Kendrick Lamar, Russell Westbrook, and DeMar DeRozan joined in protests in Compton, Sunday. From 12:00 PM to 2:00 PM, the crowd marched from Gateway Towne Center in Los Angeles to Compton City Hall, for the “Compton Peace Walk."

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Lamar, Westbrook, and DeRozan are all from the Los Angeles area. 

Westbrook spoke to the crowd during the protest. "Continue to stick together," he said. "Continue to fight for one another. Continue to lift each other up. … Continue to protect your own, protect your team, protect your family. In times like this, we need to stick together. Put a fist up."

"Let's get a moment of silence. For our lost ones. For their families. For their struggles," Westbrook added with his fist in the air.

"It’s impossible for you to understand what happens today if you don’t understand the past. Let’s continue to fight," Westbrook added on an  Instagram post.

Compton Mayor Aja Brown promoted the protest on Facebook: “Our kids are watching us and they deserve to live in a better world, a better city that ensures their peace and protection, full liberty and justice for all,” she said.

Check out photos of Lamar, Westbrook, and DeRozan from the "Compton Peace Walk" below.

In December of 2019, Roddy Ricch graced the stage at Kendrick Lamar and Top Dawg Entertainment’s Charity Concert. His debut album Please Excuse Me For Being Anti Social had just dropped and the buzz around Southern California’s newest star couldn’t have been louder. Mirroring that figurative rumble was the very real one erupting from the crowd when Ricch took the stage. He performed “Ballin” and “The Box” during his set and it must’ve been a surreal feeling. Towering over the community that cocooned him, the place that gave him the stories that paved his road to celebrity.  

Roddy Ricch is the newest fixture in hip-hop’s mainstream wheel. The success of his debut album has topped the Billboard charts and challenged records held by some of the genre’s pantheon projects like 50 Cent‘s Get Rich Or Die Tryin’. But before all the talk shows, sold-out concerts, and big-budget music videos, Roddy was born Rodrick Wayne Moore Junior to humble beginnings in Compton, California. At 8 years old he started rapping. Stylistically, his soulful vocals grew to reflectively narrate a life of struggle and survival. Melting sung melodic verses with gritty lyrical content which has become the trend. A trend that inner-city artists are perfecting given its resonation with not only avid but casual music listeners. 

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After decoding the maze of Compton’s streets as a teen, the realities of life didn’t give Ricch time to mature before delivering an awakening. He faced a number of violent and traumatic ordeals which he speaks about in the song “War Baby.” “Survived in the trenches, I’m a war baby,” he raps. “Post-traumatic stress, I know the war changed me / you can bend, but you can never break me.” That PTSD, as Roddy describes it, may come from the premature death of his best friend. He unpacks his trauma through music in a therapeutic form of expression. The sentiment bleeds into the music he produces, the product of Compton’s notorious gang culture.

“My city is known for police violence and gangs,” he explained to Complex. “That’s not good. I want my city to be known for private jets landing in that motherf*cking airport.” But it’s a process. From an earlier age, Roddy says he ran with the Compton Crips gang, explaining that all his cousins and family were Crips as well. Around the age of sixteen, Roddy was kicked out of his mother’s home, thereby having to dive deeper into the street life. Charlamagne Tha God asked Roddy during a Breakfast Club interview if it was possible to grow up in the streets of Compton and not get caught up in the gang lifestyle. “I know people who had it worse than me,” replied Roddy. “The homie come up to your door like ‘come outside you getting put on’ and ain’t nothing you can do about it.”

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Ricch dropped his debut mixtape, Feed Tha Streets, in November 2017. A project that featured both “Chase Tha Bag” & “Fucc It Up.” Yet, it wasn’t until the release of “Die Young” that everything changed rapidly for the artist. Even so, Ricch had connections with Compton’s most famous rappers prior to his national breakout. He speaks much admiration about his relationship with California hero Nipsey Hussle, even having the same “prolific” tattoo the rapper sported. He credits Nipsey for teaching him to have the mindset of an owner; not relinquishing control of his situation was the rationale. Roddy also appeared on the Grammy-winning record “Racks In The Middle” with Nip, but their ties go beyond music. He says watching how Nipsey would move taught him a great deal, noting that at times his actions spoke as loud as his words.  

He also rapped for Kendrick Lamar before he was a teenager and credits Lamar for teaching him as Nipsey did. “Kendrick Lamar taught me that life experience is an important part of being a good illustrator,” he told Complex. “When you’re illustrating a story, you have to go based off of your personal experiences. When you write about shit you don’t know about, it’s not going to sound right because you’ll miss the details.”  

That same life experience growing up in his city might’ve had a role in molding the rapper’s personal life but his musical inspirations seem untapped by California’s hip-hop influence. Undoubtedly an innovator in this era of singer-rappers, Roddy has still found a way to sport a style all his own. YG, Kendrick, Dr. Dre, and even The Game have a sound that feels innately Compton – but not Ricch. He seems to be going against the grain while also resonating at the grassroots level in Southern California. He’s been able to create a persona and brand authentic to Compton, but he doesn’t mirror it as other artists of his generation might have done. After a debut like Please Excuse Me For Being Anti-Social Roddy Ricch has become a mainstay in hip-hop culture. I look forward to hearing his collaborations with other Compton artists and how he marries that signature sound with his own.

LISTEN: Roddy Ricch – “War Baby”

Roddy Ricch has returned to the top slot on the Billboard 200 albums chart with Please Excuse Me For Being Antisocial. It marks the third nonconsecutive week that the Compton-bred emcee has claimed the crown, earning just under 95,000 equivalent album units.  The project first debuted at No. 1 in December, departing for two weeks, before returning to its glory on January 18th. This past week it made way for Eminem‘s latest outing, and now reclaims the title. The majority of its sales stem from 92,000 streaming units.

The last artist to accomplish three nonconsecutive visits to No. 1 was Billie Eilish for her When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?  That effort also returns toward the top this week, sitting the top three at No. 3 with 62,000 equivalent units. She concedes to Roddy and Em’s Music to be Murdered By which clocks 89,000 equivalent album units in its second week. Eilish’s jump can be attributed to a strong showing at the Grammy’s last Sunday that found her making history as the second artist to ever win in the top four categories in one ceremony: album of the year, record fo the year, song of the year, and best new artist.

Elsewhere on the chart, we find while Post Malone‘s Hollywood’s Bleeding hold on to the No. 5 spot with 54,000 units while Mac Miller‘s Circles dip from No. 3 to No. 6 in its second week with 56,000 units.

Dababy’s KIRK follows closely behind at No. 7 with 36,000 units while Monwybagg’s Yo’s Time Served checks in at No. 9 with 31,000 units. Closing things out is the JACKBOYS compilation project which returns to the top 10 with 30,000 units.

Roddy Ricch is having himself a moment in 2020. Starting off the new decade with a ferocious bang, the Compton rapper turned the world upside down by absolutely dominating the charts and causing pop stars to reconsider their promotional strategies. In order to even have a chance against Ricch, Justin Bieber needed to inform his fans on how to cheat the streaming algorithm. The following week, Selena Gomez begged her fans to buy out their local department stores to boost her numbers. While the latter's strategy actually worked, Ricch's album has proven to have more longevity, creeping back up to the top spot in next week's chart projections.

The Game has always represented Compton since getting into the game. The rapper became the new face of West Coast’s gangster rap at the time when G-Unit was the biggest thing in the game. However, even when The Documentary dropped and he saw an extreme amount of success, he was still in Compton, his old stomping grounds.

In a recent interview with NME, the rapper explained why he moved out of Compton. At the very moment he decided to leave, he was on top of the rap game but troubles from his past just came back to haunt him at every step.

“I was fuckin’ five times Platinum and still getting in shoot-outs in my neighbourhood,” he said. “The thing that changed my life was when a bullet went through my son’s car seat and I was just about to go into the house and get him and put him in the car. A bullet hole was in the car seat where his head would have been. And on that day, I moved out of Compton and got me a condo in Beverly Hills.”

Last Saturday marked the fifteen-year anniversary of the release of The Game’s The Documentary, an album that brought hits like “Hate It Or Love It” ft. 50 Cent and “How We Do” also featuring Fif. 

Peep the entire interview with The Game here.