Kendrick Lamar

Compton

Kendrick Lamar Duckworth was born on 17 June 1987 and grew up in Compton, California. He started out rapping as K.Dot in high school, where a fellow student, Dave Free, became a friend and early collaborator. In 2005 he signed with Top Dawg Entertainment, joining Jay Rock as the label's first signings, and with Jay Rock, Ab-Soul and Schoolboy Q he formed the group Black Hippy.

After a run of mixtapes he retired the K.Dot name and released a self-titled EP in 2009, then the mixtape Overly Dedicated in September 2010. Dr. Dre saw the video for "Ignorance Is Bliss" on YouTube and reached out. Section.80 followed on 2 July 2011. It sold about 5,000 copies in its first week and debuted at number 113 on the Billboard 200. In 2012 he signed a joint deal with Aftermath and Interscope, with Top Dawg remaining his primary label.

A short film from Compton

good kid, m.A.A.d city came out on 22 October 2012 and carried the subtitle "a short film by Kendrick Lamar". It is a concept album about his adolescence in Compton, and the first thing he made for a major label. It was recorded at PatchWerk in Atlanta, Encore in Burbank, the TDE Red Room in Carson and a Los Angeles studio called At My Mama's Studio. The first song recorded was Compton, with Dr. Dre. Singles included Swimming Pools (Drank), which reached number 17 on the Hot 100, and the album track Money Trees.

It debuted at number two with 242,000 copies. In October 2022 it became the first hip-hop studio album to complete ten years on the Billboard 200. Pitchfork's Jayson Greene wrote that it ties rap thrills directly to a narrative, and called it partly a love letter to the grounding power of family.

To Pimp a Butterfly

To Pimp a Butterfly appeared on 15 March 2015, eight days before its scheduled date. A trip to South Africa, including a visit to Nelson Mandela's cell on Robben Island, led Lamar to scrap the material he had. The finished record drew on jazz, funk and soul, with Sounwave, Terrace Martin, Thundercat and Flying Lotus among the producers, and George Clinton, Snoop Dogg and Ronald Isley among the guests. It closes with Mortal Man, which ends in an imagined conversation with Tupac Shakur built from a 1994 radio interview.

It went to number one in the United States with 324,000 copies and in the UK. Alexis Petridis of the Guardian called it a challenging and dense listen. Alright was chanted at protests in 2015, and King Kunta finished second in the 2015 Triple J Hottest 100. At the 2016 Grammys the album won Best Rap Album. In March 2016 he released Untitled Unmastered, eight unfinished tracks from the same sessions, and it also went to number one.

Damn., Mr. Morale and since

DAMN. arrived on 14 April 2017. Its lead single Humble became his first number one as a lead artist, and the album opened with 603,000 units. Petridis described it as the work of a supremely confident artist at the top of his game. In February 2018 Lamar released Black Panther: The Album, which he curated and executive produced. On 16 April 2018 Damn. won the Pulitzer Prize for Music, the first time a musical work outside classical and jazz received the prize.

Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers followed on 13 May 2022 as an 18-song double album and his last project with Top Dawg and Aftermath. It opened at number one with 295,000 units and won Best Rap Album at the 65th Grammys. A tour that ran from July 2022 to March 2024 grossed $110.9 million, and he closed Glastonbury on 26 June 2022 as the first hip-hop artist to do so.

He surprise-released GNX on 22 November 2024 and headlined the Super Bowl LIX halftime show on 9 February 2025, which drew 133.5 million viewers.