Kendrick Lamar on Making a Non-Rap Album: 'I Think I Got the Confidence for It'

Kendrick Lamar is one of the most prolific rappers of our time, but he may be planning to step away from the genre in the future. In a new, extra-long GQ Style magazine interview (print version readable here, 50-minute video above), Rick Rubin asks if K.Dot ever imagines making an album where he doesn't rap. Lamar's response? "Yeah, I think I got the confidence for it. If I can master the idea and make the time to approach it the right way, I think I can push it out."

If he does go that route, it wouldn't be a far stretch as Lamar has toyed with contemporary jazz sounds and vocal melodies on To Pimp a Butterfly. "It's a trip, because I was in the studio one day, and my guy Terrace Martin noticed something about the type of sounds that I was picking," he says about entering those other worlds. "He was like, 'Man, a lot of the chords that you pick are jazz-influenced. You don't understand: You a jazz musician by default.' And that just opened me up. And he just started breaking down everything, the science, going back to Miles, Herbie Hancock."