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Traumatic upbringing of Kendrick Lamar following horrific experience aged five
Feb 10, 2025
This year's Super Bowl halftime headliner had a seriously tough upbringing
It wasn't easy growing up as Kendrick Lamar.
The Super Bowl LIX headliner, who will grace the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans on Sunday (9 February), had a particularly tough childhood.
He was born as Kendrick Lamar Duckworth in Compton, California, a city renowned for pioneering music, but also being home to gang violence.
Surrounded by poverty and crime, the then-five-year-old witnessed his first murder.
"It was outside my apartment unit," he told NPR.
"A guy was out there serving his narcotics and somebody rolled up with a shotgun and blew his chest out."
"Admittedly, it done something to me right then and there," Kendrick said in 2015.
"It let me know that this is not only something that I'm looking at, but it's something that maybe I have to get used to — you dig what I'm saying?"
His parents, originally from Chicago, moved to Compton when they were teenagers because of the father Kenneth 'Kenny' Duckworth's former gang affiliation with the 'Gangster Disciples'.
Paula Oliver, his mother, worked as a hairdresser, and the family largely relied on welfare and food stamps.
The Pulitzer Prize winner, who also experienced homelessness, said: "You grow up inside these neighbourhoods and these communities, and you have friends, friends that you love, friends that you grew up with since elementary.
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