Artist: Kendrick Lamar
Label: Top Dawg Entertainment
Rating:
“The Heart Part 4” will empower your eardrums, motivate you to kick some ass and fill your soul with delicious hype.
It began with a subtle tease on Kendrick Lamar’s Instagram Thursday morning. An image of a velvet black cover with the number four in white taut roman numerals graced his page. Speculation swirled among the internet’s masses as to what this could mean. A new album? A new single?
Traction mounted after fellow T.D.E (Top Dawg Entertainment) affiliate, ScHoolboy Q, shared a decisive meme fired towards Drake with an emphatic caption, “Time for real Hip Hop.” Lo and behold late into Thursday’s eve, Lamar dropped his new single “The Heart Part 4.”
The timing is flawless. In fact, it mirrors what happened in 2015. Right after Drake surprisingly dropped If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late, Lamar fired back with fresh music of his own alluding to the release of his masterpiece, To Pimp a Butterfly. Lamar is a savant of timing the release of new music. After the polarizing release of More Life this past weekend, Lamar had to remind everybody who really is the top dog in the rap game.
Lamar blends this track into two different parts covering their own themes.
The first opens up with a reflection on his success in the game and the tropes of his lifestyle since. The beat is serene with harmonizing back-vocalists and supports the meditative bars he spits.
“30 millions later, my future favors/The legendary status of a hip-hop rhyme savior.”
As the track transitions into its second part, the beat gradually begins to form into a raucous affair.
Lamar delivers an onslaught of devastation directed to his rival, Drake. He dissects him with each bar like a mortician to a cadaver. He then points his wrath towards Donald Trump where he comically refers to him as a “chump.” The track closes out with Lamar warning his subjects that his next album beckons.
“You know what time it is, ante up, this is in forever/Y’all got ’til April the 7th to get ya’ll shit together.”
It’s time to strap in folks, Lamar is ready to grace us all with a new LP that should cause 2017 to spontaneously combust. It’s been two years since To Pimp a Butterfly . Last years B-Side EP, Untitled/Unmastered , served as a bridge to tide us over. Now we anxiously wait for that looming date, April the 7. Hoping for another masterpiece from the venerable and unquestioned king of modern rap.