{"id":21826,"date":"2017-09-15T10:00:02","date_gmt":"2017-09-15T14:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ohsodj.com\/?p=21826"},"modified":"2017-09-15T08:20:07","modified_gmt":"2017-09-15T12:20:07","slug":"kendrick-lamar-and-anthony-top-dawg-tiffith-cover-billboard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ohsodj.com\/?p=21826","title":{"rendered":"Kendrick Lamar and Anthony ‘Top Dawg’ Tiffith Cover Billboard"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"What started out as a dream from a group of hungry men has evoled into one of the strongest forces in hip-hop. In the latest Billboard cover story, Kendrick Lamar and Anthony \u2018Top Dawg\u2019 Tiffith have a candid conversation of their journey to success. <\/p>\n

Read an excerpt below:<\/p>\n

Top, how did you encourage creativity in your artists early on?<\/strong>
\nAnthony Tiffith:<\/strong> Growing up in the era of the gangsta shit, a lot of my friends were getting killed, a lot of friends were in the pen, I got shot. When I got with the [TDE artists], it was up to me to show them something different — to lock them in my studio and make them build a bond as brothers, and struggle a little bit. I had the money to do whatever I wanted, but they weren\u2019t going to appreciate shit if I just handed it off to them. So they were rushing to McDonald\u2019s to look at what\u2019s on the dollar menu, or going to get a River Boat special from Louisiana Fried Chicken. But I was showing them family life because my family lives in this house, too.<\/div>\n

What made you trust these kids?<\/strong>
\nTiffith:<\/strong> Me being in the streets all my life, I judge people pretty good. Jay Rock is from my hood, Nickerson Gardens. I was chasing him around, and he hides, thinking I\u2019m trying to discipline him about some bullshit. I finally catch him while he was getting a haircut: \u201cYo, you rap. I\u2019m trying to do this shit. Let\u2019s go.\u201d Dave [Free] was a computer dude, he came to fuck with my computer and played [Lamar\u2019s] music.<\/p>\n

Top, who did you look to as an example once you found success?<\/strong>
\nTiffith:<\/strong> I learned from my uncle. When I got in the streets, he was always like, \u201cBe low-key. Don\u2019t be no loud n—a.\u201d And just watching, like, JAY-Z and Puff. I don\u2019t dance. I can\u2019t jump in no video.<\/p>\n

People have compared you to Suge Knight.<\/strong>
\nTiffith:<\/strong> Have you seen any of his qualities in me? You\u2019re not seeing me go crazy, beating on anybody, arrested every week. If they were talking about success, I would\u2019ve been cool with that because he had great success. But they judge us brothers like that. They put us all in the same box.<\/p>\n

Kendrick, how have your relationships with the other TDE artists changed?<\/strong>
\nLamar:<\/strong> Being a fan of groups and labels, you hear stories of motherfuckers fighting, this one jealous of the other. Those cats never had brotherhood from the jump. I still can look in [ScHoolboy] Q\u2019s eyes, and he can still look in my eyes, like, \u201cN—a, I know.\u201d Or Rock. I know what we did to get here. No matter how far we get, we\u2019ll always have that bond, period.<\/p>\n

READ THE FULL INTERVIEW HERE<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What started out as a dream from a group of hungry men has evoled into one of the strongest forces in hip-hop. In the latest Billboard cover story, Kendrick Lamar and Anthony \u2018Top Dawg\u2019 Tiffith […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21825,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7],"tags":[676,807],"class_list":["post-21826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","tag-kendrick-lamar","tag-matrix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7qLKy-5G2","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ohsodj.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/kendrick-lamar-top-dawg-full-ohsodj.jpg?fit=500%2C282&ssl=1","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ohsodj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ohsodj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ohsodj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ohsodj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ohsodj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21826"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ohsodj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21826\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21828,"href":"https:\/\/www.ohsodj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21826\/revisions\/21828"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ohsodj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ohsodj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ohsodj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ohsodj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}