Kendrick Lamar Praised By LAPD Commissioner, Calls Him A ‘Friend’

Kendrick Lamar may rap about hating the “po po,” but the commissioner of the Los Angeles Police Department, Steve Soboroff, has no problem seeing past that.

After meeting at a recent Los Angeles Clippers basketball game, Soboroff spoke with TMZ about his encounter with the rapper. He says he now considers the “DAMN.” rapper a friend of his and says the two are on good terms.

“I consider him a friend,” said Soboroff. “And I think he considers me a friend, and I know his manager and some of the other folks around him consider me a friend. I’ve been there for a long time and done a lot of things to help in the community. I wanna keep that up.”

While the police commissioner isn’t a fan of Kendrick’s lyrics, he says there needs to be mutual respect and understanding. “It’s an opportunity to say that relationships between law enforcement and community starts with mutual understanding; respect for what other people feel, respect for what their experiences are. Everyone should be able to voice their frustrations as first step to come to productive solutions.”

Soboroff understands Kendrick uses his music to get his point across and respects the artist’s music but hopes the rapper has the same respect for him. “He expresses through his artform his feelings, and I respect that… And I think he respects, or I hope he would, respect how serious we take community policing… We can’t police our way out of these issues. These are issues that have to be brought together,” he added.

Although Lamar did not comment on the meeting, Soboroff posted a photo of the two courtside and said the rapper helped him purchase tickets to his upcoming concert. According to TMZ, the tickets for the police commissioner’s son.

In a 2015 interview with Billboard, the usually reserved Lamar spoke about the high-profile killings of black men at the hands of police in 2014. “I wish somebody would look in our neighborhood knowing that it’s already a situation,” he said.

“What happened to [Michael Brown] should’ve never happened. Never. But when we don’t have respect for ourselves, how do we expect them to respect us? It starts from within. Don’t start with just a rally, don’t start from looting — it starts from within,” the rapper said.

While Kendrick would not detail the issues he ran into as a teenager in the streets, saying he wouldn’t “be able to say that on record,” the rapper did say he was treated unfairly by police “plenty of times.” Lamar added, “I got into some things, but God willing, he had favoritism over me and my spirit.”