Songfacts®:

• This song finds Lamar looking deep into himself in order to analyze what makes us real. "That's the start of me recognizing everything I was doing throughout that day, it wasn't real," explained the Compton rapper to Complex magazine: "Everybody has their own perception of what a 'real nigga' is. Most of the time a real nigga is a street cat or someone putting in some type of work and doing violence. That's what we thought they was. Someone who's about that life."
  
  "But on that record, it was me getting an understanding of what real is," he continued, "and my pops breaking down on that record. It shows the influence he had on my life. Real is taking care of your family. Real is responsibility. Real is believing in a high power, believing in God. Real is having morals. Real is carrying yourself in a manner where you're not influenced by anybody else. You have your own mind, your own outlook on life. You're not doing what's just the trend or doing what people want you to do."