The Kendrick Lamar song all about self-love: “It comes from a place of depression”
If there’s one thing about Kendrick Lamar, it’s that he always has a message in his songs. The Compton rapper released one of his career’s best albums in 2015 with To Pimp a Butterfly, a masterpiece in the realm of jazz rap, G-funk and neo-soul.
The project features two songs called ‘u’ and ‘i’, which couldn’t be more opposite from one another. While ‘u’ details negative thoughts in his mind, calling himself “a fucking failure,” the latter track, ‘i’, is all about self-love. Kendrick told Hot 97 it was the best song he’s ever written because he never thought he’d be in a positive enough mindset after growing up in Compton.
He explained to Power 106 Los Angeles, “It’s about self-love [which] comes from within. A lot of cats that go to jail, be in these homes, or in foster homes they grew up in from these hoods, they never had that love within themselves. They thinking they get it from their parents or their mothers or big homies or grandmas, but it starts with themselves and that’s why we carry ourselves the way we do.”
Released as a single in 2014, ‘i’ won ‘Best Rap Song’ and ‘Best Rap Performance’ at the 2015 Grammy Awards. The track came about after Kendrick woke up one day feeling guilty, angry and regretful.
“As a kid from Compton, you can get all the success in the world and still question your worth,” he said to Rolling Stone. “My partner Jason Estrada told me, ‘If you don’t attack it, it will attack you.’ If you sit around moping, feeling sad and stagnant, it’s gonna eat you alive. I had to make that record. It’s a reminder. It makes me feel good.”
Kendrick spoke more about how a low mental state inspired such a positive song. “The record feels great; it feels good. But it comes from a place of depression. It comes from a place of insecurity. Not only for [other people], but for myself,” he told 93.7 The Beat. “It’s a lot of things that I deal with personally. That you deal with, that everyone in this room deals with.”
He continued, “So, it touches on so many different things, as far as equality within us as human beings, and accepting one another. People that wanna commit suicide; people that just don’t respect themselves or like the way they look, feel, talk, dress, and not accept who they are. We all put on this world to be kings, and walk in his image, and that’s how it starts – that song.”
The lyrics in the chorus, “I love myself,” were a self-conscious effort to make himself happier. “That’s a psychological trick I wanted to play on myself,” Kendrick explained to Billboard. “Now that I put this song in the atmosphere, what’s going to happen? I have to perform it every night for the next three years when we go on tour. Every time I’m in a weird mood or something goes on at home that I can’t handle, I’ve got to perform it anyway.”