The story of Kendrick Lamar

A quiet kid in Compton

Kendrick Lamar Duckworth was born on the seventeenth of June 1987 in Compton, California. His parents, Kenny Duckworth and Paula Oliver, had both grown up on the South Side of Chicago and moved west as teenagers in 1984. Part of the reason was his father's ties to the Gangster Disciples street gang. They named their first child after Eddie Kendricks, the singer from the Temptations. Money was always short. The family lived in Section 8 housing, relied on welfare and food stamps, and at times had no home at all. His mother remembered him as a loner, and his parents gave him the nickname Man Man because he seemed so grown up for his age.[1] [2]

Compton taught him hard lessons early. When he was five, sitting outside the family's apartment, he saw a young drug dealer shot dead in a drive by. He later told NPR that it changed something in him that day, because he understood this was something he might have to get used to. Around the same time he lived through the first day of the 1992 Los Angeles riots. But there was music too. Around the age of eight he stood with his father at the Compton swap meet and watched Tupac Shakur and Dr. Dre film the video for California Love. Tupac became the biggest influence of his life, and Kendrick has called himself an offspring of Tupac's art and politics.[1] [2] [3]

At school he was quiet and watchful, with a noticeable stutter. His first grade teacher at Ronald E. McNair Elementary heard him use the word audacity correctly and told him he should become a writer. In seventh grade at Vanguard Learning Center, an English teacher named Regis Inge brought poetry into the classroom to ease racial tension among his students. Kendrick fell in love with rhymes, metaphors and double meanings, and started filling notebooks with lyrics instead of doing his other homework. The early writing was angry and profane, and it helped him cope with trauma and depression. Rapping on street corners later became the thing that finally cured his stutter.[1] [2]

K.Dot and Top Dawg

At Centennial High School the pull of the streets got stronger. A summer school stint in tenth grade dragged him into the middle of a gang war, and although he never joined a gang, he grew up among close affiliates of the Westside Pirus. There were run ins with police and friends lying on hospital gurneys. He told NPR that he never had a criminal record, but that he had hurt people. His father staged an intervention that pulled him back. When he was sixteen, after the death of a friend, he was baptized and became a Christian. In 2005 he graduated as a straight A student and thought about studying psychology or astronomy, before choosing music instead.[1] [2] [3]

In high school he called himself K.Dot, and his freestyles caught the attention of a student from Inglewood named Dave Free, who came over just to watch him rap. They bonded over hip hop and the sitcom Martin and recorded in a makeshift garage studio. Free was working as a computer technician, and when he went to repair the computer of a producer called Anthony Tiffith, known as Top Dawg, he played him Kendrick's first mixtape. Tiffith invited the teenager to audition. Kendrick freestyled for two hours straight. The executive Terrence Henderson, known as Punch, was impressed, while Tiffith was mostly baffled. In 2005 Kendrick signed to Top Dawg Entertainment, just two weeks after the label's first signing, Jay Rock.[1] [2] [3]

The early years were a grind. Kendrick worked briefly as a security guard while recording at the label's studio, and he spent a lot of time as Jay Rock's hype man. Around 2008, with fellow signees Ab Soul and Schoolboy Q, they formed a crew called Black Hippy, an idea that came from Schoolboy Q. In 2006 Kendrick got an artist development deal with Def Jam, but he was let go after a meeting with the label's boss, Jay Z. Kendrick later admitted he simply was not ready. His 2007 mixtape Training Day won some praise, but C4 in 2009, a tribute to Lil Wayne, was dismissed by one critic as a misguided homage.[1] [2] [3]

In 2009 he made a quiet but important decision. He dropped the name K.Dot, feeling it hid who he really was, and began using his first and middle names. The self titled Kendrick Lamar EP that year swapped borrowed beats for original, melancholy production and put his writing up front. It also introduced the phrase good kid in a mad city, which would become the title of his breakthrough album. The EP began his partnership with Sounwave, a Compton producer who had first met Kendrick in a studio in Gardena. Sounwave has worked on every Kendrick project since, and he remains one of the most important people in the story.[1] [2] [3]

Section.80 and a good kid

The fourth mixtape, Overly Dedicated, came out on the fourteenth of September 2010 and was his first release sold through digital stores. It reached Dr. Dre in a roundabout way. Dre watched the YouTube video for a song called Ignorance Is Bliss and reached out, hoping to use Kendrick on his long delayed album Detox and thinking about signing him. Then, on the second of July 2011, Kendrick released his debut album, Section.80. The title played on Section 8 housing and on a generation born in the 1980s under Reagan and the crack epidemic. Much of it was written in his mother's kitchen and on a tour bus. It sold only about five thousand copies in its first week.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Word of mouth did the rest. At a show in West Los Angeles in 2011, Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre and the Game crowned him the new king of the West Coast. That year he also appeared on Drake's album Take Care, and in early 2012 he opened for Drake on tour. In March 2012 it was announced that Kendrick had signed a joint deal with Dre's Aftermath Entertainment and Interscope Records, with Top Dawg still acting as his main label. Dre himself appeared on the first single, The Recipe. The kid who had watched Dre film a video at the swap meet was now working for him.[1] [2] [3]

Good Kid, M.A.A.D City arrived on the twenty second of October 2012, billed on its cover as a short film by Kendrick Lamar. It tells the story of one teenage summer in Compton, out of order, with skits, voicemails and prayers. Kendrick later explained that the letters of M.A.A.D stood for two things, my angry adolescence divided, and my angel's on angel dust. The second one was personal. As a teenager he unknowingly smoked a joint laced with PCP, and he says he has never taken drugs since. The single Swimming Pools, about the pressure to drink, drew on memories of his grandfather's drinking and death.[1] [2] [3]

The album debuted at number two in America, selling two hundred and forty two thousand copies in its first week, the best opening that year for a male rapper. Lady Gaga had recorded a version of one song, Bitch, Don't Kill My Vibe, but she was left off the album over timing and creative differences, and she released her take separately. Good Kid became the longest charting hip hop studio album in Billboard history, and in October 2022 it became the first to spend ten straight years on the chart. In 2022 Rolling Stone named it the greatest concept album of all time.[1] [2]

Control, and a crisis behind the fame

In August 2013 a Big Sean song called Control leaked onto New York radio with a guest verse from Kendrick. In it he named a long list of his peers, including Drake, J. Cole and Big Sean himself, and said he loved them but wanted to beat all of them. NPR wrote that he had said what everyone was thinking, that rappers needed to try harder. Drake answered in an interview that the verse was just an ambitious thought, and many heard his song The Language as a reply. Nobody knew it yet, but this was the opening shot of a rivalry that would run for more than a decade.[1] [2] [3]

Success brought a darkness that fans did not see. In 2013 Kendrick learned that three close friends had died, and he struggled with depression, survivor's guilt and thoughts of suicide while doing promotion. The losses kept coming. In 2015 he told NPR about Chad Keaton, a friend he called his little brother, who was shot dead. Late in 2013 he opened for Kanye West on the Yeezus tour, even though his label wanted him in the studio. Kanye's team solved it by giving him a bus with a studio on board. Near the end of the tour, in a hotel room he believes was in Atlanta, he broke down screaming, a moment he later put on record.[1] [2] [3] [4]

In January 2014 Good Kid earned seven Grammy nominations, including album of the year, and he won none of them. Macklemore took best rap album and best new artist, and then shared a text he had sent Kendrick saying he felt he had robbed him. The moment became an internet joke, but Kendrick moved on. Two months after the hotel room breakdown he played three shows in South Africa and stayed on for a week. He visited Nelson Mandela's cell on Robben Island, and it snapped him back to reality. According to Sounwave, the trip led him to scrap two or three albums worth of material and start again.[1] [2] [3]

To Pimp a Butterfly

To Pimp a Butterfly was supposed to come out on the twenty third of March 2015, but it appeared on iTunes and Spotify eight days early. Top Dawg blamed a mistake at Interscope. It hardly mattered. The album set a Spotify record with nine point six million streams on its first day and went to number one in America and Britain. The original title had been Tu Pimp a Caterpillar, spelling out Tupac. Rather than leaning mainly on samples, Kendrick built the sound with live players steeped in jazz, funk and soul, including Terrace Martin, Thundercat, Kamasi Washington and the producer Sounwave. The closing track, Mortal Man, ends with an imagined conversation built from a 1994 Swedish radio interview with Tupac.[1] [2] [3]

One song escaped the album and went into the streets. In 2015, young protesters against police violence began chanting the chorus of Alright, and it became the unofficial soundtrack of the Black Lives Matter movement. At the BET Awards in June 2015 Kendrick performed it standing on top of a graffiti covered police car. On Fox News, Geraldo Rivera called the performance disgusting and said hip hop had done more damage to young Black people than racism. Kendrick answered by asking how anyone could turn a message of hope into hate. Two years later he sampled Rivera's words on his own record.[1] [2]

The same year brought a very different hit. Kendrick added a verse to a remix of Taylor Swift's Bad Blood, and it gave him his first number one single in America. At the Grammys in February 2016 he had eleven nominations, the most ever for a rapper in one night, and he won five, including best rap album. His medley on the Grammy stage was widely acclaimed. Barack Obama named How Much a Dollar Cost his favourite song of 2015, and he welcomed Kendrick to the Oval Office. That February Compton gave him the key to the city.[1] [2] [3] [4]

After LeBron James asked him to release the unfinished songs he had been performing on television, Kendrick put out Untitled Unmastered on the fourth of March 2016. It gathered eight numbered, dated demos left over from the Butterfly sessions, and it went straight to number one. One of its producers was surprising. Swizz Beatz revealed that his five year old son Egypt, whose mother is Alicia Keys, helped make part of one track. The Butterfly era also reached far beyond hip hop. David Bowie's producer Tony Visconti said that while making Blackstar, his final album, they listened to a lot of Kendrick, loving how he refused to make a straight hip hop record.[1] [2] [3]

Damn, a Pulitzer and Black Panther

Damn came out on the fourteenth of April 2017, preceded by Humble, a song built on a beat Mike Will Made It had originally made with Gucci Mane in mind. Humble became his first number one as a lead artist. Damn was leaner and more pop leaning than Butterfly, and it became his biggest seller, opening with six hundred and three thousand units. Every song on it was certified gold or better, a first for a rapper. It was also built to be heard backwards, and in December a collector's edition flipped the running order. Kendrick had first wanted to call it What Happens on Earth Stays on Earth, but he felt it did not read right.[1] [2] [3]

On the sixteenth of April 2018, Damn won the Pulitzer Prize for Music. It was the first time the prize had gone to a work outside classical music and jazz, and it was widely read as the cultural establishment finally treating hip hop as serious art. Earlier that year Kendrick had curated Black Panther The Album for the Marvel film, singing on every track whether credited or not. All the Stars, his duet with SZA, earned an Oscar nomination. There was a dispute too. The British Liberian artist Lina Iris Viktor said the video used images of her gold patterned work without permission, and a settlement was agreed in principle in December 2018.[1] [2] [3]

Kendrick also used his weight in business. In 2018 Spotify introduced a hateful conduct policy that removed music by R. Kelly and XXXTentacion from its playlists. Top Dawg's Anthony Tiffith confirmed that he warned Spotify's bosses he would start pulling his artists' music, calling it censorship aimed at hip hop, and Spotify dropped the policy. That year Kendrick also made his acting debut in the series Power, asking to play a drug addict named Laces, a character he said he knew from growing up in Compton. Then the Damn tour ended, and the most talked about rapper in the world went almost completely quiet for four years.[1] [2]

The silence covered real grief. On the thirty first of March 2019 the Los Angeles rapper and activist Nipsey Hussle was shot dead outside his Marathon Clothing store by a man named Eric Holder, who was later convicted of first degree murder. Then came the death of the basketball star Kobe Bryant. Kendrick and Sounwave later said the deaths of both men, together with the pandemic and Kendrick's own guarded nature, made the next album one of the toughest things they had ever tried to make. Kendrick also spoke of two years of writer's block. At home his life was changing. He and his high school sweetheart Whitney Alford, engaged since 2015, welcomed a daughter on the twenty sixth of July 2019.[1] [2] [3]

Leaving home: pgLang and Mr. Morale

Dave Free left Top Dawg in 2019, and on the fifth of March 2020 he and Kendrick launched pgLang, a creative company working across music, film and advertising. In August 2021 Kendrick posted a short blog note saying he was producing his final album for Top Dawg after seventeen years. A week later he appeared on Family Ties by his younger cousin Baby Keem, which went on to win a Grammy. In February 2022 he joined Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Mary J. Blige and 50 Cent for the Super Bowl halftime show, which won an Emmy.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

On the eighth of May 2022 he released The Heart Part 5. In the video his face morphs through deepfake technology into O. J. Simpson, Kanye West, Jussie Smollett, Will Smith, Kobe Bryant and Nipsey Hussle. Five days later came Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers, a double album built around his experience of therapy. He executive produced it under the alias Oklama, and it features narration by Whitney Alford and the spiritual writer Eckhart Tolle. Its cover announced the birth of their second child, a son. He confessed to a sexual addiction and to being unfaithful to Whitney, and he explored generational trauma in his family.[1] [2] [3]

The album won praise for its honesty, but parts of it drew sharp criticism. Kendrick gave a guest spot to Kodak Black, who had been accused of rape in 2016 and had pleaded guilty to first degree assault and battery. The song Auntie Diaries, about his transgender relatives, was praised by some listeners and criticised by others for repeated use of a slur and for misgendering. In June 2022 he closed Glastonbury wearing a crown of thorns with blood running down his face, repeating a plea for women's rights after the American Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The Big Steppers tour went on to gross about one hundred and eleven million dollars.[1] [2] [3]

By 2023 Kendrick had also quietly cut his ties with Aftermath and signed directly with Interscope. Mr. Morale was his last record for Top Dawg, the label that had signed him as a teenager, and his exit effectively ended Black Hippy. The parting appeared friendly, and Top Dawg's leaders later appeared in his Not Like Us video. At the Grammys in 2023 Mr. Morale won best rap album, and he became the first artist since Billy Joel to be nominated for album of the year with four lead studio albums in a row. But the calm would not last. His old rivalry was about to explode.[1] [2] [3]

The war with Drake

The Drake story began as friendship. In 2011 Kendrick recorded an interlude for Drake's album Take Care and called him a genuinely good soul. Kendrick even said Drake was the first person to hear Section.80. But after the Control verse, the two traded veiled jabs for a decade while publicly denying any feud. In October 2023 J. Cole, on a Drake song, called the three of them the big three of modern rap. Kendrick had turned down a spot on that track. On the twenty second of March 2024 he appeared on Like That by Future and Metro Boomin and flatly rejected the idea of a big three. The song spent three weeks at number one.[1] [2]

J. Cole replied with a light diss, then apologised on stage two days later and pulled it from streaming. Drake answered with Push Ups, mocking Kendrick's height and his work with Taylor Swift, and then Taylor Made Freestyle, which used AI generated voices imitating Tupac and Snoop Dogg to goad him. Tupac's estate threatened legal action, and Drake took it down. On the thirtieth of April Kendrick released Euphoria, a slow burning attack on Drake's authenticity and parenting. On the third of May he dropped 6:16 in LA, produced by Jack Antonoff, Taylor Swift's longtime collaborator, and warned that people in Drake's own camp were leaking to him.[1] [2]

Then it turned very dark. Later that day Drake released Family Matters, alleging that Kendrick had abused Whitney Alford and that one of their children was fathered by Dave Free. Within twenty minutes Kendrick answered with Meet the Grahams, written as letters to Drake's family, accusing him of preying on young women, hiding a secret daughter and harbouring sex offenders. Less than a day later came Not Like Us, produced by Mustard, openly calling Drake a paedophile, with a cover showing his Toronto mansion marked like a sex offender map. Drake denied everything in The Heart Part 6. Neither side offered evidence, and the allegations on both sides remain unproven.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Not Like Us became a phenomenon. It went straight to number one, the first rap song to do so in a shortened five day tracking week, and it was the first chart topper written by a single songwriter since Brenda Lee's Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree. On Juneteenth, the nineteenth of June 2024, Kendrick staged the Pop Out at the Kia Forum in Inglewood with Dr. Dre and dozens of West Coast artists, and he played Not Like Us five times in a row. On the Fourth of July he released a video shot in Compton, showing Whitney and their children dancing at home. Most critics declared him the winner, though some called it a hollow victory.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

GNX, the Super Bowl and the top of the world

In September 2024 the NFL named Kendrick as the headliner for the next Super Bowl halftime show, in New Orleans. Many rappers called it a snub of the city's own Lil Wayne. Then, on the twenty second of November, Kendrick surprise released his sixth album, GNX, named after a rare 1987 Buick Grand National Experimental he had just bought, the same model his father drove when he brought baby Kendrick home from the hospital. Made largely with Sounwave and Jack Antonoff, it was a loving tribute to Los Angeles, with G funk and the mariachi singer Deyra Barrera. Squabble Up and Luther, a duet with SZA, both went to number one, and Luther stayed there for thirteen weeks.[1] [2] [3] [4]

On the second of February 2025, Not Like Us won all five Grammys it was nominated for, including record and song of the year, only the second rap song to win either award. Kendrick dedicated the wins to Los Angeles, then reeling from wildfires. A week later, on the ninth of February, he played the Super Bowl with Samuel L. Jackson as a sardonic Uncle Sam and a surprise crip walk from Serena Williams. He teased the audience that his rivals loved to sue, then played Not Like Us anyway. About one hundred and thirty three million Americans watched, the biggest halftime audience ever, and afterwards the song became his first British number one.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

One moment at the Super Bowl was not planned. A member of the show's cast, Zul Qarnain Nantambu, unfurled a flag combining the Sudanese and Palestinian flags on top of one of the cars and was tackled by security. The NFL banned him for life, and police in New Orleans decided not to bring charges. Meanwhile the feud moved into court. In January 2025 Drake sued Universal Music Group, the company behind both men, claiming Not Like Us defamed him. Kendrick was not named. On the ninth of October 2025 a federal judge threw the case out, ruling the lyrics were opinion in a heated rap battle. Drake said he would appeal.[1] [2] [3] [4]

From April to December 2025 Kendrick and SZA played the Grand National Tour, their first all stadium tour. Billboard declared it the highest grossing joint headlining tour in history, and its Seattle show set a record for a single hip hop concert, taking in nearly fifteen million dollars. At the Grammys in February 2026, GNX won best rap album, Luther won record of the year, and Kendrick passed Jay Z to become the most awarded rapper in the history of the awards. In May 2026 Drake answered with three albums at once, led by Iceman, still taking shots at his rival.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Kendrick remains famously private. He rarely uses social media, steers clear of drugs, and is a devoted fan of the Dodgers, Lakers and Rams. He keeps going back to Compton, whether handing out toys at Christmas or giving a surprise commencement speech at Compton College in June 2024, where he told graduates there was no place like home. Critics rank him among the greatest rappers ever, and musicians from Bowie to Dua Lipa and Rosalía have cited him as an influence. From the fall of 2025, Temple University even began teaching a course on his life and work.[1] [2] [3]

The people around Kendrick Lamar

Kendrick Lamar and Dave Free. They met in high school when Free came from Inglewood to watch K.Dot freestyle. Free got Kendrick's mixtape to Top Dawg, became his hype man, then his manager and co president of the label. As the Little Homies they directed videos that won Grammys and MTV awards, and in 2020 they founded pgLang together. Drake's 2024 claim about Free and Kendrick's family made him part of the feud.[1] [2] [3]

Kendrick Lamar and Whitney Alford. Whitney Alford is Kendrick's high school sweetheart. They announced their engagement in 2015 and keep their life almost entirely private. She sang background vocals on To Pimp a Butterfly and was the main narrator of Mr. Morale, the album on which Kendrick confessed to infidelity. They have a daughter, born in 2019, and a son, whose birth was revealed on the Mr. Morale cover.[1] [2]

Kendrick Lamar and Anthony Tiffith. Anthony Tiffith, known as Top Dawg, signed Kendrick to his Carson label in 2005 after a two hour freestyle audition, and Kendrick bought a small stake in the company. Tiffith executive produced his albums and fought his corner, even threatening Spotify in 2018. Kendrick left the label in 2022 after seventeen years, but they stayed close, and Tiffith appeared in the Not Like Us video.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Kendrick Lamar and Sounwave. Sounwave, born Mark Spears in Los Angeles and raised in Compton, has produced on every Kendrick project since the 2009 EP. When they first met, Kendrick was silent until Sounwave played an old record called Rock and Roll Gangster, and then he rushed into the booth. Sounwave helped shape Alright, Mr. Morale, GNX and Not Like Us, and he has won Grammys alongside him.[1] [2] [3]

Kendrick Lamar and Dr. Dre. As a boy Kendrick watched Dr. Dre film California Love at the Compton swap meet. Years later Dre found him through a YouTube video, signed him to Aftermath in 2012 and appeared on The Recipe and on Compton, the song that closes Good Kid. They shared the Super Bowl stage in 2022, and in 2024 Dre joined him at the Pop Out to open Not Like Us.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Kendrick Lamar and Drake. They began as collaborators on Take Care and Poetic Justice, and Kendrick opened for Drake in 2012. The Control verse in 2013 started a cold war of veiled jabs that erupted in 2024 into the most talked about rap feud in years, with grave allegations traded on both sides. Kendrick was widely seen as the winner. Drake sued Universal, lost in 2025 and kept taking shots in 2026.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Kendrick Lamar and SZA. SZA first crossed paths with Top Dawg at a 2011 CMJ music showcase where Kendrick was performing, and in 2013 she became the label's first woman signing. They recorded Babylon, All the Stars and Luther together. All the Stars earned an Oscar nomination, Luther spent thirteen weeks at number one, and their Grand National Tour set a record for a joint headlining tour.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Kendrick Lamar and Baby Keem. Baby Keem, born Hykeem Carter and raised in Las Vegas, is Kendrick's younger cousin. He first gained notice on the Black Panther soundtrack and was part of pgLang from its launch. Their song Family Ties won a Grammy, and Kendrick helped with Keem's album The Melodic Blue and appeared on his 2026 album Casino.[1] [2]

Kendrick Lamar and Jay Rock. Jay Rock from the Nickerson Gardens projects in Watts was Top Dawg's first signing, two weeks before Kendrick. Kendrick served as his hype man on tour, and the two became the core of Black Hippy with Ab Soul and Schoolboy Q. Jay Rock rapped on Money Trees, and they shared a Grammy for King's Dead.[1] [2] [3]

Kendrick Lamar and J. Cole. J. Cole encouraged Dr. Dre to sign Kendrick, and the two talked about a joint album around 2012. When Cole called them part of a big three in 2023, Kendrick rejected the idea. Cole fired back, then apologised within days. In 2026 Cole said he had removed two Kendrick features from his album The Fall Off because of the feud.[1] [2]

Kendrick Lamar and Mustard. The Los Angeles producer Mustard sent Kendrick about five beats a day for three months hoping to work with him. One, made in about half an hour, became Not Like Us, his first number one as a producer. Kendrick's shouting of his name on TV Off became a meme, and Mustard joined him at the Super Bowl and opened the Grand National Tour.[1] [2] [3]

Rare facts about Kendrick Lamar

• Kendrick was named after Eddie Kendricks, a lead singer of the Temptations. His parents, both from the South Side of Chicago, chose the name. Kendrick Lamar Duckworth was their first child, born in Compton in June 1987.[1]
• A first grade teacher told him to become a writer after hearing him use the word audacity. At Ronald E. McNair Elementary his teacher was struck by the word. Years later, a seventh grade teacher named Regis Inge introduced him to poetry.[1]
• Kendrick had a stutter as a child, and rapping on street corners helped cure it. He told the Guardian in 2015 that he fell in love with phrases and wordplay, and practised his delivery for a long time before it came naturally.[1]
• At his Top Dawg audition he freestyled for two hours without stopping. Label president Punch loved it, but Anthony Tiffith was left bewildered. He signed anyway in 2005, and Kendrick bought a minority stake in the label.[1]
• Dave Free got Kendrick signed while fixing Top Dawg's computer. Free was working as a computer technician and played Kendrick's mixtape for Anthony Tiffith during a repair job. That led straight to the audition.[1] [2]
• Before fame, Kendrick briefly worked as a security guard. He took the job while starting to record with Jay Rock at Top Dawg's studio, in the years before Black Hippy took shape.[1]
• Sounwave learned to make beats on a PlayStation game called MTV Music Generator. The producer, discovered at thirteen by Punch, later met Kendrick in a Gardena studio and has worked on every Kendrick project since 2009.[1]
• Dr. Dre discovered Kendrick through a YouTube video. Dre saw the video for Ignorance Is Bliss from the Overly Dedicated mixtape and reached out, hoping to use him on his unfinished album Detox.[1] [2]
• Much of Section.80 was written in his mother's kitchen. The rest came together on his tour bus. The album was recorded at Top Dawg's studio in Carson and sold only about five thousand copies in its first week.[1]
• RZA of the Wu Tang Clan appears uncredited on Section.80. His vocals on Ronald Reagan Era were arranged through a London DJ who was working with RZA at the time, Kendrick told Complex in 2011.[1]
• Lady Gaga recorded a version of Bitch, Don't Kill My Vibe that was left off the album. Originally called Partynauseous, the collaboration was dropped over timing and creative differences. Gaga released her version herself in November 2012.[1]
• The Good Kid cover shows a baby Kendrick with his uncles and grandfather, their eyes blacked out. He left his own eyes visible because the story on the album is told through them.[1]
• To Pimp a Butterfly was almost called Tu Pimp a Caterpillar, spelling out Tupac. Kendrick swapped caterpillar for butterfly to show the brightness of life and the idea of using celebrity for good.[1]
• The album ends with a conversation with Tupac, built from a 1994 Swedish radio interview. Kendrick used excerpts of Mats Nileskär's interview for the Swedish station P3 to stage a dialogue at the end of Mortal Man.[1]
• To Pimp a Butterfly came out eight days early by accident. Anthony Tiffith blamed an error at Interscope. The album still set a Spotify record with nine point six million streams on its first day.[1]
• He wrote the lyrics of Mortal Man while touring with Kanye West. On the same tour, Flying Lotus played him beats, and one of them became the album's opening track, Wesley's Theory.[1]
• Kanye's team gave Kendrick a studio bus so he could join the Yeezus tour. Top Dawg wanted him recording, not touring. A New York Times writer noted that Kendrick and Kanye barely spoke during the run.[1]
• A five year old helped produce a song on Untitled Unmastered. Swizz Beatz said his son Egypt, whose mother is Alicia Keys, contributed to untitled 07, which Sounwave confirmed.[1]
• David Bowie's final album, Blackstar, was partly inspired by To Pimp a Butterfly. Producer Tony Visconti said he and Bowie listened to a lot of Kendrick, admiring how he threw everything onto the record instead of making straight hip hop.[1]
• Barack Obama named How Much a Dollar Cost his favourite song of 2015. Kendrick later met him in the Oval Office and made a video for his My Brother's Keeper mentoring initiative.[1] [2]
• Damn was nearly titled What Happens on Earth Stays on Earth. Kendrick said the working title did not read right, and Damn captured the loudness and the damned if you do feeling of the record.[1]
• Damn can be played backwards as a complete story. Kendrick said the reverse order was planned in the studio, and a collector's edition in December 2017 ran the tracks in reverse.[1]
• The Humble beat was first meant for Gucci Mane. Mike Will Made It planned to keep the finished song for his own album, but people around Kendrick persuaded him to hold on to it.[1]
• Damn was the first album by a rapper with every song certified gold or better. By June 2018 all fourteen tracks had reached at least gold, a first for any rapper or solo artist.[1]
• Humble made him the first artist to win MTV's Video of the Year for a video he co directed. He won five awards at the 2017 VMAs, including best direction and best hip hop video.[1]
• Kendrick has stayed away from drugs since one bad experience as a teenager. He tried marijuana once as a teenager, and the joint was laced with PCP. He says he has never used drugs since.[1] [2]
• His acting debut was as a drug addict called Laces in the series Power. Kendrick asked for the role, saying Laces was a character he knew well from growing up in Compton.[1]
• Before The Heart Part 5, his website showed three hundred and ninety nine empty folders. Spotify accidentally leaked news of the song through a playlist description before it came out in May 2022.[1]
• He executive produced Mr. Morale under the name Oklama. The album also features the spiritual writer Eckhart Tolle and Portishead singer Beth Gibbons.[1]
• Mustard built Not Like Us in about thirty minutes. He had sent Kendrick around five beats a day for three months, and did not know Kendrick had used this one until the song came out.[1]
• Not Like Us was the first solo written Hot 100 number one since Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree. Kendrick is the song's only credited writer, a rarity among modern chart toppers, Billboard noted.[1]
• The GNX car is the same model his father drove him home from hospital in. In 2024 Kendrick bought a rare 1987 Buick Grand National Experimental and named his sixth album after it.[1]
• He found GNX's mariachi singer at a Dodgers World Series game. Deyra Barrera sang at a 2024 World Series game Kendrick attended, and she appears on three songs on the album.[1]
• A single Grand National Tour show in Seattle took almost fifteen million dollars. It sold nearly sixty one thousand tickets, a record for any hip hop concert.[1]
• He donated fifty thousand dollars to his old high school's music department. The gift to Centennial High School came in December 2013. In 2017 he also bought a wheelchair accessible van for a fan.[1]
• He once performed with Prince at Paisley Park. The 2014 appearance celebrated two new Prince albums, and GQ called it five minutes of brilliant insanity. Prince also shaped Kendrick's vocal range.[1]

Disputed stories

These stories are told often but the accounts don't agree. Here are the versions and who says what.