“See, this weight is on my shoulders, pray Jehovah lift me up And my pain is never over, pills and potions fix me up I just want to live it up, can a motherfucker breathe? Life ain't always what it seems, so please just lift me up Lift me up, lift me up, lift me up, lift me up, lift me up”— Vince Staples, open.spotify.com
“All I have in life is my new appetite for failure And I got hunger pain that grow insane”— Kendrick Lamar, open.spotify.com
“Somethin's in the water And if I gotta brown nose for some gold Then I'd rather be a bum than a motherfuckin' baller”— Kendrick Lamar, open.spotify.com
“This is truly a blessing from a higher power, and as long as I understand that, there's really no limitations to what I can do.”— Kendrick Lamar, complex.com
“Artists just get paranoid in any situation and circumstance. I’m always paranoid. I’m already a person who thinks a lot; sometimes I may overthink things or think too much. So when you’re put into a space where you feel like you can’t necessarily trust your close ones, that can do some whole other c…”— Kendrick Lamar, xxlmag.com
“When I'm in the studio I'm looking for a feeling I haven't felt. It's a high.”— Kendrick Lamar, complex.com
“Hip-hop is not the problem. Our reality is the problem of the situation. This is our music. This is us expressing ourselves.”— Kendrick Lamar, tmz.com
“Music moves with the times. It’s not something we have to consciously do. This is what’s happening in the world — not only to me but to my community. Whenever I make music, it reflects where I’m at mentally. And this is where we’re at. When you look at other artists doing the same thing, it’s of the…”— Kendrick Lamar, nytimes.com
“This album did what I wanted it to do...That’s not necessarily to sell tons of records — though it didn’t do bad at that either — but to actually have an impact on the people and on the culture of music.”— Kendrick Lamar, nytimes.com
“Some people use drugs, or violence, or whatever your vice may be, and you have creative people that may use music or maybe use style in expressing themselves—whether they are angry or happy, or sad.”— Kendrick Lamar, thecoveteur.com
“I'd like to start it out from the bottom and build with ya Be on my last dollar and split the bill with ya”— Kendrick Lamar, open.spotify.com
“Cocaine laced in marijuana And they wonder why I rarely smoke now Imagine if your first blunt had you foaming at the mouth I was straight tweaking”— Kendrick Lamar, open.spotify.com