Kendrick Lamar Duckworth (born June 17, 1987) is an American rapper from Compton, California. Lamar embarked on his musical career as a teenager under the moniker K-Dot, releasing a mixtape that garnered local attention and led to his signing with Carson-based independent record label Top Dawg Entertainment (TDE). Lamar began to gain major recognition in 2010 after his first retail release, Overly Dedicated. The following year, he released the independent album Section.80, which included Lamar's debut single, "HiiiPoWeR". By that time, he had collaborated with several prominent artists in the hip hop industry, including The Game, Snoop Dogg, and Busta Rhymes.
Lamar secured a recording contract with Aftermath and Interscope Records in 2012. His major-label debut album, good kid, m.A.A.d city, was released in October 2012 to critical sucess. The record contained the top 40 singles "Swimming Pools (Drank)", "Bitch, Don't Kill My Vibe", and "Poetic Justice", and debuted at number two on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart; it was later certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Preceded by the Grammy Award-winning single "i", Lamar released his third studio album To Pimp a Butterfly in 2015 to universal acclaim. The album incorporated elements of free jazz, funk, soul, and spoken word, and debuted atop the charts in the U.S. and the UK. In 2016, Lamar released untitled unmastered., a collection of unreleased demos that originated during the recording sessions for Butterfly.
Lamar has received wide acclaim and a number of accolades over the course of his career, including seven Grammy Awards. In early 2013, MTV named Lamar the No. 1 "Hottest MC in the Game" on their annual list. Aside from his solo career, Lamar is also known as a member of the West Coast hip hop supergroup Black Hippy, alongside his TDE labelmates and fellow South Los Angeles-based rappers Ab-Soul, Jay Rock and Schoolboy Q.
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Andre Romelle Young (born February 18, 1965), known by his stage name Dr. Dre, is an American rapper, record producer, and entrepreneur. He is the founder and current CEO of Aftermath Entertainment and Beats Electronics. Dre was previously the co-owner of, and an artist on, Death Row Records. He has produced albums for and overseen the careers of many rappers, including The D.O.C., Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Xzibit, Knoc-turn'al, 50 Cent, The Game and Kendrick Lamar. He is credited as a key figure in the popularization of West Coast G-funk, a style of rap music characterized as synthesizer-based with slow, heavy beats. In 2014, Dr. Dre was ranked as the second richest figure in the American hip hop scene by Forbes with a net worth of $550 million; he is at the top of the 2015 Forbes list, with an estimated pre-tax take of $620 million in 2014.
Dre began his career as a member of the World Class Wreckin' Cru and later found fame with the influential gangsta rap group N.W.A with Eazy-E, Ice Cube, MC Ren, and DJ Yella, which popularized the use of explicit lyrics in rap to detail the violence of street life. His 1992 solo debut The Chronic, released under Death Row Records, led him to become one of the best-selling American performing artists of 1993 and to win a Grammy Award for the single "Let Me Ride". That same year he produced Death Row labelmate Snoop Dogg's quadruple platinum debut Doggystyle, and even molded artists into top-notch producers such as his step-brother Warren G, which led to his multi-platinum debut Regulate...G Funk Era in 1994, and Snoop Dogg's cousin Daz Dillinger which led to the double platinum debut album Dogg Food by Tha Dogg Pound in 1995.
In 1996, he left Death Row Records to establish his own label, Aftermath Entertainment. He produced a compilation album titled Dr. Dre Presents the Aftermath in 1996, and released a solo album titled 2001 in 1999. During the 2000s, he focused on production for other artists, while occasionally contributing vocals to songs. Dr. Dre signed Eminem in 1998 and 50 Cent in 2002 to his record label respectively, while contributing production on their albums. He has won six Grammy Awards, including Producer of the Year. Dr. Dre has also had acting roles in movies such as Set It Off, The Wash and Training Day. Rolling Stone ranked Dre at 56 on their list of "100 Greatest Artists of All-Time".
