When Kendrick Lamar dropped his new single “i” Tuesday, he stopped by Los Angeles rap station Power 106 that same day to help spread the word via Big Boy’s Neighborhood and wound up delivering some extra freestyle verses for the radio audience.
Seen above, the roughly eight-minute rap ranges from deep introspection to bombastic boasting delivered, as Consequence of Sound reports, over a mix of beats including Jay Z’s “Who You Wit” and James Brown’s “The Boss.” K-Dot smiled through the entire thing.
But the session didn’t end there, as Big Boy got on the mic to deliver his own version of Lamar’s origin story, hilariously taking credit for the Compton hero’s rise. In the accompanying interview, the two got into some key details of the former SPIN cover star‘s rise to stardom.
Lamar says he was shocked when Dr. Dre name dropped his name as the next rapper to inherit the throne. He was in the studio with his cell phone off and when he turned it on, he had about 100 messages waiting for him: “I was just in shock, man, because I was in the studio that moment with writers’ block. … Just sitting on the couch, I took a little nap.”
And with regard to the one-year anniversary of that “Control” verse, where he took all other rappers to school and sparked rumors of new rap rivalries, Lamar said his relationships with and J. Cole and Drake are in the “same place” they ever were.
“It’s all love,” he said. “From the moment I did the verse to after the verse. I think hip-hop is a sport, so you’re going to have these spits and spats. And it’s all good because personally I respect these dudes as people. Outside of that it’s really nothing.”
He continued on the subject, “I think what the media tried to do is insane because they took these black young brothers and try to make them bump and clash heads and that’s really not right. … Hip hop was really something that wasn’t supposed to be here this long and the more we do that, the more they try to tear it down.”
Watch that full interview here (via Hot New Hip Hop):
