Kendrick Lamar sat down for a long interview with Howard Stern on Tuesday morning.
Apparently arriving after a long night making music, Kendrick said, "I was in the studio until about five this morning. There's no sleeping going around in here. I'm going to take a nap and get right back at it." When Stern asked who he was in the studio with, he said he was only joined by Sounwave and Dave Free.
Near the end of the interview (at the 38:13 mark of the second video at the bottom of this article), Kendrick said that he saw an alien when he was six years old. When Stern asked him about it, he explained, "I'm going to stand my ground to this: Yes. I did. Nobody believed me then and they don't believe me now. It's just something I can't really describe, because it just sounds like, 'Okay, you just saw a dart go past. That shit don't make sense.' I remember this and words can't describe it. It's just a surreal moment."
Asked if he got abducted, he laughed, "I probably did. That's probably why I'm doing music right now. Who knows. They probably gave me the energy... You know."
At one point, Howard Stern brought up the feeling of survivor's guilt that Kendrick has about making it out of Compton and asked if he seeks out therapy. He replied, "I'm a stubborn guy at times, so all I had was the music. I didn't feel like expressing my feelings to anyone. I'd rather just put it on paper and on wax as my therapy. And hopefully it could come back with ideas and concepts of how to help myself through it. Fans hear it and they listen. I talk to them at my shows and they tell me how it inspires them and the situations they're going through is similar to how I felt with survivor's guilt. It's just a working thing how it comes back around."
Speaking on the Black Lives Matter Movement adopting "Alright" as a rallying cry, Kendrick said, "This gave people hope. Not just in my community, but around the world. When I see people in the streets and they're singing the song and they're feeling good about it—not from a violent standpoint but from a peaceful standpoint—with this being the anchor for it, this is probably one of my greatest songs written for sure."
Asked if he wanted to be an artist who keeps making music deep into his later years, "Yeah, for sure [...] This is for the world. You've gotta put it out there." Kendrick also named Anita Baker as the artist he wants to work with, who he hasn't already made music with.
You can listen to the interview in two parts below. Part one begins at the 41:00 mark of the first video.
