America Will Survive Once It Recognises The Position It’s In – Kendrick Lamar

Kendrick Lamar has appeared on the cover of Variety in a rare interview where he spoke about his latest record DAMN., Compton, and political complacency in the US.

Speaking on “Alright”, which became the unofficial anthem of the Black Lives Matter movement and is often played before and after shows by artists such as Anderson .Paak, Lamar suggested that the song was bigger than what chart data would suggest.

“What makes a hit record?” he said. “Because it has some kind of numbers behind it? Is it the amount of streams or the amount of sales or the amount of spins on the radio? Nobody can really justify which one it is, because I’ve heard hundreds of records from inside the neighbourhood that were quote-unquote ‘hit records’ and never stood a day outside the community.”

“You might not have heard it on the radio all day, but you’re seeing it in the streets, you’re seeing it on the news, and you’re seeing it in communities, and people felt it.”

“America will survive once it recognises the position it’s in, and the trials it’s facing,” he said. “Once people stop being nonchalant and recognise it, that’s when. When it’s not something that’s just swept under the rug because we’re the quote-unquote ‘greatest country in the world’.”

Lamar will embark on a massive UK and European tour in 2018 which will see him take in dates in Dublin, Glasgow, Manchester, London, Paris and Oslo.