Kendrick Lamar will always be synonymous with the rise of TDE. He was one of the first signees to Top Dawg Entertainment back in 2005 alongside Jay Rock. His manager Dave Free fixed Anthony “Top Dawg” Tiffith’s computer and slid him Lamar’s mixtape. Then, the Compton MC freestyled for the label exec. From there, the rest was history.
But did you know that Lamar also signed a deal with Jay-Z long before he was famous and collaborated with him in 2013? In 2007, he signed an artist development deal under Def Jam while Hov was president and CEO. Kendrick Lamar was only 17 years old, and the nerves clearly got to him upon first meeting Jay-Z. It wasn’t long until he was let go in the end.
But he didn’t take the experience personally. Instead, he just looked at it as a learning experience, knowing he wasn’t ready for those heights. “I don’t think even Jay remember that,” he told MTV (via HipHopDX).
Kendrick Lamar Bombed His First-Ever Meeting With Jay-Z
“And I remember coming out here for a meeting and I was too excited man. And all I remember was Jay walking in the room, ‘Yo, what’s up?’ And walked back to the elevator and we was like ‘Damn, that’s Jay.’ So he doubles back, goes back to his office next door and he’s playing my music. Put me in the studio and that was just one of those situations where I wasn’t ready,” Lamar continued.
Clearly, it all worked out in the end for Kendrick Lamar. He eventually worked with Jay-Z personally on the “B***h Don’t Kill My Vibe” remix in 2013. Moreover, Hov personally commissioned Lamar to perform at the Super Bowl Halftime Show after his beef with Drake.
As much as he cosigned Lamar though, he didn’t exactly agree with how the ugly feud turned out. He told GQ that, once the kids were brought into the fold, matters went way too far, even for his tastes.
“It’s too far. It’s bringing people’s kids in it. I don’t like that,” Jay-Z said of the Drake and Kendrick Lamar beef. “I sound like the old guy wagging his finger, but I think we can achieve the same thing, as far as sparring with music, with collaborations more so than breaking the whole thing apart. It could stand it before because there was no social media. You had the battle and it was fun and then you moved on. Right now, I don’t know if it could stand it with the technology that we have.”
(Photo by Johnny Nunez/Getty Images for The Recording Academy)
The post Kendrick Lamar Once Recalled How Jay-Z Signed Him to Def Jam Long Before His Breakthrough: ‘I Wasn’t Ready’ appeared first on VICE.
