Kendrick Lamar & SZA’s ‘Luther’ Was One of 2025’s Biggest Hits — But It Was Originally Just Supposed to Be an Interlude

This year, Kendrick Lamar and SZA‘s “Luther” spent 13 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and earned Grammy nominations for song and record of the year, but according to its producer, the track was never supposed to exist.

As revealed in a new Rolling Stone piece published Monday (Dec. 15) examining how the Compton rapper’s acclaimed GNX album was made, Sounwave revealed that the Luther Vandross-sampling smash was only ever supposed to be an interlude. “There were no drums,” the hitmaker recalled. “It was literally me chopping the sample and Dot just humming melodies.”

“We had the sample in the tuck forever, we just never could crack it,” he continued. “But once he hit this one specific melody, I knew that this had to be bigger.”

The sample in question is Vandross and Cheryl Lynn’s 1982 duet, “If This World Were Mine,” which plays throughout Lamar and SZA’s collab. The standout GNX single is also up for best melodic rap performance at the 2026 Grammys after closing out the year as the second-biggest hit on the year-end Billboard Hot 100 (behind Bruno Mars and Lady Gaga’s “Die With a Smile”).

Also in the RS piece, Sounwave opened up about working on GNX — which is nominated for album of the year and best rap album in 2026 — with coproducer Jack Antonoff and songwriter Ink. Though the LP dropped well after Lamar reset culture with his Drake diss track “Not Like Us,” Sounwave says that the project had been in the works for years before the rap war started in 2024.

It wasn’t until one emotional moment in the studio that the producer knew GNX was complete. “If I don’t shed a tear by the last second of the album, it is not ready,” Sounwave told the publication. “Once that last second of the last song stopped, 6 a.m. in the morning, I shed a tear. I was like, ‘We’re done.’”