Kendrick Lamar refused to attend GQ’s “Men of the Year” party on Tuesday night, despite the fact that the artist was being honored as the mag’s “Rapper of the Year.”
He pulled out of performing at the event at the last minute because he was upset with the way he was portrayed in the interview. In his GQ profile, the reporter says he’s surprised at Lamar and
his team’s “discipline,” writing, “Kendrick doesn’t smoke weed or drink booze. In the time I spent with him, I never witnessed anyone roll even the thinnest spider leg of a jay, nor did I see Kendrick so much as glance at the many, many girls around him.”
But the rapper and his label did not take this as a compliment. The CEO of Lamar’s Top Dawg Entertainment record label Anthony Tiffithtold TMZ, “To say he was ‘surprised at our discipline’ is completely disrespectful… Kendrick deserved to be accurately documented.”
Lamar and his team were also unhappy with the writer’s focus on the gang violence in the rapper’s hometown of Compton.Tiffith continued, “The racial overtones immediately reminded everyone of a time in hip-hop that was destroyed by violence, resulting in the loss of two of our biggest stars [Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G.]…
As a result of this misrepresentation, I pulled Kendrick from his performance at GQ’s annual Men Of The Year party.”“While we think it’s a tremendous honor to be named as one of the Men Of The Year, these lazy comparisons and offensive suggestions are something we won’t tolerate,” he added.
Now, GQ is responding to Tiffith’s comments.Editor-in-Chief Jim Nelson wrote in a statement on the mag’s website, “Kendrick Lamar is one of the most talented new musicians to arrive on the scene in years. That’s the reason we chose to celebrate him, wrote an incredibly positive article declaring him the next King of Rap, and gave him our highest honor: putting him on the cover of our Men of the Year issue. I’m not sure how you can spin that into a bad thing, and I encourage anyone interested to read the story and see for themselves.”Nelson added, “We were mystified and sorely disappointed by Top Dawg’s decision to pull him at the last minute from the performance he had promised to give.”
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