Just hours after his Summer Jam performance, Kendrick Lamar stopped by High Tech High School in North Bergen, New Jersey, to give students the opportunity of a lifetime by hearing their poetry and freestyles.
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The Grammy-Award winner first learned about the high school after teacher Brian Mooney wrote a blog post indicating he used K.Dot’s lyrics from To Pimp A Butterfly to draw comparisons to Toni Morrison’s classic, The Bluest Eye. Morris then wrote a response blog post featuring poems from some of his first-year English students. Both posts went viral and caught the attention of the Compton kid, who asked his manager to set up a visit with Mooney and the students.
To say the kids were excited is an understatement.
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“I was intrigued that somebody other than myself can articulate and break down the concepts of To Pimp a Butterfly almost better than I can,” Lamar said about Mooney’s original blog post. “That let me know he’s a true lover of music.”
According to reports, there was an equal exchange of listening and learning, with K.Dot answering questions from students and asking a few himself. Lamar even admitted he was impressed and complimented the young scribes on their maturity and intellect.
“I didn’t think I made [To Pimp a Butterfly] for 16-year-olds,” Kendrick said. “I always get, like, my parents or an adult saying, ‘This is great, you have a message, you have themes, you have different genres of music.’ But to get a kid actually telling me this, it’s a different type of feeling, ’cause it lets me know that their thought process is just as advanced as mine, even if I’m 10, 15 years older.”
Dopeness all around.