Pac Div produced one of the most celebrated songs in Kendrick Lamar’s catalog, and the story of how it came together is as low-key as the track itself.
The Los Angeles group has revealed that they created the beat for “Sing About Me,” the standout from “good kid, m.A.A.d city,” and sent it to Kendrick over email while they were out on tour with Mac Miller.
The response came fast. When I emailed him that he hit me back like 2 hours later already writing to it,” one member recalled, “and he was like, ‘Oh, this is crazy, you know.'”
At the time, nobody in the Pac Div camp had any sense of what the song would eventually become. “I wasn’t thinking nothing of it at the time that it would become,” he added, trailing off before his partner finished the thought.
The group’s connection to Kendrick predates the album by several years. Their first encounter came when Kendrick opened for them at the Roxy in Los Angeles.
He walked into their green room and introduced himself, and the mutual respect was immediate. “We were like, ‘We don’t know what you needed, bro. We we f*** with your music,'” one member said. From that meeting, they exchanged contact information, and a working relationship followed naturally.
That relationship carried real warmth beyond the studio. One member recalled running into Kendrick and his partner Whitney on a hiking trail early one morning, a chance encounter that led to finally exchanging numbers directly. Shortly after, they attended the “good kid, m.A.A.d city” release event together.
The credit for “Sing About Me” is something that still catches people off guard. “A lot of people still don’t really even know, for real,” one member said. “They’ll be like, ‘Wow, you made that beat?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, no, I did, for sure.'”
The placement opened doors, including work with Anderson .Paak in the years that followed. It also brought a steady stream of requests that the producer found difficult to fulfill.
“People would hit me be like, ‘Yo, can we get a beat like the Sing About Me?'” he said. “And I’m like, ‘Bro, no, that was, you know, that’s that beat. I got other beats, you know?'”
The group also touched on a separate Kendrick collaboration, a joint they described as being recorded around the same time as “good kid, m.A.A.d city.” The session came with its own complications.
We had that joint and just sent it over and he sent it back and we never got the stems,” one member said, meaning they had to work with the full mixed track rather than individual audio components. They made it work regardless.
As for “Sing About Me” itself, the song holds a special place for the producers personally. “That’s my favorite Kendrick song,” one member said plainly. He placed it alongside “The Blacker the Berry” as the two tracks that define Kendrick’s artistry for him.
The reverence is mutual. During the period surrounding the album’s release, Kendrick remained consistently accessible.
“From 2012 to 2015,” one member said, “he would be like the first person to text back if I ever hit him needed anything.”
