14 DAY TRIAL // The latest issue of GQ Magazine, the one with Justin Timberlake on the cover, the Men of the Year issue, also brings an interview with hit rapper Kendrick Lamar, conducted by Steve Marsh. Marsh also spent some time with Kendrick and slips in commentary about his discipline, his background, and quite surprising lifestyle.
Lamar and his people, specifically the CEO of his label Top Dawg Entertainment Anthony Tiffith, found out that such commentary was borderline racist because it implied that rappers could only be a certain way, so he pulled out of the GQ Men of the Year party in protest.
The interview, available at the link in the first paragraph in full, dwells on how surprising it is to see that Lamar isn’t a womanizing gangsta who boasts of his conquests, his money, and his connections with the underworld but rather a consummate professional who works hard because he wants to prove to the world he’s the best.
Writer Marsh also talks about the violence in Compton, Kendrick’s hometown, with Tiffith telling TMZ that “Marsh focused on the wrong details, senselessly romanticizing a dark time in hip hop, when the article should have been a celebration of Kendrick's successes.”
It was Tiffith who decided Lamar should skip out on the party to boycott the magazine.
“To say he was ‘surprised at our discipline’ is completely disrespectful... Kendrick deserved to be accurately documented. The racial overtones immediately reminded everyone of a time in hip-hop that was destroyed by violence, resulting in the loss of two of our biggest stars [Tupac and B.I.G.]. As a result of this misrepresentation, I pulled Kendrick from his performance at GQ's annual Man Of The Year party,” the label CEO explains to the same media outlet.
He says the GQ piece was riddled with “lazy comparisons and offensive suggestions” that they have no intention of tolerating, but he doesn’t specify whether they’re expecting an apology or a retraction.