Kendrick Lamar has weighed in on the moment in which he kicked a white fan offstage for rapping the N-word, and explained that, after all he's been told he couldn't do throughout his life as a black man, she should have let him "have this one word."
The Pulitzer Prize-winning rapper made headlines in May after he invited the fan onstage to help him rap his track "m.A.A.d city" during a festival performance, only to boot her off stage after she repeatedly failed to censor herself while rapping the N-word.
"You gotta bleep one single word, though," he'd requested before ousting her.
Lamar, 31, broke down his reasoning in a recent interview with Vanity Fair.
"Let me put it to you in its simplest form. I've been on this earth for 30 years, and there's been so many things a Caucasian person said I couldn't do. Get good credit. Buy a house in an urban city. So many things _ 'You can't do that' _ whether it's from afar or close up," he said.
"So if I say this is my word, let me have this one word, please let me have that word."
The "Alright" rapper also expressed his shock at hearing he'd won a Pulitzer Prize in April, something he believes was long overdue for the hip hop world.
"It was one of those things I heard about in school but I never thought I'd be a part of it," he said. "I thought, to be recognized in an academic world ... whoa, this thing really can take me above and beyond. It's one of those things that should have happened with hip hop a long time ago. It took a long time for people to embrace us _ people outside of our community, our culture _ to see this not just as vocal lyrics, but to see that this is really pain, this is really hurt, this is really true stories of our lives on wax."
Lamar's fourth album, "Damn," won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Music, making it the first non-jazz or classical work to snag the coveted honor.
