The 1998 album that inspired Kendrick Lamar to write his first lyric
Kendrick Lamar’s love of rap music took root early. He started writing his own verses as a teenager, and there was one album in particular that drove him to do so.
During a conversation with Complex in 2012, Kendrick reflected on his favourite ever albums at that point in time. Among them was It’s Dark and Hell is Hot, DMX’s debut album released in 1998 by Def Jam Recordings and Ruff Ryders Entertainment.
“Aww yeah,” Kendrick said of the record. “That’s the first album that got me writing. I wrote my first lyrics to that album actually, about 13, 14.”
It’s Dark and Hell is Hot, as its very title implies, was an intense, violent album, with DMX’s animalistic qualities expressed most viscerally through his trademark dog barks and whines. It was an extremely hard and dark record, and it inspired the freshly teenaged Kendrick to pursue songwriting for himself.
Celebrating the “raw” quality and “realness” of the album, Kendrick argued that it filled a void in rap that had been left by Tupac Shakur’s death. Something was “missing in the game” without Pac, and Kendrick believed X stepped up to amend that.
His favourite song from It’s Dark and Hell is Hot was the first track, ‘Intro,’ which he said he had “on repeat” as a kid. “That,” he went on, “‘Get At Me Dog,’ I could go all day.”
The album as a whole inspired the young Kendrick so much that he felt compelled to start writing his own lyrics, which is why, so many years later, he maintained that it was one of his favourite albums of all time. And, as he revealed during the interview, he had the pleasure of telling DMX that personally.
He met X for the first time a week before this interview with Complex took place, which allowed him to tell his idol what his debut record had meant to him. He got to let him know that it inspired him “to be a rapper.”
Years later, in 2019, X returned the favour by listing Kendrick as one of his favourite rappers of the new generation, telling GQ that he thought Kendrick was “dope.” That must have meant a lot to a man who had once idolised him so much as a teenager.