When Kendrick Lamar was a child, the rapper saw Tupac and Dr. Dre filming a music video in his neighborhood. This sighting, matched with the frequent Tupac listening thanks to his family members, impacted Lamar, he says.
“Huge Tupac fan forever,” Lamar says in an interview with BET for the network’s The Message. “‘Pac? Energy, aggression, emotion, something I gotta dig deep and think about all my woes in my life.”
When he saw Dre and Tupac in Compton, Lamar says Dre was driving a Bentley and Pac was in the passenger seat. Lamar says a police officer on motorcycle stopped by and nearly hit the vehicle. He says he’ll never forget watching Tupac Shakur yell at the police officer for nearly damaging the car. He says he remembers Tupac saying, “Yo, what is you doing? This is a $100,000 car. You in front of my people.”
Beyond this, Lamar says that seeing Dre and ‘Pac in his community let him know that “anything is possible.”
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“I hope I inspire the next kid,” Lamar says.
“It was almost live because he was shooting a video on Rosecrans in Compton with [Dr.] Dre for the original ‘California Love’ video,” Kendrick said. “I actually got to see him perform just a little bit before they shut that shit down…before it got too crazy.”
More from the clip, which is a part of BET’s The Message, is below.
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