It has been 3 years now since the Grammy Award-winning, Pulitzer Prize-earning, Compton rapper Kendrick Lamar released his critically acclaimed album “DAMN.”. Staying relatively out of the public eye since his DAMN. World Tour, Lamar reappeared in March of 2020 when he posted a graphic to his social media related to a project seemingly titled “pgLang”. The graphics were followed by a short teaser video and a link to a professional website. Since March, however, Lamar has been relatively quiet about the company until recently. Here is what we know.
Founded by Kendrick Lamar and fellow rapper Dave East, pgLang released a mission statement clarifying it isn’t a record label, movie studio, or publishing house. The statement read: “PgLang is multi-lingual. 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.” The decision to launch in 2020 was revealed to be a response to the rapidly changing media landscape in modern society. “Only a few contemporary creators have figured out how to speak the evolving language of this generation without fading into the white noise or pre-assigned market share,” The company shared. “pgLang is designed to be artist-friendly above all else and embrace both quality and unconventional concepts.”
To this point, the only releases that have come from Lamar’s and East’s new platform included a small merch release, which sold out in minutes, as well as two short video clips entitled “Welcome to pgLang” and “Propaganda”. Artists who have been involved in some capacity include Baby Keem, Jorja Smith, as well as Florence + the Machine vocalist Florence Welch and jazz mainstay Kamasi Washington. The pgLang Instagram has suggested future collaborations with Keith Powers, Amber Wagner, Brent Faiyaz, and many others.
While the company is only in its infancy, it has proven time and time again that anything Kendrick Lamar touches seemingly turns to gold. Check out the pgLang website here to learn more.
