On Monday (Oct. 21), Harper's BAZAAR unveiled their latest issue with Kendrick Lamar, who sat down with longtime collaborator SZA for a deep conversation. As writer Kaitlyn Greenidge revealed in the feature's introduction, the Compton emcee is the fifth man to appear solo on the cover of the long-running women's fashion magazine.
Near the beginning of the exchange, Lamar spoke to SZA about his spiritual practices. “Ain’t no bulls**t. Ain’t no cliché. But I literally talk to God. Like, it’s to a point where I’ll be starting to think I’m going crazy. But then He has to remind me, ‘No, this is really me,’” he explained to the SOS talent. “My early-morning practice is that I have to run. When I started running, that’s where I started to understand. There was this threshold of pain in the spirituality for me. I remember my shins was aching and I was like, I got one mile to go. Then I get whispers, and downloads, and start talking about s**t that I want to know about. Next thing, I’m three miles in, four miles in. I wake up and do that s**t every day.”
Lamar was also candid about his childhood, which he admitted was a difficult topic to discuss. “I hate going back to that. It’s traumatizing,” he expressed. “My pops, he was tough. He was militant. As far as every day, you are expected to go to work, take care of your family, [and] get back up to do it all over again. ‘Being a man’ type s**t, right? And he never showed no weakness. He never showed any emotion that could garner a one-up from the person sitting across from him. And I learned to experience that, not knowing I had them same traits, right?”
Notably, the former TDE artist said that he'd never done ayahuasca. It's a surprising revelation given that he advised Drake to try it out on the menacing diss “meet the grahams.” “Therapy's a lovely start, but I suggest some ayahuasca, strip the ego from the bottom,” Lamar rapped to the OVO boss on The Alchemist-produced offering.