The life lesson Kanye West taught Kendrick Lamar
(Credit: Hip Hop Hero)

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The life lesson Kanye West taught Kendrick Lamar

With his recent return on ‘Family Ties’ with Baby Keem and his album Mr Morales and The Big Steppers, Kendrick Lamar confirmed himself as a generational rapper. While others turn hip hop into a soap opera, Kendrick prefers to let his bars do his talking, and one person he shouted out on the track mentioned above is Kanye West.

The two rap icons have reportedly worked on over 40 songs together, while ‘No More Parties in LA’ is the only one that the public has ever heard. Since his adolescence, Kanye has been an inspiration to Lamar, and albums like The College Dropout undoubtedly played a pivotal part in soundtracking his teenage years.

While many will argue that Drake is the most important hip hop artist to have emerged over the last decade, Kendrick takes that crown for the purists. He may not have enjoyed a string of number-one singles like some of his peers, however, Kendrick makes up for that in bucketloads of credibility. His consistency is unparalleled, and the Compton artist even has a Pulitzer Prize to show for his work. Lamar is more than just a rapper, he boasts supreme social consciousness and has the capabilities to create utter wizardry with his pen.

Lamar has a list as long as his arm of influences, with Tupac and Dre the two names he holds in the highest esteem. However, in 2014, back before he’d reached his zenith and was still firmly on the rise, Kendrick opened up about the one poignant life lesson he learned from Ye.

West’s brave mind and ingenuity are what Lemar has attempted to replicate in his career, stating that Ye made him believe to “never to downplay your ideas”. Further adding, he “learned to always stay as creative as possible and never have any boundaries”.

He continued, “Those things that people called ‘rants’ on-stage are real conversations that we had behind closed doors, about business and how when you get to a certain level, people won’t want to see you breakthrough because they only see you as a rapper.”

The uncompromising attitude that Kendrick adopted early on in his career has been a gift. The rapper has always believed in his ideas and instilled a belief that he can successfully mine gold out of anything he puts his mind to. 

So far, he’s used his confidence and imitable skill to gleam dazzling results from everything he’s touched. Well, apart from that Taylor Swift collaboration, it’s probably worth erasing that one from our collective memories.