Right as the 2024 MTV VMAs kicked off, Kendrick Lamar made sure chaos was afoot with the surprise release of a new track on Instagram.
Hear the new song below. Notably, its arrival comes amid ongoing debate over the recent announcement that he would be headlining next year's Apple Music Super Bowl Halftime Show.
Super Bowl LIX is set for New Orleans next February. Despite this, Lil Wayne is not the halftime headliner. This hasn’t set well with many fans and artists alike, including Birdman and Nicki Minaj, among others. Drake himself chimed in, albeit without any actual remarks, by way of some timely Weezy pics he shared to his IG several days after Kendrick’s Super Bowl announcement. Meanwhile, Jay-Z’s name was widely mentioned amid speculation about why Wayne, who has publicly expressed hopes of securing the gig, hadn’t been given the honor instead.
While Kendrick, whose historic back-and-forth with Drake defined much of this year, didn’t directly address any of that in the new song, he still brought a fiery perspective to an already busy evening.
"I think it’s time for me to watch the party die," Kendrick raps in the track’s chorus. This could be taken as a dig at how he views the lyrical content of, yes, the 6 God. Alternatively, this could be an assessment of how he sees the musical landscape at large.
The Drake-focused interpretation is further supported in the opening verse of the track, which wasn’t initially released with an official title:
If you parade in gluttony without giving truth to the youth, the graveyard is company
Just tell us what casket to choose
They party more than bitches, tell me what are you working for?
They glorify scamming, you get chipped over this credit card
Right after, Kendrick laments unnamed individuals who, in his words, "party more than bitches," leading him to question what, exactly, "you’re working for." Elsewhere, the "Not Like Us" chart-topper offers empathy for women tasked with dealing with "the clown and nerd shit." The late Nipsey Hussle also gets a mention, like so:
Would trade all of y'all for Nip, I can't be proud of you n***as
The last time we were writing about IG-dropped tracks from Kendrick, we were deep in the thick of his and Drake’s charts-dominating beef. Will this latest surprise drop lead to a similarly relentless exchange of diss tracks, or even simply more new music from Kendrick ahead of an expected new album, his first since Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers? Stay tuned.
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