Though some may say Kendrick Lamar’s rise to hip-hop’s royalty was something of a quick ascendancy, they would be surprised to hear that his vision of what he has done was already in the game plan since 2007, maybe even prior.

In this 2007 interview Kendrick, though at the time going by his previous pseudonym as K. Dot, decrees, “K Dot straight outta Compton, ’07 to 3000. That’s the slogan right now.” In those days, he was working on the mixtape Training Day, and discussed working with Game, but he still was set on bringing something different to his music.