Kendrick Lamar was the big winner at this year’s Grammy Awards, taking home five gongs in all – but how much do you know about the rapper?
The Grammy Awards are one of the biggest nights in the music calendar, and to be nominated for an award is a huge honour – something many strive for years to achieve.
So to win five awards in one year is a massive deal – and that is just what Kendrick Lamar did earlier this week. He scooped the awards for Record of the Year for Luther (with SZA), Best melodic rap performance (again with SZA for Luther), best rap song for TV Off (featuring Lefty Gunplay), best rap album for GNX, and was one of the winners in the best rap performance category for Chains & Whips, alongside Clipse, Pusha T & Malice and Pharrell Williams.
These awards cemented Kendrick as one of the biggest rap artists on the planet currently, and increasingly one of the best of all time. But how much do you know about Kendrick Lamar? Here are some facts you might not know about him.
Lamar isn’t Kendrick’s surname
Kendrick is always known as Kendrick Lamar, but Lamar is his middle name. His given surname is Duckworth, but he chose not to use it professionally.
He was named after singer-songwriter Eddie Kendricks, who was in the Temptations.
He is engaged to his high school sweetheart
Kendrick has been together with his fiancée Whitney Alford since their high school days in the early noughties. While their engagement was announced in 2015, they haven’t got around to getting married yet.
However, the couple do have two children, a daughter born in 2019 and a son born in 2022.
His biggest influence is Tupac Shakur
Legendary rapper Tupac Shakur is credited by Kendrick as being his biggest influence. Indeed, one of Kendrick’s early childhood memories is watching with his father the music video for Tupac and Dr Dre’s hit song California Love being made at the Compton Swap Meet. In addition, Tupac’s 1996 album The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory influenced’s Kendrick’s artistic direction.
There have been plenty of other influences on Kendrick, including The Notorious BIG, Snoop Dogg, DMX, Mob Deep and more.
Kendrick was the first solo rapper to headline the Super Bowl half-time show
Last year’s Super Bowl show was headline making for many reasons. Kendrick was the headlines – the first solo rapper to have this honour – others have made appearances (including Kendrick himself) in the past but never as a sole headliner.
Kendrick’s show at Super Bowl LIX included his Drake diss track Not Like Us, and included appearances from Serena Williams and Samuel L Jackson as ‘Uncle Sam’. It has gone down as one of the performances with the most symbolism and sociopolitical commentary in the history of the event.
Kendrick had a Pulitzer Prize first
Kendrick has made a habit of making history during his career. One of the biggest was becoming the first hip-hop artist to with the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2018 for his album DAMN. This showed he wasn’t just a rapper, but an artist of meaning through his social and political commentary in his music.
Kendrick now holds a Grammys record
While Kendrick won five Grammys earlier in the week, they were by no means his first: he now has 27 of them in all.
Those five also means he has taken a record – he is now the rapper with the most Grammy wins in their career. He is now two ahead of Jay-Z in second place, three ahead of Kanye West and 12 ahead of Eminem.
Those wins put Kendrick equal fifth on the all-time list of Grammy winners, alongside Alison Krauss and John Williams. He is one behind legendary producer Quincy Jones, two behind Chick Corea and four behind Sir George Solti. However, he is eight behind the record holder, Beyonce.
