Pulitzer Prize-winning rapper Kendrick Lamar has signed an exclusive, worldwide administration agreement with Universal Music Publishing Group, the company announced Tuesday.
Anthony “Top Dawg” Tiffith said: “Kendrick and I are excited for our new partnership with Jody Gerson and UMPG. Jody was passionate from the jump – she fought to make this deal happen.”
Lamar has won 13 Grammy Awards and in indisputably one of the most influential rappers of the millennium. He was named Variety’s first Hitmaker of the Year in 2017.
Jody Gerson, UMPG Chairman and CEO, said: “Kendrick Lamar is not only one of the greatest lyricists that has ever lived, but he has done as much or more than any artist to promote much needed change in our society through music. I and my colleagues at UMPG are deeply honored to be afforded the opportunity to join Kendrick, Anthony ‘Top Dawg’ Tiffith and the TDE family to help forward his unique and important vision.”
Along with his three full-scale albums under his own name — 2012’s “Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City,” 2015’s “To Pimp a Butterfly” and 2017’s “Damn,” Lamar has released an outtakes collection called “Unmastered, Untitled” and wrote and produced 14 songs for the soundtrack to the Marvel superhero film “Black Panther,” for which he won Academy and Grammy Awards.
The new publishing deal is likely to increase speculation that Lamar’s long-awaited fourth full-length album is imminent. One report early this year claimed that it was a rock-oriented release — vaguely along the lines of the jazz-oriented “To Pimp a Butterfly” — but further details have not been forthcoming. Lamar was most recently with Warner Chappell Music Publishing.