This is an archival story that predates current editorial management.
This archival content was written, edited, and published prior to LAist's acquisition by its current owner, Southern California Public Radio ("SCPR"). Content, such as language choice and subject matter, in archival articles therefore may not align with SCPR's current editorial standards. To learn more about those standards and why we make this distinction, please click here.
Barack Obama is a pretty big Kendrick Lamar fan.
He named the Compton rapper's "How Much A Dollar Cost" his favorite song of 2015, and in a new PSA for The National Mentoring Partnership, it shows the two of them sitting down and having a very friendly heart-to-heart.
"I sat down with President Barack Obama and shared the same views," Lamar says in the video called "Pay It Forward." "Topics concerning the inner cities, the problem, the solution, and furthermore embracing the youth. Both being aware that mentoring saves lives."
Photos from the video show Lamar with a big ol' grin, just happy to be there. But it appears that Obama himself was a little starstruck too. In an interview with Buzzfeed's Another Round, Valerie Jarrett, Obama's senior adviser, recalls:
[Lamar] was at the White House. He came and he visited the president, and you know what the president said to him? [Because] he was a little nervous—bless his heart, he's really a very nice young man, and the president said, "Can you believe that we're both sitting in this Oval Office?"
Aww.
