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It’s hard not to like Compton rapper Kendrick Lamar; his excellent 2012 album, Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City, made the man one of the few big sticks by which everything else in hip-hop has since been measured, and in August his rap-game hydrogen-bomb contribution to Big Sean’s “Control” made the tune the focus of more passionate conversations about the state of the genre than any Big Sean song has any right to be. Lamar’s a thoughtful, gifted MC and he’s a crossover pop star that “true hip-hop heads” and Top 40 fans both admire, so it isn’t all that surprising to see him take the spotlight in a new advertisement campaign—he stars in a promo for Beats Pill speakers, another audio product in the Beats Electronics LLC line. It’s a natural fit considering company founder and rap icon Dr. Dre not only served as an executive producer for Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City, but he also coreleased the album through his Interscope imprint, Aftermath.
