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We Need Cooler Heads
Kendrick’s latest song takes aim at a new target: the hip-hop influencers pushing propaganda to their audiences.
After news of Kendrick Lamar being tapped to perform at the Super Bowl Halftime Show in New Orleans next year drew questions about why hometown legend Lil Wayne didn’t receive the honor, Akademiks accused Jay-Z (whose Roc Nation produces the event) of a vendetta against Southern rappers, while New Rory & MAL denounced “chess moves” behind the scenes. Further through the looking glass of mainstream rap as both a powerful commercial engine and a bastion for the hedonistic impulses of wealthy men, we remain in need of cooler heads committed to cutting through the daily pageant of posturing and saber rattling, not posting up in the middle of the mess, coaxing out more festering negativity. In its contempt for the landscape of controversy-thirsty hip-hop Hannitys, the first Kendrick Lamar release since “Not Like Us” tells us he will still toss anti-pop curveballs at listeners who wish he’d stop squirming and double down on a more commercial sound — that he doesn’t care if a new song is more of a choppy inside-baseball debate about news aggregation than an attempt at a hit record.
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