– blkcory
I don’t know if you’ve been living under a rock or just don’t have internet access but Kendrick Lamar put out “The Heart Pt. 5” on Sunday and you know what that means right?! A Kendrick Lamar album is coming…as in tonight fam.
In my limited research, I haven’t seen any other prominent rap names targeting a May 13th release date besides Kendrick. My theory is that Kendrick Lamar might be hip-hop’s current boogeyman and nobody really wants to deal with this guy. Forget album sales, you’re probably not going to out-rap Kendrick Lamar from front to back on your own album. Now, there might be very few exceptions to this rule, but not many. Anyways, in anticipation of his final album with TDE, I thought I’d talk about “The Heart Pt.5” music video and some of my favourite bars from the record.
Fam, I didn’t even know what a deepfake was until I started writing this. I thought it was just a buzzword on Twitter but nah, apparently all the face morphing stuff in this video is what deepfakes are. The man said “he is all of us” and then I watched this man’s face turn into Jussie Smollett. All the face changes catch you off guard the first time you watch it but with the bars he’s spitting, it invokes some thought the second time around.
“Niggas goin’ to work and sellin’ work, late for work
Workin’ late, prayin’ for work, but he on paperwork
That’s the culture”
Ever since I first heard “22 Two’s” I’ve been a fan of when rappers will use the same word multiple times in different ways. No exception here. He keeps going back to it being a part of the culture and the reality as this is, he’s not wrong. A lot of the emotion we love in hip-hop comes from a real place or time in people’s lives. Even the painful ones.
“I done seen niggas do seventeen, hit the halfway house
Get out and get his brains blown out, lookin’ to buy some weed
Car wash is played out, new GoFundMe accounts’ll proceed
A brand-new victim’ll shatter those dreams, the culture”
The downtime did not dull this man’s pen at all. The way this guy can go from making you feel what he’s saying to literally picturing it in your head is hip-hop at its finest.
“And to the killer that sped up my demise
I forgive you, just know your soul’s in question
I seen the pain in your pupil when that trigger had squeezed
And though you did me gruesome, I was surely relieved
I completed my mission, wasn’t ready to leave
But fulfilled my days, my Creator was pleased”
Yeah having these bars go off while the Nipsey deepfake is on screen got me, I won’t lie. I sat there and was like “nah this is why people don’t want smoke* with Kendrick”. You think you figured the man out and then he raps from the perspective of the late Nipsey Hussle. Rappers aren’t doing this at this skill level regularly man.
All in all, “The Heart Pt.5” is another installment in the series that does not disappoint and if this is how he’s rapping, his album, “Mr. Morale and & Big Steppers” likely won’t disappoint either.
Glossary:
Smoke – to have a problem or issue with someone that may or may not result in violence
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