Kendrick Lamar doesn’t want to be the savior, but he’s certainly a spokesman for it on his latest single, released in a guerrilla-style manner just days after he was announced as the winner of Super Bowl LIX. The song, in which Kendrick raps about how it’s time to “let the party die,” doesn’t find him expressing much joy at being the first solo rapper to grace the Super Bowl stage. Instead, he seems to have more pressing matters on his mind—he’s so fed up with the rap ecosystem that he uploaded the untitled five-minute track.
Over a mournful cardo beat, Kendrick calls out a rap game filled with “clowns,” “devils,” and “degenerates,” then goes on to target “rappers who spread lies” and “radio personality who peddles propaganda for a paycheck.” He asks, “Why would we argue with these niggas if they can’t see the future first? / Why would we argue with these clowns if the circus is doing so well?”
In the run up to 2022 Mr. Moral and the Big StepsKendrick shared “Part IV of the Heart,” in which he railed against the ills we’ve come to accept as “culture,” with a music video in which he transformed into figures like Kanye West and Will Smith. Three years later, he seems to have a stronger desire to recalibrate the culture. He ends the first verse of his new single with the line, “I’d replace y’all with Neb, I couldn’t be proud of y’all niggas.” He spends much of the song outlining the violence he’d like to unleash on those he feels are complicit in corrupting the youth.
The track showcases Kendrick's talent for charisma. He invokes spirituality throughout the song, including a line where he pleads, “God, please forgive me, you know how hard I tried.” He also references philosopher Eckhart Tolle's “New Earth” theory, stating that his vision of the future will be “full of beautiful people making humanity work.” Rapper Lecrae, whose music contains heavy spiritual themes, is mentioned, as is rapper D-1, who regularly targets rappers he feels are promoting negative messages.
Overall, the song feels like a call to arms for Kendrick’s idea of a better world. “Where are the soldiers then? / Those who lost it all and learned how to learn from it,” he rhymes. One might think Colin Kaepernick would fit that bill, and that Kendrick’s announcement of a Super Bowl halftime show would have him working with the entity that took so much from the quarterback. If he’s going to uproot culture, he might have some habits and alliances of his own to examine. But even despite the moments when second thoughts reveal contradiction, Kendrick’s tactile style and handwriting make the song a worthy song. The urgency in his approach bodes well for his next album—whenever it comes out.
For many, the song was another swipe at Drake, with whom he has been engaged in a war of words since April. Some of the lines could apply to the Toronto artist — but he’s criticizing most of the game here, and reducing the song to a Drake insult lacks the overall message, and is perhaps an optimistic contemplation of a “round two” in a battle that both men seem to be moving past.
There is no evidence that the ominous “Round 2” video that Drake posted to his Instagram account was actually about Kendrick. People have attributed the meaning to a cryptic post from a man, the night before his death, Honestly it doesn't matter Drake has just dropped his latest album, and he decided to post hentai porn on his Instagram account as if his account was hacked; there’s always a reason or a motive for him to be on social media. Drake’s last candid words about the feud were his retirement in “The Heart Part 6.” Kendrick just said “no round two” in a clip that was streamed to millions of people. Scathing songs like “Meet The Grahams” and “Family Matters” make it clear that these are two grown men who will say it off the chest if they want to—no guessing for them.
DJ Akademiks was critical of the song, calling it a “misstep” and concluding that “you can't say there's no second game, then immediately drop a song that sounds like it's going to be a second game.” He has an incentive in all of this because he was the de facto master of ceremonies at the bloodthirsty, erotic “party” that Kendrick wants to end. Many fans who watch the cycle of black nihilism as entertainment listen to Akademiks to get their fix, and Kendrick is probably targeting Akademiks when he sings about “radio personality pushing propaganda to get a paycheck.” He ends the line by asking, “Tell me when they show up as victims.”
The bar is reminiscent of Nas competing to “go to every station, kill the DJ” on “Hip-Hop Is Dead.” It’s the song of the same name from a 2006 album in which Nas similarly takes aim at the rap establishment, railing against crazed rappers, money-hungry record labels, and radio bribes for ruining his beloved art form. There are more similarities between him and Kendrick: At that point, Nas was 15 years into his career, the victor of the biggest battle of all time, and considered by many to be the greatest lyricist of his generation. He explained the premise to MTV, noting that “when I say ‘hip-hop is dead,’ America is basically dead. There’s no political voice. Music is dead… our way of thinking is dead, our business is dead. Everything in this society is done.” “It’s like a slingshot, where you throw the alien back and he starts losing speed and he’s about to fall.”
Jay-Z expressed his disdain for the state of the game in his 2009 song “Death of Autotune,” criticizing the lack of aggression among hip-hop artists, and excessive marketing, declaring, “This ain't for the Z100.” Kendrick had reached the point where these two rap icons were simply More faithfulNo wonder Nas congratulated Kendrick on his Super Bowl win announcement on his Instagram Story last week, agreeing that he “can’t wait to watch the party die!!!!”
Kendrick releases this latest track after 18 years Hip Hop is dead In a scene that seems even darker than the one Nas was talking about. Rap is floundering on the charts because it reflects the slow decay of capitalism in its final stages. Too many major label artists are floundering in the water with the same old albums with the same old themes to the same old beats, and everyone seems so desperate that we collectively allow it to happen. We’ve become desensitized to the cycle of the few exciting artists we have falling prey to gun violence or addiction. The industry is being overrun by people who see rap as a scam and have no inherent loyalty to hip-hop culture or the people who started it. And the vast majority of hip-hop’s profits are going into the pockets of people who don’t really care about the communities from which all these painful narratives come: the labels, the predatory bloggers, the streaming giants.
If people hadn't already coined it Hip Hop is dead“That would be a fitting title for Kendrick’s latest single. “My friend Jay Estrada told me I should burn it down so I can build it up / That affirmation is just as real, it’s not as real as us,” Kendrick sings, referencing the term “destroy and rebuild,” which Nas used as the title of a song in 2001.
Every great work of art is built on a simple idea. At its core, Kendrick Lamar’s catalogue is the journey of a Compton survivor pleading for peace of mind. Here, he delivers his final chapter, in which the streets he so desperately sought to escape are caricatured by those looking to exploit them, and he sees too many of his peers fall for the trick.
