Slava P’s favorite jig is the Charleston.
How would you celebrate the release of an album that was both critically applauded and sold 241k units in its first week? Kendrick decided to do it by dropping free music completely separate from the GKMC canon and serves as an introduction to his new collaborative efforts with the sultan of snore, Jermaine Cole. Backed by production help from New York’s Canei Finch, Kdot stops to bask in the rightfully deserved spotlight by lyrically flexing on all his haters, including the Belize-wunder-jew.
Self-awareness has always seemed to be Kendrick’s shtick, so it’s interesting to hear how he refers to his own career path as analogous to the strapped suicide bomber and the rumors surrounding why people “thought Good Kid might flop, or that I might go pop,” due in part to the supposed Lady Gaga collaboration that never happened. It makes you wonder if Kendrick hadn’t actually started circulating all of that “collaboration news” himself, just to have something to rap about after the album in order to avoid a 2 Chainz-ian buzz blowback. J.Cole on the other hand does a great job of staying in the shadows and behind the soundboards on this one, adopting an approach that leads me to nickname him Beige KRIT for the time being.
The combination of Kendrick and Jermaine may seem one sided on paper, especially for a full-length project – but if the collaborations can continue to make use of J.Cole’s untainted, non-commercialized-yet-signed-to-Jigga soulfulness, and combine it with Kendrick’s raw, unstructured grasp on lyricism, I would venture a bet that this specific cut qualifies as “barrel bottom” when the full project is released.
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