News: Kendrick Lamar Talks Not Winning a Grammy in XXL Magazine
Kendrick Lamar is on the latest cover of XXL Magazine and inside the article, he talks about how he thought he would win a Grammy for his debut album G.O.O.D Kid, M.A.A.D. City. Take a look at what he had to say below.
‘I thought I was going to win Best Rap Album at the Grammys. I put a lot of work in on my album and the biggest thing for me is knowing that it was basically an underground album. It didn’t have big No. 1 records on it and there wasn’t really any commercial hits. It was great songs and I think the message behind it reached as many listeners and believers as a super mainstream album. So for me, when you’re saying, “rap,” that would be my definition of something that deserved an accolade. Yep.
I found out a lot about myself in these past two years. It’s scary. I know more about myself now than any other point of my life. I believe in this theory that when you get success and you get fame and money, it makes you be you times ten. I was a pretty shy and to myself type of person as a kid. And now 15 years later I’m in front of people every day, tens of thousands of people. So that makes me more of a recluse. That makes me not come outside of my world on the outskirts of L.A. and bounce around different places and things like that.
So you ask yourself in the midnight hour, “Who am I? Is this really what I’m supposed to be doing? How did I get here? Why am I doing this? What’s my responsibility?” It’s a real trippy thing, you feel me? And I think it’s something that nobody can understand; only an artist can. Things change for you with success when you get money. I noticed when people started treating me a little bit different, the people that I cared about the most, my close friends and family. The artist don’t necessarily change, it’s usually the people around them. Their expectations of you can sometimes be out of control. You can do one thing that can trigger something mentally in them that makes them think that you don’t care about them or you don’t fuck with them no more when that’s not the case. You’re just more focused on what you have to do because it’s bigger.’