Marianna “Rapsody” Evans says Kendrick Lamar’s honesty and emotion make him comparable to Lauryn Hill.
“I just think it’s the type of person he is and the type of music he makes,” Rapsody says in an XXL interview. “Musically he’s very honest. He’s not apologetic in what he does. You can see how much energy and time he’s put into his craft and perfecting it. And just the execution of it and the emotion, that really comes through in his music. Coupled with the honesty. People get attached to that. It’s not fake. It’s not fluff. It’s real. He’s the type of artist who gives me the type of feeling like when I first heard Lauryn Hill, [they have] that same energy and spirit about them. That’s what I would think it is.”
The North Carolina emcee featured on the track “Complexion (A Zulu Love)” from Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly.
“On a personal level, it just took me back,” Rapsody says. “Two things hit me right off bat. I thought about when I was younger and how I felt; in the Black community there is a such thing as colorism, like if you’re light-skinned you’re better and you’re dark-skinned you’re not. That’s a real conflict that lives. I suffered from that growing up when I was younger. My older sister tells me stories of things I used to say when I was way too young to remember.”
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Rapsody, part of 9th Wonder’s Jamla label, says working with Lamar helped her gain creative clarity.
“One thing I can say is, for me, it gave me more confirmation of, just do what feels right,” Rapsody says in the interview. “Don’t get caught up in what everyone else is doing, just tell your story and just make great music. But listening to this, it also made me want to push what I do to another level. So to me, To Pimp A Butterfly sounds like Section.80 but taken two, three, four, five different levels up and that’s what it inspires me to do. Just work harder, take yourself out of a box, don’t overthink it at all and just put your self in free states to reign. And wherever your emotion or wherever the music or wherever you’re feeling, wherever that takes you, just to go there unapologetically all the way. And you know, just gave me more confirmation to continue walking my path.”
For additional Kendrick Lamar coverage, watch the following DX Daily:
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