Kendrick Lamar’s “I” has garnered a significant amount of praise from fans and critics for its positive “I love myself” refrain, and the Compton, California, rapper spoke about the single during an appearance on 93.7 The Beat. Lamar told host Devi Dev that “I” is about positivity,but it was inspired by darkness and sadness.
“The record feels great and feels good, but it comes from a place of depression,” Kendrick told Dev. “It comes from a place of insecurity. Not only from them, but from myself. It’s a lot of things that I deal with personally that you deal with, that all of us in this room deal with. So, it touched on so many different things. As far as equality within us as human beings and accepting one another … It comes [to] a lot of turmoil when you talk about money, when you talk about fame and fortune and success. A lot of things you gotta handle and balance and that brings a whole lot of depression. I’ve spoken with artists that’s done it before me. They said they went through the same phases too.”
Lamar also talked about his upcoming appearance on “Saturday Night Live” and he shared his idea for a sketch.
“I wanna do skits out of the norm,” Kendrick said. “Something that contrasts. I always talked about — but recently we started talking about how it never was any white people in the city, in my schooling; from the Compton school district. I would like to do something where I can contrast that and bring it all the way back and put me in the class where it’s different types of ethnicities other than the minority. I wonder how would I function in that type of environment? I think that’d be fun.”
