The one Kendrick Lamar song Prince loved and nearly featured on
Kendrick Lamar has collaborated with some of the biggest stars of all time—leading to some great songs, and others that weren’t so good. But one collab that almost happened, and likely would have been great, was with Prince, who had initially been meant to appear on a track for To Pimp A Butterfly.
The song that Prince had been set to appear on was ‘Complexion (A Zulu Love),’ which deals with perceptions of beauty in a racist society. “The idea was to make a record that reflected all complexions of black women,” Kendrick explained in a conversation originally published by the Grammys website. “There’s a separation between the light and the dark skin because it’s just in our nature to do so, but we’re all black.”
The idea for the song occurred to Kendrick while he was travelling around South Africa, during which he “saw all these different colors speaking a beautiful language.” This was an idea that Rapsody, who really did feature on the song, really identified with, in light of her own visit to Africa.
“I went about a year before him,” Rapsody revealed during this same Grammys feature, “so I knew what that trip does to you, especially as a black person.”
As the song started to take shape, Kendrick immediately identified Rapsody as the right person to feature on it. “Immediately when I heard the beat I heard [Rapsody’s] voice and vocal tone,” he said. “But what made her special was that I knew that she was going to bring the content from a woman’s perspective about complexion, being insecure and at the same time having gratitude for your complexion.”
Rapsody knew exactly what Kendrick needed from her, and she understood his intentions for the song perfectly. But, as she revealed during this conversation, she was taken aback to learn that Kendrick had initially never intended to do a verse on the song himself. He’d wanted someone else to perform with Rapsody.
“What tripped me out is Kendrick originally said that he didn’t want to do a verse on there,” she said. “He wanted me to do two verses and Prince to do the hook.”
Kendrick backed up her claim. “That’s true,” he said. “Prince heard the record, loved the record and the concept of the record got us to talking. We got to a point where we were just talking in the studio and the more time that passed we realised we weren’t recording anything. We just ran out of time, it’s as simple as that.”
It’s a striking thought, to imagine that Prince came so close to performing on the song. As it happens, it exists only as an idea. The closest that people can get to hearing Kendrick and Prince work together is by digging out footage of a performance they did together in 2014.