Alex K. Logan

George Clinton speaks on Kendrick Lamar via the New York Times: "I’ll put it like this: He, along with Motown, Sly Stone, the Beatles — that kind of institution is going to last. There are a lot of slick writers out here nowadays with lyrics and things, but he writes with soul. He’s a young kid, but when I met him, he sounded my age. He’s like a psychiatrist on record — he talks about [expletive] that most people are afraid to talk about. He’s at that point where he can move the conversation. Nobody will talk about these topics, and he talks about them so matter-of-factly that you don’t even think, You can’t say that. Making it commercial is another thing. It’s one thing to be hard-core gangster rapping so you can say things. But when you’re talking about life in general and make it sound so hard, so cool — then watch the kids say, No, he ain’t all that, then turn around the next year and change their minds? Kids today, they want their new artist; they don’t want their older brother or sister’s artist or their mother and father’s. Kids don’t like you after a few years. When you can go past that and have the next generation after that still talking about you, you’re doing something. That whole “To Pimp a Butterfly” album, it was like one song to me. It was like Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On.” And he’s starting all over each time he puts an album out — he’s like a brand-new kid."