Ab-Soul reacts to Kendrick Lamar leaving the TDE label.
Ab-Soul continues the promo run for his comeback album “HERBERT” as he sat down with XXL Magazine for a new interview. Among other things, the rapper was asked about the time when Kendrick Lamar announced that his “Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers” will be his final album through the TDE label.
“Well, you know, I always romanticized the idea of us staying together forever,” he said on how Kendrick Lamar leaving the label impacted his course. “And I say this as Kendrick obviously being my brother, you know? I like how he put it. There’s beauty in completion. And you know, I feel like he reached his space where he felt like he needed to embark on something else. I support him in whatever. He’s incredible. He’s an incredible artist and I support it. I’m behind it 100 percent.”
“Did you guys have a conversation about him leaving or can you share any aspect of how that might’ve gone?” he was asked. “I feel like that kind of thing, it just kind of went unsaid just for the sake of making sure we remember the brotherhood first. That we’re brothers first and, you know? He’s still somebody that I can call on and vice versa. And that’s the most important thing versus us tryna get to the bottom of why he would start his own label or whatever have you. Our brotherhood is more important to me personally.”
The LA rapper also responded to question about if lyricism is a lost art. “A lost art? I won’t say that. Lost isn’t the word,” he said. “It’s still a lot of us getting down, getting busy in terms of lyricism in that respect. I’m just here to restore the feeling. To keep that, the hip-hop spirit. The essence of it. The root of it. I feel like that’s my, one of my purposes, for sure. To remember how it started. Hip-hop is amongst the youngest of genres. I feel an obligation to keep paying homage to the pioneers before me and keeping that vein of hip-hop.”
When questioned regarding the reason for the album’s initial planned release in 2020, which marked four years since his last release, the artist was asked what prompted his return to music. “OK, well, as you know, [Do What Thou Wilt,] it was a bit dark. It was a bit heavy, heavy on the ears. I felt, as well as my team felt, that maybe I should come back brighter, have some contrast. Maybe that might’ve been too much. You know, challenge yourself to create something that’s a little bit more easier to digest, if you will. So, I took like a year-and-a-half off to just reset. I didn’t write, I didn’t record. ”
Check out his full interview here.
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