Kendrick Lamar Interviews N.W.A. For Billboard Magazine

When Kendrick Lamar arrives this Friday evening at a cavernous photo studio in the flatlands of industrial Hollywood, he’s 30 minutes early. And the occasion has been nearly 25 years in the making: Lamar, 28, is here to interview the four living members of N.W.A for their first magazine cover together since Ice Cube went solo in 1991 and the group collapsed into a famously bitter feud. Eazy-E died in 1995, at 31. But today, Lamar meets with four men who defined his hometown of Compton, Calif., as a cradle of politically engaged, uncompromisingly hardcore hip-hop.