrast between the frustration and anger of the song's verses and the dramatic "hypocrite" twist in the song's final line.

With so much to unpack, we chose to split this episode into two parts. On today's episode, we'll conduct a line-by-line analysis of "The Blacker the Berry" and divert into a few areas of historical significance alluded to in its lyrics.
If you like what you hear, subscribe and rate Dissect on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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S1E15/16 - The Blacker the Berry by Kendrick Lamar

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Our season long analysis of To Pimp a Butterfly by Kendrick Lamar continues with the album's thirteenth track "The Blacker the Berry." Listen now: iPhone, Stitcher, Google Play, iTunes The song was the album's second single and released amidst the height of the Black Lives Matter movement.

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A drizzly Sunday morning in Compton, the sky an un-California-ish gray. Into the parking lot of a local hamburger stand pulls a chromed-out black Mercedes SUV, driven by 27-year-old Kendrick Lamar, arguably the most talented rapper of his generation. There are a half-dozen guys from the neighborhood waiting to meet him: L, Turtle, G-Weed. "I grew up with all these cats," Lamar says. He nods to Mingo, a Compton-born sweetheart who is roughly the size of the truck he arrived in: "I don't need to hire a bodyguard. Look how fucking big he is!"

The burger joint, Tam's, sits at the corner of Rosecrans and Central, a famous local spot recently made infamous when Suge Knight allegedly ran over two men with his truck in the parking lot, killing one of them. "Homey died right here," G-Weed says, pointing to a dark spot on the asphalt. "That security camera caught everything. They're building a case."

Lamar grew up just six blocks from here, in a little blue three-bedroom house at 1612 137th St. Across the street is the Louisiana Fried Chicken where he used to get the three-piece meal with fries and lemonade; over there is the Rite Aid where he walked to buy milk for his little brothers. Tam's was another hangout. "This is where I seen my second murder, actually," he says. "Eight years old, walking home from McNair Elementary. Dude was in the drive-thru ordering his food, and homey ran up, boom boom - smoked him." He saw his first murder at age five, a teenage drug dealer gunned down outside Lamar's apartment building. "After that," he says, "you just get numb to it."

It's almost noon, but Lamar is just starting his day - having spent a late night in the studio scrambling to finish his new album, To Pimp a Butterfly, which has to be done in five days. He's dressed casually in a gray hoodie, maroon sweatpants, and white socks with black slides, but recognizable enough that an old lady in line decides to tease him while complaining about the heat inside. "Y'all need to put the air conditioner on," she calls to the manager. "Kendrick Lamar is here!"

Lamar may be a two-time Grammy winner with a platinum debut executive-produced by Dr. Dre, and with fans from Kanye West to Taylor Swift. But here at Tam's, he's also Kendrick Duckworth, Paula and Kenny's son. Inside, a middle-aged woman who just left church comes up and gives him a hug, and he buys lunch for a cart-toting lady he knows to be a harmless crack addict. ("She used to chase us with sticks and stuff," he says.) Outside, an old man in a motorized wheelchair scoots over to introduce himself. He says he moved here in 1951, when Compton was still majority-white. "Back in the day, we had the baddest cars in L.A.," he says. "I just wanted you to know where you came from. It's a hell of a neighborhood."

On his breakthrough album, 2012's good kid, m.A.A.d City, Lamar made his name by chronicling this neighborhood, vividly evoking a specific place (this same stretch of Rosecrans) and a specific time (in the summer of 2004, between 10th and 11th grade). It was a concept album about adolescence, told with cinematic precision through the eyes of someone young enough to recall every detail (as in: "Me and my niggas four deep in a white Toyota/A quarter tank of gas, one pistol, one orange soda").

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A drizzly Sunday morning in Compton, the sky an un-California-ish gray. Into the parking lot of a local hamburger stand pulls a chromed-out black Mercedes SUV, driven by 27-year-old Kendrick Lamar, arguably the most talented rapper of his generation. There are a half-dozen guys from the neighborhood waiting to meet him: L, Turtle, G-Weed.

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The rapper also discussed what his Pulitzer Prize win means for hip-hop and survivor's guilt for making it out of Compton.

Kendrick Lamar just got off the road for TDE's The Championship Tour, and along the way Vanity Fair writer Lisa Robinson tailed him backstage at Madison Square Garden and had a series of conversations with the acclaimed MC. The pair touched on everything from his Pulitzer to freestyling for TDE head Anthony "Top Dawg" Tiffith as a 16 year old.

They also discussed how Lamar writes his songs, with Robinson inquiring about specific turns of phrase like "Demo-crips and Re-blood-licans" from "Hood Politics" and "I got power, poison, pain, and joy inside my DNA," from "DNA." Lamar discussed the time and attention to detail his writing necessitates:

'Execution' is my favorite word. I spend 80 percent of my time thinking about how I'm going to execute, and that might be a whole year of constantly jotting down ideas, figuring out how I'm going to convey these words to a person to connect to it. What is this word that means this, how did it get here and why did it go there and how can I bring it back there? Then, the lyrics are easy.

He was also asked about a controversial bar from "m.A.A.d. City" where he posed a hypothetical question about whether he would be looked at differently if he killed someone as a teenager:

If I told you I killed a nigga at sixteen, would you believe me?
Or see me to be innocent Kendrick you seen in the street
With a basketball and some Now and Laters to eat?
If I mentioned all of my skeletons, would you jump in the seat?
Would you say my intelligence now is great relief?

As a 2015 DJBooth story noted, Lamar has alluded to violence in his past on tracks like "Hol' Up" and "The Blacker the Berry." In the interview, he spoke candidly about having "understanding rather than frustration with my homies" because of their shared traumatic upbringings in Compton, and talked about a turning point-resulting in the first of his two baptisms-that occurred while he was growing up:

I'll put it this way: I've seen my own blood shed, and I've been the cause of other people shedding their blood as well. There was a split second when I felt what my homeboys were feeling-like I don't give a fuck anymore-and that's when I knew something else had to happen.

Later, he reflected on his Pulitzer win for DAMN., the first ever by a non-jazz or classical musician. He viewed it as long overdue acknowledgement of rap's ability to convey powerful and resonant emotion:

It's one of those things that should have happened with hip-hop a long time ago. It took a long time for people to embrace us-people outside of our community, our culture-to see this not just as vocal lyrics, but to see that this is really pain, this is really hurt, this is really true stories of our lives on wax. And now, for it to get the recognition that it deserves as a true art form, that's not only great for myself, but it makes me feel good about hip-hop in general. Writers like Tupac, Jay Z, Rakim, Eminem, Q-Tip, Big Daddy Kane, Snoop ... It lets me know that people are actually listening further than I expected.

Lamar mentioned Eminem in the story, citing the Detroit rapper as a major influence on his linguistic style.

"It comes from my love of hip-hop. Eminem is probably one of the best wordsmiths ever ... The Marshall Mathers LP changed my life," he said.

Throughout the piece, musicians like Pharrell Williams, Bono, SZA, and Eminem himself shared their thoughts on what makes "Pulitzer Kenny" such a unique and crucial talent.

"He's the Bob Dylan, the Miles Davis of our time, but he's his own thing," Pharrell said. "His ability to entertain while educating, without ever being preachy, is amazing."

Eminem also noted how Lamar constantly varies his deliveries. "He switches up his flow every few bars so it's more interesting to listen to," he said.

Read the full profile on Vanity Fair and check out the lyrics to Kendrick Lamar's discography on Genius.

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Kendrick Lamar Opens Up About His Writing Process & Violence In Compton In Vanity Fair Cover Story

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Kendrick Lamar just got off the road for TDE's The Championship Tour, and along the way Vanity Fair writer Lisa Robinson tailed him backstage at Madison Square Garden and had a series of conversations with the acclaimed MC. The pair touched on everything from his Pulitzer to freestyling for TDE head Anthony "Top Dawg" Tiffith as a 16 year old.

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Who Is Kendrick Lamar?

Kendrick Lamar Duckworth, who performs as Kendrick Lamar, was born in Compton, California, on June 17, 1987. After writing stories as a child, he put to music some lyrics about the rough Compton streets he grew up on. He rapped under the name K-Dot, releasing a series of increasingly popular mix tapes, which brought him to the attention of hip-hop super-producer Dr. Dre. Lamar's debut major-label recording, good kid, m.A.A.d City, was released to great acclaim and impressive sales for an up-and-coming recording artist. He continued to receive accolades for his 2015 album, To Pimp a Butterfly, and his 2017 follow-up, DAMN.; both won Grammys for Best Rap Album, while DAMN. also made history as the first of its genre to earn a Pulitzer Prize.

Background and Early Life

Kendrick Lamar Duckworth (who dropped his last name to perform as Kendrick Lamar) was born in Compton, California, on June 17, 1987. His parents had moved to Compton from Chicago to escape the city's gang culture, although Lamar's father had been associated with the notorious Gangster Disciples gang. As the 1980s crack trade and West Coast gang presence increased, Lamar grew up around precarious street activity, but he seemed more influenced than harmed by it. He was a good student who enjoyed writing, first stories and poems, and then lyrics.

Lamar's family was directly touched by the violence of the streets, yet he remained thoughtful and soft-spoken, ever the keen observer, even as a child. He adopted the moniker K-Dot and began performing his lyrics as a rapper. At age 16, in 2003, he circulated a mix tape called Youngest Head Nigga in Charge, which drew a lot of interest in his native Southern California and beyond.

The project was enough to get Lamar a record deal with Top Dawg Entertainment, a respected California independent label and feeder to major labels. He went on to release two other acclaimed mix tapes, Training Day (2005) and C4 (2009), steadily working with other up-and-coming West Coast rappers like Jay Rock, Ab-Soul and Schoolboy Q. Lamar and these other performers eventually formed their own rap collective, Black Hippy.

Meeting Dr. Dre

In 2010 Lamar dropped the K-Dot tag and began using his own name. He also put out a fourth mix tape, Overly Dedicated. That same year, Lamar released his first full-length independent album under Top Dawg Entertainment. Titled Section.80, it was released exclusively on iTunes.

Lamar continued writing music and lyrics, and continued to tour and collaborate with more popular recording artists such as Young Jeezy, The Game, Talib Kweli, Busta Rhymes and Lil Wayne. Dr. Dre, one of hip-hop's most respected and influential producers, took the young artist under his wing, becoming his mentor in both music and business.

As the buzz on Lamar continued to build, Dr. Dre signed him to his independent record label, Aftermath Entertainment, alongside more established rap stars Eminem and 50 Cent (in a joint venture with Top Dawg). Aftermath was distributed by major label Interscope (Universal Music), which would have the marketing, sales and distribution muscle to take Lamar's career to the next level. Now the quiet, observant kid who made good grades in school was poised to become rap's newest superstar.

'good kid, m.A.A.d city'

In October 2012, Lamar's highly anticipated major-label debut album, good kid, m.A.A.d city, was released to wide acclaim. ( Lady Gaga recorded a song with Lamar for the album, but it ultimately was not included due to "creative differences.") Hit singles like "Swimming Pools (Drank)" and "Poetic Justice," and the rapper's emergence as a talent to watch, cleared the way for him to make major American television appearances while promoting the album, including Saturday Night Live, Late Night With David Letterman and Late Night With Jimmy Fallon. This solidified his fan base, not only among hard-core hip-hop heads, but also among college students and fans of alternative rock.

The Revival of Hip-Hop

Lamar's appeal to the masses didn't stop there. The thought-provoking lyrics on his debut album caught the attention of hip-hop critics as well, with MTV naming him the "Hottest MC" of 2012-putting him in the company of other rappers who have earned the title, including Lil Wayne, Jay-Z and Kanye West.

Additionally, critics took note of Lamar's verse on the song "Control," by rapper Big Sean. Although the track was penned by another artist, Lamar's verse drew attention because of his challenge to several other popular names in the hip-hop world, including Drake, J. Cole and Big Sean himself. The bold claims in the controversial verse rapped by Lamar brought about a vibe that was reminiscent of the classic hip-hop era, drawing appreciation from critics, rappers and fans alike.

Lamar remains popular for his sharp observations of street culture, often examining the psychology of the victims of crimes. "That's the most interesting story to me," he told the British newspaper The Guardian. "At first, I was scared to show fear because you can never be sure how people will perceive you. But I dared myself to do that, to stand out."

'To Pimp a Butterfly' and 'DAMN.'

In 2015, Lamar released his next album, To Pimp a Butterfly, featuring artists like Bilal, Snoop Dogg and Pharrell Williams, among others. Butterfly was another highly acclaimed outing known for its funk-laden mix of bravura, community politics and vulnerability. Lamar was nominated for a whopping 11 Grammys later that year and won the first award of the 2016 show, specifically for Best Rap Album. (He'd already received four other Grammys pre-telecast, making him the biggest winner of the night.) He later brought the house down with a politicized performance of "The Blacker the Berry" and "Alright" that fused spoken word, live jazz, traditional African dance and a reference to the death of teen Trayvon Martin.

In March 2016, Lamar released untitled unmastered, a compilation of tracks that were unfinished demos for To Pimp a Butterfly. The release went to the top of the U.S. Billboard 200.

The artist continued to wow fans with the April 2017 release of DAMN., which featured such tracks as "Humble" and "Loyalty," a collaboration with Rihanna. Along with achieving double-platinum status, DAMN. was named by BBC news as the critics' favorite album of 2017, based on the compilation of year-end polls.

Nominated for seven Grammys, Lamar kicked off the 2018 awards show with a politically charged performance that also featured Dave Chappelle and Bono and the Edge of U2. He went on to sweep the rap categories, claiming Best Rap Album for DAMN. and Best Rap Song for "Humble," en route to an impressive five Grammy wins for the night.

Pulitzer Prize Winner

Lamar made history in April 2018 when he won a Pulitzer Prize for music for DAMN., making him not only the first person to win a Pulitzer for a hip-hop album, but also the first artist to win the prize for music that isn't classical or jazz. The Pulitzer board called the album "a virtuosic song collection unified by its vernacular authenticity and rhythmic dynamism that offers affecting vignettes capturing the complexity of modern African-American life."

Along with the hardware, Lamar stood to benefit from the expiration of his publishing deal with Warner/Chappell Music. Lamar's management company, Top Dawg Entertainment, was said to be considering offers between $20 million and $40 million for the rapper-songwriter's catalog.

Underscoring his expanding influence, Lamar in June 2018 was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences' music branch, for his work on the Black Panther and Divergent soundtracks. The following month, he made his acting debut in 50 Cent's crime drama Power, as a homeless man.
(Profile photo of Kendrick Lamar by Jason Merritt/Getty Images)

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Kendrick Lamar Duckworth, who performs as Kendrick Lamar, was born in Compton, California, on June 17, 1987. After writing stories as a child, he put to music some lyrics about the rough Compton streets he grew up on.

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The first Pulitzer prize for music went, in 1943, to William Schuman's Secular Cantata No 2. It took 54 years before the judges recognised music beyond the European classical tradition, making Wynton Marsalis's Blood on the Fields the first jazz winner. There have only been two jazz winners since then (Ornette Coleman in 2007 and Henry Threadgill in 2016) and, until this year, nothing from the world of popular song. The prize has long been criticised as stuffy and irrelevant, with even 2003 winner John Adams saying it has "lost much of the prestige it still carries in other fields like literature and journalism".

By granting this year's award to Kendrick Lamar's album , the Pulitzer board has gone from 0 to 60mph in a spectacular way.

Damn is as groundbreaking a winner as was Bob Dylan's Nobel prize for literature last year, though less of a philosophical conundrum. While even Dylan fans disagreed over whether songs qualified as literature, Damn is clearly excellent American music. The only rule broken by its win is the archaic, unspoken one that reserves the Pulitzer for supposedly higher artforms.

So the only criticism that sticks is the fact that, unlike the two composers he beat, Lamar needs neither the publicity nor the $15,000 prize money. Damn, the US's biggest-selling hip-hop album of 2017, has already taken home six MTV awards, five Grammys, NAACP Image Awards, a Brit, a Juno, a BET award and a Clio. But needing the award comes a poor second to deserving it.

Lamar's Pulitzer has been celebrated as a vindication of hip-hop, and a particularly sweet one given that Damn features a pointed sample of Geraldo Rivera on Fox News making the absurd claim that "hip-hop has done more damage to young African Americans than racism in recent years". But, four decades after it evolved out of Bronx DJ culture, hip-hop is both critically adored and commercially supreme.

When the biggest hit on Broadway is , it doesn't take a Pulitzer to grant the genre artistic legitimacy. Nor is it likely that rappers will suddenly dominate the Pulitzer, any more than folk-rock singer-songwriters will take over the Nobel for literature. The award says less about hip-hop at large than it does about Lamar's exceptional place in American culture.

The Pulitzer board starchily described Damn as "a virtuosic song collection, unified by its vernacular authenticity and rhythmic dynamism that offers affecting vignettes capturing the complexity of modern African-American life", all of which is true but could apply equally to Lamar's previous two albums - he is currently enjoying a streak of commercial and critical success comparable to Stevie Wonder's in the 1970s.

Lamar's 2012 major-label debut Good Kid, M.A.A.D City was the kind of cinematic coming of age story that most rappers spend the rest of their careers trying to live up to, but 2015's To Pimp a Butterfly was something else entirely: a wildly original exploration of Lamar's conflicted feelings about fame combined with a ferocious state-of-the-nation address, steeped in decades of soul, funk, hip-hop and jazz.

Lamar was hailed as both the greatest rapper alive and the voice of black America under pressure, so nobody would have blamed him if his next full album had been a step down from that overwhelming masterpiece. Such extravagant praise has a tendency to derail artists, if not with complacency then with paralysing self-doubt.

In fact, Damn, though shorter and more direct, is just as rich and audacious. Unless you count his occasionally phoned-in guest verses on pop hits, Lamar has yet to disappoint. Undoubtedly, Lamar's cultural importance played a part in his Pulitzer win. In this hyper-political era of the Trump catastrophe and the unchecked police brutality that led to Black Lives Matter, there's a particular excitement about works of art - Black Panther (for which Lamar produced the soundtrack), , Moonlight, Beyoncé's - which address blackness.

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Lamar featured on Beyoncé's Lemonade album. Photograph: Paras Griffin/BET/Getty Images

But even if it weren't a cultural phenomenon, Damn would be deserving on a compositional level. While there will always be those who flatly refuse to accept hip-hop as a valid artform, for everyone else Lamar represents the pinnacle of the form. His combination of technical virtuosity, moral complexity, political acuity, wit, empathy and musical depth and breadth makes him the only MC (sorry Kanye) who can unite teenage hip-hop fans, Golden Age aficionados and people who barely follow the genre.

Raised in Compton, Los Angeles, Lamar, like many rappers, grew up amid poverty and gang violence. He continues to wrestle with survivor's guilt and the moral responsibility that comes with success, constantly interrogating his own weaknesses and hypocrisies. When I interviewed him in 2015, he was hugely impressive in a low-key way: calm, reflective, deeply religious and wise beyond his years.

He clearly took seriously the job of living up to expectations without ever being sanctimonious or didactic. "We all like to have fun," he told me. "I like to have fun, too. But where do you stop and say, You know what? There's actually some real shit going on out there that people can relate to more than any singalong I can bring to the table. It's just about balance.

"I don't fault other artists. I don't say this person should be doing that. As conscious as my music sounds, I would never point the finger because every day I make mistakes."

If Lamar's work has a central theme, it's human fallibility and contradiction: "I got power, poison, pain and joy inside my DNA," he raps on Damn's most intense track, DNA. He uses sly charm, raspy belligerence, frantic rage, solemn introspection to express different sides to his personality.

He is an extraordinarily vivid and unpredictable storyteller with a tendency to radically change his music, vocal tone and lyrical direction midway through a song, zooming in or out so that the second half complicates and subverts the first.

Even when he's riding one beat for four minutes, as he does on his hit single Humble, his lyrics contain multitudes. His technical brilliance is never self-regarding virtuosity but a means to an end: more clarity, more complexity, more honesty.

The listener gets the impression that, rather than competing with other MCs, Lamar is driven by a burning desire to outdo himself.

When Duke Ellington was controversially denied a Pulitzer in 1965, he responded: "Fate is being kind to me. Fate doesn't want me to be too famous too young." He was 67 at the time. Lamar is just 30, undaunted by fame, and more untouchable than any MC in the history of hip-hop. The Pulitzer is just the latest confirmation that he stands alone.

LAMAR'S TOP CUTS

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Photograph: Scott Dudelson/Getty Images for Coachella

HiiiPoWer, 2011 The Art of Peer Pressure, 2012 Alright, 2015 The Blacker the Berry, 2015
Lamar's unflinching self-analysis accelerates into a breathtaking frenzy, like sparks flying from an overheating brain.
A ferocious expression of black pride and rage, which attacks first white America and then Lamar's own hypocrisy.
From his album To Pimp a Butterfly, its defiant but qualified optimism, elevated by soul and jazz, made this an anthem for Black Lives Matter.
This is a storytelling tour de force that speaks of crime, friendship and a very close shave, bringing Lamar's dangerous adolescence to life.
Lamar aligns himself with a roll-call of black icons on this Kanye West-influenced highlight from his independent studio album Section.80. Topics

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From street kid to Pulitzer: why Kendrick Lamar deserves the prize

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The first Pulitzer prize for music went, in 1943, to William Schuman's Secular Cantata No 2. It took 54 years before the judges recognised music beyond the European classical tradition, making Wynton Marsalis's Blood on the Fields the first jazz winner.

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Although tracks like "m.A.A.d City" and "Backseat Freestyle" may get more spins from Kendrick Lamar's good kid, m.A.A.d city, perhaps one of the most powerful cuts on the album is "Sing About Me, I'm Dying of Thirst." Now, in a recent interview with Life + Times' Decoded series, K. Dot explains the story behind the song.

Kendrick revealed that the first verse of the song is taken directly from his life following the untimely death of a friend in a shooting. While writing the song, Kendrick said he wanted to tell this story from the perspective of his friend's older brother, who was trapped in a life of crime. Ultimately, Kendrick said that it was this experience that pushed him deeper into his craft as to avoid the dangers of street life.

"That's one of my favorite verses on the album," he explained. "It's an obvious true story. It hits home, as far as the past members of tragic situations that happened in my life. That one particular situation is my homeboy getting smoked while I'm right there, and I'm being the last one right there just seeing him take his last. [The verse is] his brother being irrevocable, a street cat, and him just thanking me for being right there, and wishing that he could've found a passion in something - maybe music, maybe sports - but [it's] him recognizing the fact and truth that he was already in too deep."

He continued, "The craziest part about that verse - and in real life - [is] him saying, 'If something happens to me before your album drops, just make sure you mention and tell this story in a positive light,' and that's exactly what I did and he definitely passed, too. That's why that's one of the final songs on the album - out of 12 songs, that's closer to the bottom because when the reality check really hit, a lot people know Kendrick Lamar for who I am today, but for me to think [of] what I had to do to come from a dark space, and that was the turning point right there."

Check out the full interview interview below.

RELATED: Kendrick Lamar Explains Why He Avoids Music Disputes

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Kendrick Lamar Explains The Story Behind "Sing About Me, I'm Dying Of Thirst"

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Although tracks like "m.A.A.d City" and "Backseat Freestyle" may get more spins from Kendrick Lamar's good kid, m.A.A.d city, perhaps one of the most powerful cuts on the album is "Sing About Me, I'm Dying of Thirst." Now, in a recent interview with Life + Times' Decoded series, K.