Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.When he was eight years old, Kendrick Lamar had his first brush with rap royalty. Tupac Shakur and Dr Dre were shooting the \u201cCalifornia Love\u201d video in the Compton neighbourhood of Los Angeles, and Lamar\u2019s father took him to watch the action unfolding not far from their home. \u201cIt was like pandemonium\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009He put me on his shoulders, and there they was: Dr Dre and Tupac right there [with] a white Bentley,\u201d Lamar later recalled. Fifteen years later, Lamar had the chance to recount that story to Dre in a recording studio, a full-circle moment he\u00a0described as \u201cvery surreal\u201d. Yet he also believes that seeing the two rap legends in 1995 had led him to that studio. \u201cIt was already designed and destiny.\u201dToday, the 37-year-old Lamar stands without peer in the rap world. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his 2017 album DAMN., which the committee called\u00a0\u201ca virtuosic song collection unified by its vernacular authenticity and rhythmic dynamism\u201d.\u00a0Last week, he captured five Grammy awards for \u201cNot Like Us,\u201d\u00a0a \u201cdiss\u201d track that accused fellow rapper Drake of predatory behaviour towards young women and triggered legal action from Drake in response. And on Sunday he will perform at the Super Bowl, which is expected to draw an\u00a0audience of more than 100mn.\u00a0Onstage at the Grammys, after prevailing over stars including Beyonc\u00e9 and Taylor Swift, he declared: \u201cNothing more powerful than rap music. I don\u2019t care what it is. We are the culture\u201d.\u00a0Lamar says these accolades help him in his mission to prove rap is an art form. \u201cWhen people talk about rap, man, the conversations I hear, they think it\u2019s just rap and it\u2019s not an actual art form,\u201d he told\u00a0Apple Music this week. \u201c[People] kind of belittle it. So I love to see it get that kind of recognition.\u201d\u00a0Kendrick Lamar Duckworth was born in 1987, a moment when a distinctly West Coast brand of rap music was coming to life in Compton\u2019s roller rinks and house parties. A year and a half later, NWA\u2019s influential Straight Outta Compton brought Compton\u2019s gang violence and police brutality to life with tough beats, inventive sampling and lyrics that were violent, misogynistic and often wickedly funny.\u00a0Lamar\u2019s parents, Paula Oliver and Kenny Duckworth, moved to Compton in 1984 from Chicago\u2019s South Side. Kenny had been running with an infamous street gang, and Paula demanded that he stop. The family relied on food stamps and lived in subsidised housing. From an early age, Lamar witnessed gang wars and shootings. \u201cI would wake up one morning, and it would be cartoons and cereal and walking back from school. And at 4pm, we\u2019d be having a house party \u2019til 11pm\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009and people [were] shooting each other outside the door\u201d, he told Vanity Fair.\u00a0He fell in love with hop-hop at just four years old. As a teenager, an English teacher introduced him to poetry and encouraged him to pursue creative writing. Lamar began making music in the studio \u201cto do something other than being in the streets\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0In 2012 Dre signed him to Interscope, the outlaw record label that Jimmy Iovine and Ted Field built in the 1990s, home to Snoop Dogg and other California rap stars. With the release of good kid, m.A.A.d city, Lamar was transformed from an underground act to a major label artist capable of selling millions of albums. Today, he is widely regarded as one of the most significant rappers in the history of the genre, on a level with his childhood heroes.\u00a0Long before their beef, Drake and Lamar \u2014 the two biggest rappers this century \u2014 were occasional collaborators. While Drake helped make rap into the most popular genre in the US, Lamar cemented rap\u2019s position as a form of poetry. The two men are keenly aware of these stereotypes. Drake wrote in the diss track \u201cFamily Matters\u201d that Kendrick is \u201calways rappin\u2019 like you \u2019bout to get the slaves freed\u201d.\u00a0After releasing a couple of monster albums \u2014 including DAMN., which sold more than 600,000 copies in its first week \u2014 Lamar seemed to turn away from the spotlight. In 2022 he debuted an introspective concept album about therapy that made less of a commercial splash.\u00a0But last year, his feud with Drake catapulted him back into the forefront of pop culture. The two rappers spent last spring hurling increasingly personal insults. At the height of the frenzy, Lamar dropped four songs in the span of five days, culminating in \u201cNot Like Us\u201d, which was widely deemed as the knockout punch that defeated Drake in rap\u2019s civil war.\u00a0The song has become one of the biggest in Lamar\u2019s career. The audience at the Grammy\u2019s erupted when it won record of the year, singing along to one of the most lethal lines: \u201cTryna strike a chord and it\u2019s probably A Minor\u201d.\u00a0Off the back of that success, Lamar in November dropped his sixth album, GNX, named after the Buick muscle car that was released the year he was born. GNX is something of a victory lap, as well as a tribute to LA: its lyrics reference Compton, the I-10 freeway and film director Spike Lee.\u00a0\u00a0On Sunday, Lamar\u00a0will become the first solo rap artist to headline a Super Bowl show when he takes the stage at the Superdome in New Orleans. He says he wants to bring his \u201cLA energy\u201d \u2014 a sense of \u201cbeing in the now and being just locked into how I feel\u201d. \u201cThis is me, this is Kendrick Lamar, 37 years old and I still feel like I\u2019m elevated\u201d.anna.nicolaou@ft.com, christopher.grimes@ft.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.When he was eight years old, Kendrick Lamar had his first brush with rap royalty. Tupac Shakur and Dr Dre were shooting the \u201cCalifornia Love\u201d video<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":197385,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-197384","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197384"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197384\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":197386,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197384\/revisions\/197386"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}