Kendrick Lamar is open to the idea of releasing an album where he doesn’t rap.
The Grammy-Award winning emcee recently had a conversation with producer Rick Rubin recorded by GQ magazine where he’d consider doing a different kind of project somewhere down the line. Kendrick told Rubin he considers himself “first and foremost a rapper” and went on to explain why he thinks he’s at the point in his career where he could release a project without any rapping. “I think I got the confidence for it. If I can master the idea and make the time to approach it the right way, I think I can push it out,” he said.
Lamar certainly isn’t the first rapper to consider releasing an experimental project with no rapping. Kanye West dropped his auto-tuned R&B inspired “808s and Heartbreak” in 2008 and achieved much success. The genre-bending project is said to have given birth to singing rappers like Drake and Future. Elsewhere in the GQ interview, Rubin calls Kendrick “a throwback to when lyrics mattered” and said today’s hip-hop is mostly about “vibe swag and personality, and less about words.” Kendrick credited Eminem as one of his greatest influences when it comes to being a lyricist. The “Marshal Mathers LP” blew Lamar away when it came out. “How’s his words cutting through the beat like that? What is he doing that I’m not doing, now that I’m into it?” said Kendrick to Rubin.
Source: complex.com
