r&b isn't what it used to be, commercially

Kendrick just does these to collect quick checks. At the end of the day we all know about his music and what he stands for
I remember years ago listening to the following, and B-Real said, "I never rapped on an R&B record and I never will."
There was a time when Hip Hop at least made an attempt to police itself, but somewhere down the line things got blurry. Blame it on the money, and me personally I especially put blame on Puff, Bad Boy, and what passed for Hip Hop journalism in the form of The Source and XXL magazines. Not everybody agrees with me, but the West Coast was putting a Chuck Taylor in New York's azz something fierce during the 90's.. Lets face it, East Coast boom bap, sample laden dark structured music couldn't compete with G-Funk and Gangsta Music. Puff found a niche doing that commercial bull sh!t, and although Biggie sounded great on R&B blends, they lost me when they tried melding the two officially. This ain't some revisionist history either, cuz some folks will remember on here BCC, Roots, Jeru, etc., throwing shots at Biggie and Bad Boy cuz they were watering down the culture. Had Biggie not been recently murdered by the time his second project dropped, he would have faced significant backlash. Some of that backlash would have been typical NYC crab in a barrel nonsense that we're accustomed to, but plenty of it would have been legit.
That era made it acceptable for rappers to do the pop sh!t they do now. Nowadays everybody's afraid to criticize anybody for whatever lane they chose. We've literally watched a beautiful art form deteriorate because of commercialism.