harpersbazaar.com/culture/art-books-music/a62568151/kendrick-lamar-sza-interview-2024

Album season approaching

Hell yeah

this nigga aura be killin me bro

It’s time to watch the party die folks!

Crazy how this didn’t get auto moved to politics

interesting, are they doing the Interview Mag thing or have they always had artist on artist interviews?

anyway, reading

edit: nvm first line gives me the answer lol

For this issue, only the fifth time this magazine has put a man alone on the cover, Lamar wanted SZA to interview him. It’s a move that makes sense when, later on, Lamar explains that he processes information best through connections with others.

in

S: Can I ask you a hypermasculine question? You can also tell me to shut the f*** 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 …

S: Break the man down for me.

KL: 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: We shot a movie last night. I’ve never shot a movie before, so I was freaking out. It’s a lot of being scared to be myself. I’m either gonna pretend it never happened or not show up to the premiere.

I met Katt Williams on set. He told me I was mentally ill, like, as a compliment. He was like, “Sa, I believe you might have some mental—”

And I was like, “Illness?”

And he was like, “Yes.” He said, “Oh, welcome.”

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?

KENDRICK LAMAR: I grew up with that term. I was hearing it when I was five, six years old.

S: So you identify with it but not as it.

KL: My whole thing is, it’s all experience. I say some s*** 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 s*** is subjective.

S: It’s giving self-therapy.

KL: I think it’s going back to my inner child, right? I was trying to understand myself, trying to find people I could relate to. How to identify myself outside myself. It sounds crazy to a lot of people. I really can see myself out of my body. When I do that, I have no judgment toward it. It’s too many eyes on me to not remove myself. That s*** is scary to anybody else.

S: Are you scared?

KL: No, because I’ve learned that I can’t identify with my performances onstage. I can’t hold my true whole identity to that person who’s onstage. Because if I did, that means I will judge every movement every time I f*** up a lyric, every time I’m off-key. … It’s too much to deal with. So I have to have a distance between the performer and the person I close my eyes and look at the ceiling with. I had to develop that tough skin at like 16, 17 years old, not knowing it was not only for my career but for myself. It’s mentally ill for sure.

S: So have you and Cole spoke in the last few weeks/months?

KL: Nah. F*** that nigga to be honest. We been taking notes and we’ll say what needs to be said come album time

S: It’s very honest. Speaking of honesty and ego, have you done ayahuasca?

KL: I haven’t done it.

S: What? I wonder how you’re arriving at all of these conclusions. I want to talk to you about your spiritual practices. How many spiritual practices contribute to your day-to-day?

KL: All day, every day.

S: All day is ceremony?

KL: Ain’t no bullshit. Ain’t no cliché. But I literally talk to God. Like, it’s to a point where I’ll be starting to think I’m going crazy. But then He has to remind me, “No, this is really me.”

My early-morning practice is that I have to run. When I started running, that’s where I started to understand. There was this threshold of pain in the spirituality for me. I remember my shins was aching and I was like, I got one mile to go. Then I get whispers and downloads and start talking about s*** that I want to know about. And next thing I’m three miles in, four miles in. I wake up and do that s*** every day.

S: Loss of self … you have to break yourself.

KL: I have to.

S: I’m grateful for the God tea. 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.

Two of my fav artists. Love to see it

S: Which one is the hardest?

KL: The last one.

S: Why?

KL: 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 s***, 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.

You know, our parents, they never had these outlets to express themselves the way they wanted to. I’ve always looked at us as somewhat of a beacon of hope for them. I always wanted to know, how does your mom feel about your self-expression?

Print is still the worst medium

S: You know, my mom grew up dark-skinned in the ’50s. My mom integrated schools in St. Louis. She made herself smaller to be polite and nonproblematic Audrey. And growing up in the burbs where we were one of the few Black families, she kind of passed that to me. She’s developed this delightful energy that she really, truly does have. But also I feel like deep down, she really needs to beat some ass and she’ll feel better.

When she told me about how she spends so much time monitoring herself … people be like, “Oh yeah, we are our ancestors’ wildest dreams” when you talking about “It’s time to vote.”

But I’m my ancestors’ wildest dream because I can be a b**** and I’m okay with that. Because my mom wasn’t allowed to be a b**** in her space or in white spaces. And I feel like that’s my duty to literally get in here and be like, “I’m gonna do what I want.”

And I feel like my mom at first was really uncomfortable with me saying crass things and behaving in a certain way. And she was embarrassed, even though she was proud. And then something happened where it started to free her.

She started moving things around in the house, designing the house, and being free. She didn’t grow up with money or anything. So it’s so scary for her to think about renovating a crib or having something for herself. She never even imagined what her dream house could be. So it’s like it scared her. It f***ed her up. She was upset and embarrassed, but now she’s, like, freed-by-proxy type s***.

KL: You gave her that.

S: And she gave it to me. 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 s*** was deep for me.

S: Would you say you’ve done more crying recently than you have in your life?

KL: Now? Yeah, I have to.

S: It’s cleansing.

“I don’t BELIEVE I’m an ANGRY PERSON. But I DO believe in LOVE and WAR, and I believe they BOTH NEED to EXIST.”
KL: It might be easier for you, though.

S: 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.

S: That was emotional and pretty. 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.

S: Do you have an idea of what you’re supposed to do?

KL: I don’t. I’m curious, and that’s what keeps me energized.

S: Do you even have a desire specifically of what it should be, or are you gonna let God shape it for you?

KL: I’m gonna let God shape it. I love the mystery of it. I have to have it. I have to. The chase of it all. You know what I’m saying?

S: You’re so teachable.

KL: Laughing Shut up.

This fit is fckin INCREDIBLE!!!!!!!

omg, Solána.

bro different fr. talking to God n s***

Need that physical copy of this

S: You are. That’s what I feel like I suffer from. I’m not teachable for real. That’s my problem, because I always be like either in my fear or do some s***. I have a low pain tolerance but a high competition tolerance. I can’t explain it.

What is it that you want the most, if you want for anything?

KL: Information. I want it all. I want the resources. I wanna meet people smarter than me. I wanna talk to them. I want them to show me things. I just wanna be fulfilled with whatever this world has to offer. That s*** hypes me up. Information. I’m a motherfucking nerd for it. You is too.

S: I am.

KL: This s*** is a mystery, and I love it as a mystery. I love it. I love that the answers could be wrong or right.

S: You have such Father Time energy. It’s very universal-dad vibes. Actually, it’s more universal sensei. It’s almost gender ambiguous. It’s father and mother because you actually seem quite in tune with your feminine energy. Do you consider yourself in touch with your feminine side?

KL: I have to balance both. At first, all I knew was the masculinity, and I always kept that wall up because of my pops.

But the more I delve deeper into my music and the more expressive I get with myself … that is the feminine energy right there. That’s not the bravado that I grew up seeing all the time. This is who I am, the soft-spoken me, and I have to own it.

This is where my superpower lies. Because if my job is to communicate, I need to be able to communicate with everyone. I need to be able to sit in front of SZA and talk to you in a way where you feel comfortable, in a way where it feels authentic from me to you, you to me, and I can’t do that with a wall up. I can’t do that with my full masculinity.