King Kendrick Has Returned
When Kendrick Lamar drops not one, but two promotional singles for his upcoming album - you know the world becomes shook. On March 23, Lamar shared an Instagram post with the Roman numeral "IV" before suspiciously deleting it not too long after.
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Later that same night, he drops "The Heart Part 4" and ends it with "Y'all got til April the 7th to get y'all sh*t together" - implying a new album coming soon. This single broke the Internet, with fans worldwide praising Kendrick for his impressive lyricism and beats, and intriguing method of promoting a new album. The song samples "Don't Tell a Lie about Me and I Won't Tell the Truth on You" written by James Joseph Brown Jr and Maloy Roach and performed by James Brown, and "I Love You" by Faith Evans, with fellow sInger Khalid singing uncredited vocals to this ground-breaking song.
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Not too long after (one week later to be exact), he shocked the world yet again with his gripping new single "HUMBLE". With menacing beats from Pluss and Mike WiLL Made-It, he made a poignant and cutting single for all those that deserve to be taken down a notch. He also manages to comment on our society's obsession with Photoshop, making a clear preference to natural looks (especially when it comes to the portrayal of black women in society). The music video accompanying the song also struck many allusions, from "The Last Supper" to classic Catholic iconography to "Being John Malkovich". K Dot skillfully alludes to a span of 2000 years of popular culture, in a perfect example of balancing visual culture with intertexual rap.
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