Kendrick Lamar facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Kendrick Lamar
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Lamar at the 2018 Pulitzer Prizes
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Kendrick Lamar Duckworth
June 17, 1987 Compton, California, U.S.
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| Education | Centennial High School |
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| Years active | 2003–present |
| Organization | PGLang |
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Works
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| Partner(s) | Whitney Alford (eng. 2015) |
| Children | 2 |
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| Awards | Full list |
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Kendrick Lamar Duckworth (born June 17, 1987) is an American rapper and songwriter. Often regarded as one of the greatest rappers of all time, he is the only musician outside of the classical and jazz genres to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music.
Contents
Early life
Kendrick Lamar Duckworth was born in Compton, California on June 17, 1987, the son of a couple from Chicago. Although not in a gang himself, he grew up around gang members; with his closest friends being Westside Piru Bloods and his father, Kenny Duckworth, being a Gangster Disciple. His first name was given to him by his mother, Paula Oliver, in honor of singer-songwriter Eddie Kendricks of The Temptations. He grew up on welfare and in Section 8 housing.
In 1995, at the age of eight, Lamar witnessed Tupac Shakur and Dr. Dre film the music video for their single "California Love", which proved to be a significant moment in his life. As a child, he attended McNair Elementary and Vanguard Learning Center in the Compton Unified School District. He has admitted to being quiet and shy in school, his mother confirming he was a "loner" until the age of seven. Lamar was further educated at Centennial High School, where he graduated from in 2005 as a straight A student.
Career
In 2003, at the age of 16, Lamar released his first mixtape under the pseudonym K.Dot. The mixtape was released under Konkrete Jungle Muzik and garnered local recognition for Lamar. The mixtape led to Lamar securing a recording contract with Top Dawg Entertainment (TDE), a newly founded independent record label based in Carson, California. He began recording material with the label and subsequently released a 26-track mixtape two years later, titled Training Day (2005).
Throughout 2006 and 2007, Lamar would appear alongside other up-and-coming West Coast rappers, such as Jay Rock and Ya Boy, as opening acts for veteran West Coast rapper The Game.
After becoming a founding member of the hip hop supergroup Black Hippy, Lamar dropped his stage name and started using his first and middle names professionally. In 2011, he released his debut studio album Section.80, a conscious hip hop record. The album was met with positive reviews and included his debut single "HiiiiPower". In 2012, Lamar secured a record deal with Dr. Dre’s Aftermath Entertainment, under the aegis of Interscope Records, and released his second studio album Good Kid, M.A.A.D City. The West Coast and gangsta rap influenced album garnered widespread critical recognition and commercial success, while including the singles "Swimming Pools (Drank)" and "Backseat Freestyle".
Lamar's major-label debut, good kid, m.A.A.d city, was released on October 22, 2012. The album debuted at number two in the US, selling 242,100 copies in its first week. Later that year, Fuse TV listed Lamar's single, "Backseat Freestyle" among the top 40 songs of 2012. In a few months' time, the album was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). HipHopDX named Lamar "Emcee of the Year" for their 2012 Year-End honors.
On October 15, 2013, Lamar won five awards at the BET Hip Hop Awards, including Album of the Year and Lyricist of the Year (the latter of which he had also won the year before). In November 2013, he was named GQ's "Rapper of the Year," and was featured on the cover of the magazine's "Men of the Year" issue.
Lamar received a total of seven Grammy nominations at the 56th Annual Grammy Awards (2014), including Best New Artist, Album of the Year, and Best Rap Song, but did not win in any category.
A visit to South Africa inspired Lamar’s jazz-flavored third studio album, which was released in 2015. It received universal acclaim and became his first number-one album on the Billboard 200.
On May 17, 2015, Lamar featured on the official remix of American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift's song "Bad Blood", as well as appearing in the music video. The original song is in Swift's fifth studio album 1989. The single reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and the music video won them a Grammy Award for Best Music Video and a MTV Video Music Award for Video of the Year.
Lamar experimented with R&B, pop and psychedelic soul in his fourth studio album. It spawned his first solo number-one single "Humble" and became the first non-classical and non-jazz work to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music.
On March 4, 2016, Lamar released a compilation album Untitled Unmastered, containing eight untitled tracks. The compilation album debuted atop the US Billboard 200.
Following a four-year hiatus, Lamar released his minimalist fifth studio album Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers (2022), which served as his swan song from TDE. He has directed and produced several music videos and films with his creative partner Dave Free, with whom he founded the creative collective PGLang.
In support of Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers, Lamar embarked on the Big Steppers Tour, which ran from July 2022 to March 2024. The tour grossed $110.9 million in worldwide revenue, becoming the highest-grossing rap tour ever at the time.
Lamar has received various accolades throughout his career, including one Primetime Emmy Award, one Brit Award, four American Music Awards, six Billboard Music Awards, 11 MTV Video Music Awards (including two Video of the Year wins), 17 Grammy Awards (the third-most won by a rapper), and 29 BET Hip Hop Awards (the most won by any artist). Time listed him as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2016.
Artistry
Influences
Lamar cites Tupac Shakur as his biggest influence, noting that he has impacted his music and everyday life. He has stated that Shakur, the Notorious B.I.G., Jay-Z, Nas and Eminem are his top five favorite rappers.
Musical style and rapping technique
Lamar's musical style is known to be "anti-flamboyant, interior and complex." His work is generally categorized as progressive rap due to his contributions of broadening the genre's audience to reach mainstream listeners. He's stated in an interview that "You really can't categorize my music, it's human music."
Songwriting
Lamar's songwriting is often based on his personal life. Lamar's writing often contain political and social commentary centered around African American life and culture. It has been compared to a State of the Union address by The Guardian. Jacob Uitti of American Songwriter notes, "For as much as he is a musician and a lyricist and an emcee, Lamar is also a playwright, a novelist, a short story author. He’s literary within the art form of music."
Other ventures
Acting and filmmaking
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Lamar began his filmmaking career by writing the music video for his song "Ignorance Is Bliss". He made his directorial debut with the music video for "Backseat Freestyle". Since then, he has directed several of his music videos alongside his creative partner Dave Free under the collective name The Little Homies. In 2014, Lamar produced and was featured in M.A.A.D, a short film inspired by his second studio album Good Kid, M.A.A.D City. In December 2015, he co-directed, edited and starred in the short film God Is Gangsta. He began executive producing music videos in 2020 with Baby Keem's "Hooligan". In January 2022, Lamar and Free announced that they will be producing an untitled comedy film with South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker.
In July 2018, Lamar made his acting debut in the fifth season of the Starz drama series Power. His casting stemmed from his friendship with rapper 50 Cent, who stars in and executive produces the series. Lamar wanted to portray a character that did not resemble his musical persona, and drew inspiration from various people he knew when growing up in Compton. He also compared his acting preparation to his songwriting, saying that he prefers to "always have that open space to evolve". Lamar's performance was praised by critics and viewers, and earned him an NAACP Image Award nomination for Outstanding Guest Performance in a Comedy or Drama Series.
Business and fashion
Lamar owns a percentage of his former record label Top Dawg Entertainment. In December 2014, he was announced as a brand ambassador for sportswear brand Reebok, and designed six sneakers with the company. After ending his ambassadorship with Reebok in 2017, Lamar began a partnership with Nike and collaborated on five sneakers. In 2022, he collaborated with Converse on two sneakers.
Impact
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Lamar's work has earned universal acclaim from music critics, industry peers, and cultural figures. He has been named by numerous media outlets as one of the most influential artists of the 2010s, with Billboard listing him as one of the greatest rappers of all time. He has been credited by NPR Music with the revival of jazz rap, which waned after the 1990s. Writing for Esquire UK, editor Olivia Ovended opined, "Even if you're not overly familiar with Lamar's back catalogue, his influence in music is everywhere, from the West Coast hip-hop now being made by Anderson .Paak. to the trap of Gucci Mane. He is—and we'll brook no argument here—the greatest rapper making music today." The New Yorker journalist Carrie Battan considered him "California's biggest hip-hop artist since the nineteen-nineties." Lamar has been branded as the "New King of Hip Hop" numerous times by media outlets. Steve Batlin of Forbes writes that although he "may or may not be the greatest rapper alive right now", he's "certainly in the very short lists of artists in the conversation." Lamar frequently refers to himself as the "Greatest Rapper Alive" and has once declared himself the "King of New York".
His music was also used during protests following the 2016 United States presidential election. According to American studies and media scholar William Hoynes, Lamar's progressive rap music places him in a long line of African-American artists and activists who "worked both inside and outside of the mainstream to advance a counterculture that opposes the racist stereotypes being propagated in white-owned media and culture". History.com considered Lamar's Pulitzer Prize win as "a sign of the American cultural elite's recognition of hip-hop as a legitimate artistic medium." NPR Music writer Marcus J. Moore noticed Lamar's rap-jazz aesthetic present on his repertoire, "he's at the vanguard of this movement, proving that he too is a rule breaker, just like Miles, Herbie, Coltrane, Glasper and Hargove, who all took bold creative risks to push jazz into uncharted territory," and stated that Lamar is introducing jazz to a generation "who might only know it through their parents' old record collections." Esquire US writer Matt Miller opined about the rapper's videography in 2017, crediting Lamar for "reviving" the music video as "a powerful form" of social commentary, citing as examples "Alright" and "Humble".
Multiple artists have cited his work as an inspiration, including Khalid, Roddy Ricch, Christine and the Queens, Jhené Aiko, Cordae, Car Seat Headrest and Dua Lipa. Madonna praised Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers as "history making" and "mind-bogglingly brilliant". Pharrell Williams called Lamar "one of the greatest writers of our times", explaining that he "knows how to be very disciplined with a subject matter, he knows that stickiness is important, and he knows that it has to feel great." Lorde described him as "the most popular and influential artist in modern music".
Achievements
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Throughout his career, Lamar has won 17 Grammy Awards (the third-most by a rapper in history), a Primetime Emmy Award, four American Music Awards, 29 BET Hip Hop Awards (the most won by any artist), 11 MTV Video Music Awards (including two Video of the Year wins), 6 Billboard Music Awards, and a Brit Award. As a songwriter, he has received nominations for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award. At the 58th Annual Grammy Awards, Lamar received the most Grammy nominations by a rapper in one night, with 11. During the 65th ceremony, he became the first artist from any genre to be nominated for Album of the Year with four consecutive lead studio albums since Billy Joel (1979–1983).
Lamar has received two honors in his hometown. On May 11, 2015, he received the California State Senate's Generational Icon Award from State Senator Isadore Hall III (D–Compton) who represents California's 35th district. From the senate floor, Lamar told the legislature, "Being from the City of Compton and knowing the parks that I played at and the neighborhoods, I always thought how great the opportunity would be to give back to my community off of what I do in music." On February 13, 2016, Mayor of Compton, California Aja Brown presented Lamar with the key to the city, for "representing Compton's evolution, embodying the New Vision for Compton."
He appeared for the first time on the Time 100 list of most influential people in 2016. His debut major-label release, good kid, m.A.A.d city, was named one of "The 100 Best Debut Albums of All Time" by Rolling Stone. To ... a Butterfly was ranked by many publications as one of the best albums of the 2010s (decade), with The Independent placing it first. In 2015, Billboard included Lamar in "The 10 Greatest Rappers of All-Time." Complex magazine has ranked Lamar atop "The 20 Best Rappers in Their 20s" annual lists in 2013, 2015 and 2016. He has also won six Billboard Music Awards, seven BET Awards (including Album of the Year), and 25 BET Hip Hop Awards—the most for an artist.
Personal life
While attending Centennial High School, Lamar began dating beautician Whitney Alford. In April 2015, during an interview with The Breakfast Club, Lamar revealed that they were engaged. The couple have two children together: daughter Uzi (born July 2019), and son Enoch. Lamar is an older cousin of fellow rapper Baby Keem, and a younger cousin of basketball player Nick Young. He is a notable fan of the Los Angeles Lakers, the Los Angeles Dodgers, and the Los Angeles Rams.
Lamar is a devout Christian, having converted following the death of a friend. He has been outspoken about his faith in his music and interviews. He has been baptized twice; first when he was 16 and again in 2013, which he announced during his opening set at Kanye West's The Yeezus Tour. Lamar has credited God for his fame and his "deliverance" from crime that often plagued Compton in the 1990s. He also believes his career is divinely inspired, saying in an interview with Complex in 2014, "I got a greater purpose, God put something in my heart to get across and that's what I'm going to focus on, using my voice as an instrument and doing what needs to be done."
Discography
Studio albums
- Section.80 (2011)
- Good Kid, M.A.A.D City (2012)
- To ... a Butterfly (2015)
- Damn (2017)
- Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers (2022)
Filmography
- Lennon or McCartney (2014)
- Quincy (2018)
- Kendrick Lamar Live: The Big Steppers Tour (2022)
- Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé (2023)
- Piece by Piece (2024)
See also
In Spanish: Kendrick Lamar para niños
- List of American Grammy Award winners and nominees
- List of artists who reached number one in the United States
- List of artists who reached number one on the U.S. Rhythmic chart
- List of black Golden Globe Award winners and nominees
- Music of California
