Despite containing several of the biggest hits of his career, Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN. is also filled with challenging beats that seem like they would make little sense for any other rapper to tackle. On one of the project’s biggest songs “DNA.,” the beat actually drops out halfway through, leaving Kendrick to black out over sparse percussion.
In a new cover story in Variety, Kendrick explained why he enjoys choosing such off-kilter beats and turning them into songs that can still sell in the mainstream:
I probably wouldn’t be doing music if I couldn’t find things to challenge me. So I have to find an off-beat pocket and learn how to rap off beat in a way so that when you play it back, it sounds on beat. I like little beats where the snare is a second to the left or a second to the right, like Mike Will does.
He went on to explain how his opinion about being involved with the production side of his music has changed. “In my early years, I was just all about the raps,” he said. “I didn’t care about nothing else. But when you get into the world of songwriting, and making material that’s universal, you gotta be hands on and know the different sounds and frequencies, what makes people move, what melodies stick with you, taking the higher octaves and the lower octaves and learning how to intertwine that in a certain frequency, how to manipulate sound to your advantage.”
Genius previously explored how Kendrick uses the pitch and intonation of his voice as a storytelling tool in his music:
Mike WiLL Made-It, who produced “DNA.,” revealed earlier this year that he built the beat on the second half of the song around Kendrick’s verse, which the Compton rapper recorded a cappella:
Elsewhere in the interview, Kendrick also discussed the success of his To Pimp A Butterfly song “Alright,” which became the unofficial anthem of the Black Lives Matter movement after its release. Although the song never made it higher than No. 81 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, the TDE rapper thinks it was “the biggest record in the world" because of its outsized impact. “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,“ he said.
Read Kendrick Lamar’s full Variety story here and catch up on all the lyrics to DAMN. on Genius now.
