Kendrick Lamar Is Apparently Buddies With The Commissioner Of The LAPD

In what might come as a shock to fans of Kendrick Lamar, it turns out that the Compton rapper is quite friendly with the Commissioner of the LAPD. Steve Soboroff made waves the other day by posting a picture of himself on the floor of the Staples Center, seated next to Kendrick, with a caption that read, “#thisguy helped me navigate the @Staples Center website to buy tix for @kendricklamar concert in August.”

TMZ eventually reached out to Soboroff who went a little deeper about his connection to Kendrick. “I consider him a friend, and he considers me a friend, and I know that his manager and some of the other folks around him consider me a friend,” the commissioner said. “I’ve been there a long time and done a lot of things to help in the community and I just want to keep that up.”

He also addressed some of the criticism that Kendrick has leveled against law enforcement, especially in the song “Alright,” where he raps, “We hate po-po / Wanna kill us dead in the street for sho’.” Soboroff was surprisingly levelheaded in his assessment, saying “He expresses through his art form his feelings, and I respect that, and I think he respects, or I hope he would respect, how seriously we take community policing and understanding people’s views.”

One person who doesn’t respect Kendrick’s message is Fox News talking head Geraldo Rivera. Kendrick actually took a snippet of Rivera’s criticism of that song in particular and cut it into the DAMN. album opening track “Blood.” Since then, Geraldo has only doubled down in his criticism, saying, “Indoctrinating young people with the message that the cops are the enemy, that there’s no good way to get ahead. It’s the worst role model. It’s the worst example. It’s the most negative possible message. And what’s the point of it? I mean, you sell records. I get that. You sell records. I get that this stuff is, you know, popular, but it avoids the central reality, just as Black Lives Matter avoids the central reality.”