The Brooklyn rapper Kendrick Lamar credits for “ridiculous storytelling”
Kendrick Lamar loved his fellow West Coast rappers as a kid growing up in Compton, but he didn’t get lost in all the rivalries and feuds. To succumb to the historic troubles between the East and West coasts would have meant missing out on a lot of great music.
Kendrick was a huge Tupac Shakur fan, and he even got to meet him while he was just a child. He took a great deal of inspiration from Pac, and he said as much in an open letter that he once wrote to mark the anniversary of Pac’s untimely death.
Noting that Pac had the capacity to “[change] lives forever,” he further stated that his childhood encounter with the legendary West Coast rapper made him realise that he “wanted to be a voice for man one day.” Tupac, more than most figures, shaped Kendrick into the artist he later became.
But even though Kendrick was dedicated to Pac in this way, that didn’t mean he failed to appreciate the talents of his arch rival. Kendrick was a fan of Brooklyn’s own Notorious BIG, too, despite their awful feud, and, as he recounted to Complex in 2012, he even tried to learn from Biggie’s style, as well.
Kendrick recalled that, when he was younger, he and his friend tried to learn how to rap the verses on Biggie’s song ‘Fuck You Tonight.’ Laughing, he recalled the words he and his friend tried to master: “Girl you look fine, like a wind face Rolex, you just shine.”
He loved Biggie’s performance on that song as a kid. “That flow,” he said of the track. “We thought that was crazy.”
Kendrick also noted that the “storytelling was ridiculous” on it, but he also adored the wider album that it featured on. ‘Fuck You Tonight’ appeared on Life After Death, Biggie’s second album, which was released just 16 days after he was murdered. This was an album that should have cemented his status as a superstar, but, sadly, he wasn’t around to enjoy it for himself.
Kendrick was hugely impressed by Biggie’s change of direction on Life After Death, compared to how he was on his debut album Ready to Die, released three years earlier. Biggie, with this second album, had moved away from a grittier, street-inspired sound with which he had made his name to instead embrace his role as a star. He opened his sound “up to the masses.”
“He started off with the streets,” Kendrick said, “and then brought it out with the next album, which was dope.” Kendrick, too, has been trying to strike that delicate balance throughout his own career. He is trying to push himself as an artist, continuing to make interesting, novel music, while, at the same time, appealing to the masses.
Biggie, although he wasn’t alive to enjoy the fruits of his labour, managed to do that on Life After Death. Kendrick admired him greatly for it.