Songfacts®:

• "Auntie Diaries" finds Kendrick Lamar assessing his relationships with gender as he discusses two transgender relatives.
• During his first two verses, Lamar tells us about his trans auntie who started living as a man. As an elementary schoolboy, Lamar joined in with his classmates to use homophobic slurs, but was still proud of his aunt. She had been that way all his life, so he didn't batter an eyelid at her trans ways. When the young K-Dot asked his mother why his uncles didn't like her, she explained that she had more women than they did.
• Lamar concludes the second verse by introducing his favorite cousin, Demetrius, who went further than his aunt. Demetrius actually went through a surgical gender-reassignment and transitioned into Mary-Ann.
• During the third and fourth verse, K-Dot recounts his family's disbelief when Demetrius transitioned. However, the rapper had picked up the signs and didn't join in with his school friends' homophobic teasing. He later recounts calling out his preacher when he said Demetrius was just "going through some things."
• Happily, Lamar's family came to accept Mary-Ann's transition, and things became relaxed enough for Lamar to use the word "fa--ot" in front of his cousin. When Mary-Ann challenged him on this, Lamar recalled an incident when he brought a white female fan onstage to rap his "m.A.A.d city" track with him. She rapped the lyrics verbatim, causing Lamar to correct her for using the N-word. The Compton artist immediately recognized his hypocrisy of using the F-slur as a straight cisgender male.
• Lamar co-wrote "Auntie Diaries" with the track's drummer Homer Steinweiss, guitarist Daniel Krieger, and its producers Caloway, Rappy, Beach Noise, Bekon and Craig Balmoris.
  
  Producer/songwriter Bekon contributed to eight out of the 14 tracks on Kendrick Lamar's DAMN album. He played keyboard, synthesizer, strings and sang backing vocals on this track.
• That's the German-Canadian spiritual teacher and writer Eckhart Tolle who says "This is how we conceptualize human beings" in the intro. His self-help guide, The Power of Now, has sold over three million copies in North America.
• Kendrick Lamar premiered "Auntie Diaries" live on July 19, 2022, during his concert at Oklahoma City's Paycom Center.