Kendrick Lamar Covers the HARPER’S BAZAAR November 2024 ‘The Voices’ Issue

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Kendrick Lamar has consistently pushed the art of hip-hop to new heights. In advance of his Super Bowl performance, he gets personal with friend and fellow artist SZA.

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SZA: I want to ask you about your mental health. Do you feel like you suffer from mental illness or experience it ever? Or do you just feel like you’re in a multitude of feelings and you’re not putting a label on it?

KL: “I grew up with that term. I was hearing it when I was five, six years old.”

“My whole thing is, it’s all experience. I say some sh*t on a record and identify with a moment, and then I don’t identify with it anymore. That’s just growth for me. All that shit is subjective.”

SZA: Sidebar, what do you feel like your top three contributing factors to self-transformation in the last few years have been?

KL: “The power of honesty and being honest with myself, perspective about the person sitting across from me, and learning that vulnerability is not a weakness. That last one probably been one I’m still developing.

 We talk about our childhood. I hate going back to that. It’s traumatizing. My pops, he was tough. He was militant, as far as every day you are expected to go to work, take care of your family, get back up to do it all over again. Being-a-man type shit, right?

And he never showed no weakness. He never showed any emotion that could garner a one-up from the person sitting across from him. And I learned to experience that, not knowing I had them same traits, right?

But for what I do, there is certainly no growth without vulnerability. If I understood the power of vulnerability earlier, I could have had more depth and more reach to the guys that was around me in the neighborhood coming up.”

SZA: When was the last time you cried? When was the first time you cried?

KL: I would say the last time I cried was probably on Mr. Morale [2022’s Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers] on the “Mother I Sober” record. That shit was deep for me.

SZA: I cry all the time. I’m gonna cry right now because that is just beautiful. Wait, you didn’t tell me, what was the first time that you allowed it to happen?

 KL: “The first time I allowed it to happen is documented, actually, onstage [in 2011] when Dre and Snoop and the whole West Coast was out, and they was like, “This is the torch that we were handing off.” Dre passed me the torch, and a burst of energy just came out and I had to let it flow.

My tears is all on the internet. And now I look back and I love that moment. I love that that happened. Because it showed me in real time expressing myself and seeing all the work that I put forth actually come to life in that moment.”

SZA: What do you want for yourself now? What’s your driving force? Do you feel like you’ve done it all? Do you feel like now it’s all for the plot? Is the plot you? Is further self-discovery the plot? Is it domination?

KL: “It’s funny. I was asking myself that this morning. I get fulfilled sharing my experiences with the youth and allowing them to hear these stories and hear these experiences and catch up to them. So to actually answer your question, it’s communication just with people in general. And I feel my work in music is just the start.
I don’t think it’s my end goal. I know it’s not my end goal. Music is just a vessel to get me there.”

SZA: Can I ask you a hypermasculine question? You can also tell me to shut the f*ck up. What does “Not Like Us” mean to you?

KL: [Laughing] “Not like us? Not like us is the energy of who I am, the type of man I represent. Now, if you identify with the man that I represent…”

“This man has morals, he has values, he believes in something, he stands on something. He’s not pandering.

He’s a man who can recognize his mistakes and not be afraid to share the mistakes and can dig deep down into fear-based ideologies or experiences to be able to express them without feeling like he’s less of a man.

If I’m thinking of “Not Like Us,” I’m thinking of me and whoever identifies with that.”

SZA: So when you feel the surge of energy in records like that, where is that root? Is it anger?

KL: “But I do believe in love and war, and I believe they both need to exist. And my awareness of that allows me to react to things but not identify with them as who I am. Just allowing them to exist and allowing them to flow through me. That’s what I believe.”

Interview by: SZA
Introduction by: Kaitlyn Greenidge
Photography by: Quentin De Briey
Styling by: Carlos Nazario

[Photo Credit: Quentin De Briey for Harper’s Baazar Magazine]

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