2018 Roundup // Kendrick Lamar, Jay Rock, Future, James Blake - King's Dead

2018 is coming to a close and we here at We Hate Music would like to highlight some of the records that slipped through the cracks. Happy Holidays and hope you enjoy.

January 11, 2018 - Top Dog/Aftermath/Interscope Records

This year has had mostly bad music, much of it unnoticed, and much of it ignored—some of it unignorable. It’s not unlike most years. It’s also bore some of my favorite albums out of the last five years (Steal Chickens from Men & the Future from God). Admittedly we’ve missed a lot of good music too. But I didn’t miss ‘King’s Dead’ on the Black Panther Soundtrack. Un-topped by any other solitary song, yet stuck in a hodgepodge of all contributing artists’ less-than-best work, ‘King’s Dead’ offers up the strengths of Kendrick Lamar, Jay Rock, Future, and James Blake.

Alternately subtle and intricate with syncopating switching time signatures, Mike Will Made It and Teddy Walton provide a haunting, gassed up back drop of bent notes and dissonant chords. Well-crafted to compliment rather than distract, the producers do what any excellent producers ought to do, show restraint. The composition is sparse and unassuming—offering up immense space to the Kenny, Futuro, and Mr. Rock.

It’s a song that doesn’t stop building momentum with endlessly climactic moments up until the finish. Starting with excellent ideas like making one-hundred-thousand dollars and then freaking it, and following up with the strong five-hundred-thousand dollars and then freaking that. The simplest wants of the heart, fiercely articulated in these opening bars. Kendrick mostly establishes the tone in the first verse—he's better than us. But actually, his real goal is to assure us that our attention and goal orientation is better turned elsewhere; probably by focusing on our communities via reinvestment and emphasizing subaltern perspectives. But if for some reason you don’t believe him—

Jay Rock is going to come in and explain a little further. The hypest man, Mr. Party Voice. “Yeah, it’s like that lil’ bitch.” In such great company we are all lil’ bitch. I’m flattered, but you take it how you like. As a MVP he gets no sleep and he doesn’t like that. Constantly on the move and organizing his life and his gang and his influence, which is massive, Jay Rock needs one of us lil’ bitches to “bust that open, [he] want that Ocean, yeah, that bite back.” For him, all this vodka is relaxation, but for us unequipped and not adequately charged and subsequently drained with and by such massive moves, we’ll need “two life jackets lil’ bitch,” because the Ocean does bite back. We are all so psyched to see these gentlemen party, but the gentlemen want to remind us that they only party like this because life is hell and they’ve done something to embroil themselves in massive amounts of life. The party is how they survive, and what kills them. But it must be done. They are saving us from the party, by partying themselves. They are party Christs. The remainder of Jay Rock’s verse is a gentle pat on the shoulder for us—he doesn’t know us, he’s just being real. And his click and queen are always ready. That’s tiresome. For everyone involved. I’m not often ready, but I’m occasionally well-rested. It's a tradeoff.

And now it’s time for the most secular of the rappers to tell you his tale. It’s nearly Canterbury in its structure. First the party monk Kendrick, then the knight Jay Rock, and third, the secret character, the secularist Future. He seems to be blacking out the most of all of them. Baby mommas beware. Rather baby daddies with cemented or perhaps more tenuous and confusing relationships with their baby mommas beware. Future is sneaking. He seems really pleased. He likes to sneak. He put a Rolls Royce-worth of a watch on his wrist. Once he sneaks, then he freaks. He freaks that baby momma, whoever she is, god bless. Then he goes on to observe her as an item, god un-bless. “I had to make my mind up should I keep it,” he wonders, flippantly.  “La di da di da,” he says. This little perversion of a child’s ditty that Future pulls midway through his verse was the first thing that solidified my interest in this song when I was half-way listening in an Uber. Once he said “motherfuck the law” I was sold. I too feel this way.

Kendrick comes back in with the opening verse and a first-timer is sure to think, “Okay, we’re closing out.”

No. You are not. It’s about to get hot. James Blake lends a hand and switches the tempo up once, then again and the time signature too. Kendrick lets loose his flow, a flow which is intended to shoo you off like the big dumb loveable animal that you and I are. He details in his rapid poetics his search for euphoria his desire to be okay once and for all. This is his final attempt to get you to un-align yourself with the images and the lifestyle these gentlemen embody. “Born warrior, looking for euphoria, but I don’t see it, I don’t feel it.” It’s hollow. The pursuit is hollow. It is not a journey to the center of happiness, but a journey upwards away from the center towards a thicker and thicker crust of being. But it’s not without thrills, nor is it without insights—booyah. Yeah God. ⛰️