Kendrick Lamar and Dr. Dre returned to their old school in Compton, California, on Tuesday as they attended the groundbreaking ceremony for a new Centennial High School campus. The two artists, who have long represented Compton in their careers, were joined by will.i.am at the event.
The ceremony carried particular weight because Lamar was born in Compton and attended Centennial High School, while Dre also said he attended the school. Lamar received the Key to the City in 2016 and was already a hometown symbol by then, after rising from a straight-A student at Centennial to one of the most visible voices tied to the city.
Micah Ali, the board president of Compton Unified School District, invited Dre to speak, and Dre used the moment to frame the project as more than construction. “Today is really nostalgic for me,” he told the crowd. “Sometimes you hear that term ‘full circle.’ This is really a full-circle moment for me because I did actually attend this high school.”
Dre said the campus was the result of a long-running effort to give something back to the city that shaped him. “Today isn’t just about a new building, it’s about a promise kept to the city that made me — point blank. Period,” he said. “This groundbreaking is where the vision we’ve shared for years finally hits the pavement.” He added that the project was about “investing in the next generation that’s coming straight out of Compton” and “tearing down walls and opening doors for our next scholars, innovators, creators, pioneers, technicians, and engineers that absolutely have the potential to change this world.”
The new campus fits a pattern for Dre, who in 2015 said he would donate all of his artist royalties from his third studio album, Compton, to help fund a new performing arts and entertainment facility in his hometown. Tuesday’s ceremony put him and Lamar back in the place that first shaped their public identities, now with the ground breaking on a school meant to serve the next generation of Compton students.
The question now is not whether the symbolism lands. It already has. The test is whether the promise behind the groundbreaking turns into a campus that delivers on the ambitions Dre described, and whether the city’s most famous alumni can keep that momentum moving beyond a ceremony and into the classrooms that follow.
