Kendrick Lamar’s Juneteenth Pop Out concert proved to be a uniting moment for Los Angeles. The Grammy-winning rapper even added a little hint of hoop culture in his concert, calling on stage LA locals, Russell Westbrook and DeMar DeRozan. LeBron James was in attendance too. The West Coast rapper took advantage of the moment and paid tribute to the late great Kobe Bryant, even shouting out Nipsey Hussle in the same breath.
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“This s*t making me emotional,” Kendrick Lamar remarked after finishing his opening set. “We have been f*ed up since Nipsey died. We’ve been f*ed up since Kobe died. This is unity at its finest. We done lost a lot of homies to this music st, to this street st. For all of us to be together on stage, that s*t is special. Everybody on this stage got fallen soldiers.”
These statements from Lamar seem to fall in line with the rapper’s previous comments on gang violence and oppression within the black community. During his monologue, K-Dot highlighted that the City of Los Angeles has been hurting, more so since the death of Bryant, and West Coast legend Nipsey Hussle. Similar to Lamar, Hustle was a part of the conscious rap movement and talked heavily about de-escalating violence in black neighborhoods and taking pride in Black culture.
Kobe’s former Laker teammate Shaquille O’Neal saw the moment fitting to pay tribute to his fallen friend, as he shared a video of Lamar name-dropping Kobe and Hustle during his “Pop-Out” concert, on his Instagram story.
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A rapper himself, O’Neal seems to feel heavy about the moment, and rightfully so. While Kobe’s relationship with Shaq is well documented, it’s also important to remember that O’Neal is also a platinum-selling hip-hop artist who has featured with a lot of East Coast and West Coast rappers. Thus, the Big Fella took heed of the moment and paid his tributes. But Lamar shouting out Kobe is more personal than most think, as the duo were close in real life.
Kobe saw a lot of himself in Kendrick, and K-Dot admits to being a “fan”
Back in 2017, Kobe Bryant and Kendrick Lamar linked up in Los Angeles for an interview with Complex. The sit down gave people a deep insight into the two minds that had achieved the highest level of skill in their respective domains. At the time of the interview, Lamar had just dropped his platinum-selling album “DAMN” and Bryant had just debuted his Grammy-winning short film “Dear Basketball”.
During the sit down the host from Complex asked a now-retired Bryant if Kendrick’s persona and approach to the game of rap reminded him of any basketball players. Instantly replying to the question, Bryant said,
“Yeah, it was me. No, listen, It’s the same hunger. When you step out there on the court, we’re taking heads off.”
The fellow Nike athletes did have a lot in common and K-Dot’s just reminded everyone in the rap game, that similar to Kobe, he is the game’s boogie man, and is liable to go off, whenever he wants.
