Kendrick Lamar Is Working On His Next Album Following TDE Exit

Kendrick Lamar just dropped his fifth studio album in May, which was the final obligation of his contract with his longtime label Top Dawg Entertainment/Aftermath. Shortly after launching his Big Stepper Tour, the Compton, Calif. native is already working on his next project.

During an interview Complex published on Tuesday, August 2, TDE's in-house producer Sounwave, who's worked on every K Dot project from 2009 to his latest LP, explained that Lamar and his team immediately begin working on the next project once the current one is released. Sounwave also confirmed that they've already started working on the next album.

"Oh, we always start, immediately after," Sounwave explained. "Like, we’re starting on the next one now. That’s never going to change, all the way from the Kendrick Lamar EP. The next day, we started on Section.80. It’s just the ideas never stopped. That’s one of the main reasons I go on tour with him, is to create the next album. We can’t skip a beat. We have to just keep it going. There’s no breaks. There’s no such thing as a vacation when you’re doing what you love."

"Everything you do is what you love to do, so you’re excited," he continued. "Your family might feel a different way about it, but it’s always like, what’s next? We’re like kids in a candy shop. Personally, once I release an album like this, I don’t go back to it for a while, because I lived it so much. It’s like, it’s not for me anymore. It’s time for me to clear my head, so the best thing to do is to think about the next project."

K Dot's next album will be his first independent release. Nearly a year before he released the album, Kendrick announced that he was leaving Top Dawg Entertainment and revealed his plans to focus on his own imprint pgLang. The company, which was established in 2020 along with his business partner Dave Free, has already signed acts like Baby Keem and Tanna Leone.

Sounwave also mentioned that Lamar's latest album Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers was created over the past five years, which means they immediately started working on it after Kendrick dropped his DAMN. album in 2017. Read the entire conversation with Sounwave here.