The biggest disappointment of Kendrick Lamar’s career
Kendrick Lamar has established a career of control, through mastery of narrative, image and of craft. Album releases come with purpose, tours are planned, and interviews are hard to come by. His ascendancy appears smooth on the surface: critical reception, market performance, cultural dominion. However, when Kendrick talks of disappointment, he does not refer to charts, trophies, and rivalries.
He points inward.
In a broad interview with Rick Rubin, Kendrick confessed that the greatest disappointment of his career is not about music itself. It is the things he has missed in pursuit of it. Birthdays. Family gatherings. Normal time that is not featured in the news but cannot be substituted. To one whose labour is maniacal in the memory, in consequence and personal cost, this confession sinks deeply.
The profession of Kendrick Lamar is not one you can simply ‘clock out’ from. Studios run late. Tours are international. Promotion spills over into writing which spills over into recording. The pressure is continuous, and the more the platform, the less space there is to vanish. Kendrick is not unwilling to admit that this pace entails sacrifice, and that sacrifice has been his lot ever since the beginning.
He explains that he is aware of these losses, and yet he cannot do anything to stop them. That knowledge, he says, was a source of stress and not acceptance. It is not just that he missed moments, but that he could not even find the balance during the acknowledgement of the harm. This is a confession of an artist that is seldom put in a disciplined and deliberate way. In this case, there are boundaries to the discipline.
What complicates the pain is the silence surrounding it. Kendrick clarifies that his family and intimate circle are supportive, but not unharmed. They know what his profession demands, yet still feel his absence. In many cases, they do not want to express that disappointment. Not that it is not real, but because they do not wish to press him still more.
That silence cuts both ways. Kendrick confesses that he even forgets how much he means to the people he grew up with. Fame narrows perspective. The world takes over, and personal relations may be pushed aside without any intention or even ill will. That is a hard pill to swallow when one is an artist whose work always challenges accountability.
The difference between his career achievement and personal remorse is drastic. Kendrick is a multi-decorated artist of his generation. Multiple Grammy wins. A Pulitzer Prize. Record-breaking tours. Albums that redefine hip hop language. But there is no way to make up for lost time. There is no award that can be used to replace absence. The disappointment lies just in the fact that the success is so absolute.
This has always been a tension existing within Kendrick’s music. His albums go back and forth to issues of accountability, heritage and self-value – regardless of success. The thing this confession makes us realise is that those are not abstract questions. They are living. The very same ambition which is the driving force behind his art is the same one that puts a strain on his personal life. The very attention that makes a great one, puts a distance.
That sincerity re-invents his career. Kendrick Lamar has been perceived as an untouchable performer who is working at an unprecedented level. His own words destroy that myth. Even success on the highest level takes its toll. Public failures are not the most painful debts, but the absence of a kind of debt in particular. After all, the greatest disappointment of Kendrick’s career is not that he was not able to accomplish something, but that he was not able to be there. It is a lesson that even greatness does not spare a person from loss. It merely alters its point.