Kendrick Lamar’s wordsmith journey to Super Bowl halftime headliner

Now might be a good time to check on Drake as Kendrick Lamar appears to have executed a checkmate-move in what has been an historic hip-hop feud between the two artists.

Now might be a good time to check on Drake as Kendrick Lamar appears to have executed a checkmate-move in what has been an historic hip-hop feud between the two artists. Here’s the backstory: the two battled back and forth earlier this year in a well-documented rap battle that Lamar is widely viewed to have won through his searing verses about Drake. The Canadian artist may have rapped that he was as “Big as the Super Bowl,” but it was the Compton-native Lamar who was announced as the headline act for the next Super Bowl. It’s just the latest historic achievement for the artist lovingly known as K.Dot. Three years before he was born Kendrick Lamar Duckworth, his parents Kenny Duckworth and Paula Oliver left Chicago for California in search of a better life. “They were going to go to San Bernardino,” Lamar told Rolling Stone magazine in 2015. “But my Auntie Tina was in Compton. She got ’em a hotel until they got on their feet, and my mom got a job at McDonald’s.” According to their son, the couple initially struggled to find their footing in Southern California, sleeping in motels, their car and sometimes a local park.