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Creativity Quote by Kendrick Lamar

"I can see the evil, I can tell it, I know it's illegal. I don't think about it, I deposit every other zero"

About this Quote

A confession that doubles as a flex: Kendrick frames moral clarity as background noise drowned out by the machinery of getting paid. The line is built on a blunt triptych of certainty - "I can see... I can tell... I know..". - a courtroom cadence that makes the pivot hit harder. He’s not pleading ignorance. He’s admitting awareness, then choosing numbness: "I don't think about it". That deadened clause is the real indictment, because it’s less about one bad act than about the learned habit of moral dissociation.

"Deposit every other zero" turns sin into arithmetic. It’s an image of money so large it becomes abstraction, a stack of digits that makes consequence feel small and distant. Kendrick isn’t merely saying wealth corrupts; he’s dramatizing how capitalism trains you to convert complexity into numbers. The evil is legible, the illegality is explicit, yet the incentive structure is louder than the conscience.

Context matters because Kendrick’s catalog constantly wrestles with the paradox of being hyper-aware inside systems that reward complicity - the record industry, street economies, corporate branding, even the spectacle of "authentic" pain as product. He speaks like someone who has survived enough to recognize the trap, then watches himself step into it anyway. The line lands because it refuses the comforting narrative of purity. It’s self-critique with a receipt, the kind that implicates the listener too: if you knew, and the direct deposit hit, what would you stop thinking about?

Quote Details

TopicMoney
SourceSong: "Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe" (2012), good kid, m.A.A.d city
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Lamar, Kendrick. (2026, February 1). I can see the evil, I can tell it, I know it's illegal. I don't think about it, I deposit every other zero. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-can-see-the-evil-i-can-tell-it-i-know-its-184838/

Chicago Style
Lamar, Kendrick. "I can see the evil, I can tell it, I know it's illegal. I don't think about it, I deposit every other zero." FixQuotes. February 1, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-can-see-the-evil-i-can-tell-it-i-know-its-184838/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I can see the evil, I can tell it, I know it's illegal. I don't think about it, I deposit every other zero." FixQuotes, 1 Feb. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-can-see-the-evil-i-can-tell-it-i-know-its-184838/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.

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About the Author

Kendrick Lamar

Kendrick Lamar (born June 17, 1987) is a Musician from USA.

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