This is total conjecture, but I seriously think Kendrick has some inner turmoil specifically on a certain topic that's not addressed as much.

I didn't mean for the title to seem like a clickbait thing, I just didn't want it to be some ridiculously long title. The topic is drug use.

Kendrick rose to fame, in part, on being a positive role model for youth in terms of staying away from drugs. His breakout album was very interlaced with this idea, and he got rewarded for it by local and nation groups. Awards. Press. All these things.

But here's the thing. Kendrick does do drugs. And I feel like if I was in his position, it would be something I would want to clarify, but wouldn't really elaborate on because of how it would affect others. He wants kids to think he doesn't do drugs. He doesn't want to encourage it, obviously.

But the fact is, he does. He just doesn't smoke weed. Kendrick very specifically even says this in this interview, timestamped at 3:38. If you watch that, you know in no uncertain terms that he does stuff from time to time, just not weed. And his lyrics about painkillers and amphetamine are obviously signs too.

I mean you don't write TPAB and not do drugs. It doesn't happen. It's possible in the sense that anything is possible. But no epic in modern music history was made without some good old recreation. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that he takes amphetamines from time to time given his style, approach, and level of detail in his rhymes. Amphetamines often do that, making you create this elaborate worlds.

As someone that's been through the drug life and someone who writes, I can very clearly see what he's saying about weed too. I can't smoke for the life of me. I literally think I'm dying. I can handle my self better on LSD than I can on pot, as weird as that may sound. Like it's infinitely easier to go about my day on LSD than smoking weed. Pot feels like it's PCP to me or something. And that leads into another point.

When weed does this to you or makes you have panic attacks every time, t's often a sign that you have an underlying issue like an anxiety disorder, which is exactly what my case was. And using other drugs, I realize that I was mainly just using to cure the anxiety.

He reminds me a lot about Bob Dylan in the sense of his career and how he always goes left when others go right and doesn't do what's expected of me. Kendrick's a genius, in my book. Just the same as Dylan. There's often very similar signs throughout music history of people that reach this special songwriting level that's just above everyone. Okay, I'm ranting now. Sorry, it's early/late for me.

Anyway, I think Kendrick might have some conflict over it in his mind of something. Just the same way Dylan hated being the "voice of a generation" because he did two or three years of folk acoustic songs, while most of his career was absolutely nothing like that (Also here is a video of what Dylan is actually most notorious for in the minds of his fans. Not the protest music. It's when he rejected it, got booed, went electric, and wrote very elaborate surrealist music. This song isn't half as elaborate of his others at the time, but it shows the booing, etc). I think Kendrick will probably never reject being a positive role model even if it might make him feel mildly hypocritical, because it's good to tell kids they don't need drugs to be successful. Because those kids aren't going to be the next Kendrick, more than likely. He doesn't want them stuck in the loop.

It's just an interesting topic to me, because I still see people saying "look Kendrick doesn't do drugs" when the unfortunate thing is... most truly innovate music was made by drug users. It's just an unfortunate but realistic fact. From the 60s to now, drugs are a staple of music creation, as they put you in different mindsets and they also help churn out ideas, depending on the substance. Of course many start taking hard drugs and going to far where its the exact opposite and does nothing to help them.

TL;DR - Kendrick has publicly said he does subtances, just not weed, and he was only saying those things because it was popular to at the time of his rise. And I think he doesn't want to change that image for the sake of kids, so he doesn't reject it the same way others might reject their early career labels. And it seems like a hard conflict to deal with.