With the 58th Annual GRAMMY Awards airing tonight (February 15th), all eyes are currently on Kendrick Lamar. Leading all nominees with 11 nods, Lamar – who was recently given the key to Compton – recently gave an oral history of To Pimp A Butterfly to Andreas Hale. Now, 2DopeBoyz brings to readers an exclusive outtake from the interview that did not make the original interview.
In the piece, Kendrick speaks on his performance for the GRAMMYs, which people have said will “piss off the nation.”
As Kendrick Lamar prepares for The Grammys, the Compton emcee is aware that all eyes will be on him to see whether or not he takes home Album of the Year and just what he has in store for his performance, which is one that Grammy host LL Cool J has gone on record to say will be “controversial.”
“Kendrick Lamar’s gonna do something very controversial,” LL Cool J said in an interview with Studio Wrap. “And that’s what art is about, right? It’s not about whether you agree or disagree. It’s about it stimulating conversation and provoking people to have conversations about society. And if that’s what you want your art to do as an artist, if that’s the lane you choose, you’re accomplishing something if people talk about what you’re doing. So, it’s gonna be amazing.”
In the weeks leading up to the big show, 2DopeBoyz spoke with Kendrick Lamar about his expectations when he released To Pimp A Butterfly and if he expected the overwhelming positive response that the album has received, which has led to the multiple Grammy nominations.
“I knew what I was up against,” he says when asked if he thought the album would be received well by the mainstream. “I’d be a fool to say that a majority of the masses would play it in the club but at the same time I knew the content and the message I was getting across would have much more of an impact than trying to do this over a club record. It was really a challenge but I challenged myself to do it.”
Lamar admits that even he is surprised that an album like this has helped him garner 11 Grammy nominations. Keenly aware that some could find the messaging in the album offensive, Lamar made a conscious decision to go the route he did, regardless how anyone felt about it.
“You have to be confident enough to know that the message will get to the people around the world and they will understand it,” he said. “That’s a gift that God to put in me to continue to talk about these things. The message is bigger than the artist.
When it comes to his recent appearances that have found him performing unreleased songs, Lamar reveals that those are songs that, for one reason or another, didn’t make the album.
“You see all these performances on these late night shows,” he said. “I got a chamber of material from the album that I was in love where sample clearances or something as simple as a deadline kept it off the album. But I think probably close to ten songs that I’m in love with that I’ll still play and still perform that didn’t make the cut.”
