TDE President Punch Isn’t Mad About Kendrick Lamar’s Exit From The Label

Kendrick Lamar is probably going to drop a new project this year. We haven’t anything new from the Compton MC since he last dropped DAMN back in 2017. We did hear his feature on Baby Keem’s album but not a piece of solo music at all.

During a recent interview with Mic. Punch, Top Dawg Entertainment President Punch discussed Kendrick Lamar’s exit from the company. Lamar is now a grown man, according to Punch, and is ready to create his own thing.

I don’t even know if I would describe it that way as ready to leave, as more so ready to build his own thing. That’s a grown man right now. We watched him grow from a teenager up into an established grown man, a businessman, and one of the greatest artists of all time. So how long do you actually be signed up under somebody? It’s been almost 20 years. So it’s time to move on and try new things and venture out.

Punch also spoke about the Black Hippy band, admitting that he laments not being able to put together an album with all of the members.

We definitely wanted to do a Black Hippy album. But it was such a learning experience for us, everything was new. The timing never really panned out. When one guy would be recording his album, another guy would be on tour. Everybody was never in the same timeframe. So we didn’t want to hold back; we wanted to keep going and just push further into their individual careers. In hindsight, I wish I would’ve pushed the Black Hippy album more. That was always my goal, personally. You would have to ask everybody individually to see if that’s what their goal was.

In August 2021, Lamar said that his upcoming album will be his final with TDE. This year looks like a perfect opportunity for Kendrick to drop a new album as following his incredible Super Bowl performance, rapper and other performers involved have experienced a massive boost in their music streams, as we reported earlier.

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