The one time Kendrick Lamar rapped in Spanish
Kendrick Lamar is a uniquely talented rapper, capable of constructing verses that others could only ever dream of. But he was really showing off in 2013, when he featured on Schoolboy Q’s song ‘Collard Greens’ and, out of nowhere, started rhyming in a language that wasn’t even his own.
“Translation,” he raps on his verse, before breaking out into Spanish. “Ven aquí, mami, ese culo / Tú quieres coger mis huevos, y papi me molestes / Chuparse puto pendejo, el pinche cabrón.” Who knew he was capable of doing that?
Even the man whose song he was rapping on was taken aback when Kendrick first did that. As Schoolboy Q admitted in an interview with MTV around the time the song came out, he simply hadn’t expected Kendrick to rap in another language.
“I have no idea what he said,” Q said. “And I had no idea he was gonna do that.”
Schoolboy Q did go on to say that he could recall Kendrick chatting with a Spanish-speaker around the time he was putting his verse together. “I remember seeing him talking to a Spanish dude while he was writing it,” Q said, “and he came up with that and I was very upset because he killed it.”
That last comment speaks to the friendly competitive streak that existed between Kendrick and Schoolboy Q around this time. They were both signed to Top Dawg Entertainment, and, while they were supportive of one another’s projects, they did still want to outdo each other.
“It’s a healthy competition,” Q insisted in an interview with Complex in 2014, “but I feel like the media be making it out to be more than it is.”
While Q claimed during this same conversation that he was happy for Kendrick, who had really started to take off around this period, it must have been difficult to constantly have to speak about his peer in interviews, which, it seems, did happen a lot around this time. In that regard, it probably didn’t help matters that Kendrick’s rap in Spanish was, ultimately, the main takeaway from ‘Collard Greens.’ People were so impressed by it, to the extent that Kendrick became the main story.
Knedrick would again incorporate the Spanish language into his music on his GNX album, which opens with the mariachi vocalist Deyra Barrera singing in Spanish on ‘wacced out murals.’ Clearly K.Dot has an affinity for the language.