Kendrick Lamar On Embracing Vulnerability, Self-Transformation & Feminine Energy

Kendrick on his spiritual practices:

"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 shit that I want to know about. And next thing I’m three miles in, four miles in. I wake up and do that shit every day."

Kendrick on his top three keys to self-transformation:

"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."

Kendrick on vulnerability and childhood 

"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.

"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]."

Kendrick on balancing his masculine and feminine energy:

"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."

Kendrick on anger:

"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. 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."

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