One of his biggest issues was self-esteem — accepting that he deserved to be where he was. And some of that came from his discomfort around white people.
"I'm going to be 100 percent real with you," Lamar says. "In all my days of schooling, from preschool all the way up to 12th grade, there was not one white person in my class. Literally zero." Before he started touring, he had barely left Compton; when he finally did, the culture shock threw him. "Imagine only discovering that when you're 25," Lamar says. "You're around people you don't know how to communicate with. You don't speak the same lingo. It brings confusion and insecurity. Questioning how did I get here, what am I doing? That was a cycle I had to break quick. But at the same time, you're excited, because you're in a different environment. The world keeps going outside the neighborhood."