Dave Free has offered insight into the inner workings of his partnership with Kendrick Lamar and the success of their pg.Lang imprint.
In a rare interview with Elephant, which went live on Thursday (July 11), the former Top Dawg Entertainment exec broke from what he calls the company’s “No Yapping” policy to share what he and K.Dot see as their creative agency’s vision.
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“We want to treat artists like they’re start-ups,” he told the outlet. “We want them to take ownership of their brand, which is really taking ownership of themselves. You always hear people talking about all these elements of the business that they don’t like, but it’s not like there are a lot of active participants putting their money where their mouth is. We were like, ‘Let’s not talk about what we want to see from the industry — let’s just do it.'”
Asked whether pg.Lang has a specific formula for success, the award-winning videographer and filmmaker replied with no hesitation.
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“Here’s the whole process,” he started. “Kendrick or I will dream something up, although the idea could come from staff members too, and we’ll come into the office, and we’ll figure out how to create a system around the idea to make it self-sufficient. We make sure it’s going to be impactful, influential, financially stable, it’s going to shake people up, and it’s going to tell a story.
“When it’s developed, we ask, ‘Does it move you?’ Eventually, after repeating that process enough times, we get to a place where we can’t poke any more holes. That’s what we call ‘break and repeat.’ Once there are no more holes to poke, I feel comfortable putting it into the universe. So that’s the process. We apply that to everything that we do.”
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Last summer, Kendrick Lamar credited Dave Free with stopping him from “going crazy” in the studio, saying he suffered from Pinky and the Brain syndrome and that Dave keeps him in check.
K. Dot and Nigerian singer Tems sat down for a conversation about music and creativity for Interview Magazine back in August 2023, and the latter asked the former who has helped keep him sane during some of his deep-dive studio sessions.
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“I’m the kind of person that if you leave me in the studio by myself for like two days, I turn into one of those mad scientists in a cartoon,” Tems said, to which Kendrick agreed.
“I’m the same way. I call it the Pinky and the Brain syndrome,” the Compton rapper replied. “You need at least one or two people that you really trust to be like, ‘You know what? You’re going crazy.’”
When asked who that person was for him, Kendrick quickly noted his manager and pgLang partner Dave Free, as well as his longtime producer Sounwave.
“I can relate to that, because my boy, Dave [Free] — my partner, actually — he started as one of my managers, but he was a creative also,” he continued. “Along with my producer Sounwave, I kind of lean on him to know if I’m going the right way.”
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Dave and Kung Fu Kenny have been thick as thieves for years, and music aside recently announced that their pgLang collective would be producing a live-action comedy film alongside South Park co-creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker for Paramount Pictures.
Written by Vernon Chatman, the movie is set to “depict the past and present coming to a head when a young Black man, who is interning as a slave re-enactor at a living history museum, discovers that his white girlfriend’s ancestors once owned his.
