Recently, Kendrick Lamar did an interview with Harper’s Bazaar, and SZA was the interviewer.

During the discussion, Kendrick revealed the first time he let himself cry, “The power of honesty and being honest with myself, perspective about the person sitting across from me, and learning that vulnerability is not a weakness.”

He continued, “That last one probably been one I’m still developing. But for what I do, there is certainly no growth without vulnerability. If I understood the power of vulnerability earlier, I could have had more depth and more reach to the guys that was around me in the neighborhood coming up.”

He added, “But the more I delve deeper into my music and the more expressive I get with myself … that is the feminine energy right there. That’s not the bravado that I grew up seeing all the time. This is who I am, the soft-spoken me, and I have to own it. This is where my superpower lies. Because if my job is to communicate, I need to be able to communicate with everyone.”

Lamar continued, “The first time I allowed it to happen is documented, actually, onstage [in 2011] when Dre and Snoop and the whole West Coast was out, and they was like, ‘This is the torch that we were handing off.’ Dre passed me the torch, and a burst of energy just came out, and I had to let it flow.”