Kendrick Lamar Baby Keem
Kendrick Lamar & Baby Keem

Kendrick Lamar has been off the scene crafting and creating his pgLang company which he started some months back with Dave Free and promising artist, Baby Keem as the first signee.

The two are on the cover of i-D magazine for it’s 40th anniversary where they talk new music, PgLang, Keem’s music history and growth and more.

Kendrick: When did you find your love for music?
Keem: I always loved music growing up but I wasn’t really searching for music myself until I was about nine or ten, when I got a computer and the internet started being easy to access. This is 2009/2010. Kanye, Wayne, Eminem, I remember I liked Rihanna.

Bitch, I was hot too! (laughs)
I didn’t know about you till the end of 2010. I didn’t know I wanted to make music till I was thirteen but it wasn’t, ‘Ah, I got it’. I just knew I was gonna try it cuz everybody else tried it. My whole thing was to wait until my voice got deeper because I was a little kid.

So what’s the process? You get your own mic, your own setup?
When I really started I was thirteen and I had Apple studio shit on my computer. I had borrowed $300 from my grandma and I got my stuff on Craigslist. I was probably 15. I got a mic for $50, it was shit but it worked. So I just started learning on that. I made it work.

Kendrick Lamar & Baby Keem
Kendrick Lamar & Baby Keem

Kendrick: What stands out is the fact you started at 13, y’know what I’m saying? I started recording at 16. So you got even more of a head start. But the fact that you went out your way at that age, that’s already an advantage that some older guys don’t have, their first time getting in the studios is in their twenties. So they got to catch up.

Keem: I was in my room for so long in a makeshift setup. I was just learning what mics I liked and now I know I’ve got to stop being stubborn towards mics. If I tried it when my voice was different a year ago, I have to try it now. I’m obviously evolving. Projects like Die for my Bitch officially solidified my room to me because obviously my room is my room, but to somebody else it’s not looked at like a studio, right?

Read the full interview here.

“pgLang is multilingual. Our community speaks music, film, television, art, books, and podcasts — because sometimes we have to use different languages to get the point of our stories across. Stories that speak to many nations, many races, and many ages. That is why our writers, singers, directors, musicians, and producers break formats when we build ideas and make them real for the curious.

Putting round pegs through square holes is not a process, but we embrace the idea of anarchy and challenges that make us stronger. pgLang is focused on using our experiences, and nurturing our many collaborators, to build stories that are equally accessible and engaging then fitting them within the best media.”