Now with ZIP File. Download: Previously: Passion of the Weiss Top Hip Hop Songs —,,,,, Yes, “Hot Cheetos & Takis” is a real song by children about two different spicy snacks that aren’t available in all markets. And yes, it is a real song about spicy snacks that is rapped by children as part of an after-school project and not a real band or rap group or some avatar for coolness. But still, it is a real song that is actually enjoyable to listen to outside of the first time you ever heard it. Basically, what I am trying to say is that this isn’t “Gangnam Style,” which I’m pretty sure was created in a viral marketing lab by the same people who invented Lays potato chips and Betty White. “HCAT,” as the kids call it, has 4.5 million YouTube views and has been heard in a non-computer setting once.

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“Gangnam Style” has 962 million views and will be torturing me during NBA game breaks for the next 15 years, has led to a full-on controversy for the artist and is honestly still catchy no matter how many times you hear it but come on. One of these songs is a great piece of music by some children having fun, the other is by an American-trained Korean guy who was sick of the excess and commercialism of a certain area of his homeland — and the wrong one became the world’s biggest viral sensation.

But you know, who’s to say being overshadowed by Psy is a bad thing for the YN Rich Kids? Maybe this is an Eric Bledsoe kind of thing where a talented youngster is allowed to develop out of the limelight until he/they is a fully-formed beast, or maybe I just forgot what website I’m writing for and made a reference to a basketball player who is still kind of off the radar.

Whatever the case, we shouldn’t forget about “Hot Cheetos and Takis” just because it dropped in the summer of Psy. It’s still great and it’s still fun and it’s still worth showing someone who’s never seen it. Plus, 10 years from now, you can say you remember the world’s biggest rapper back when he was still Dame Jones of the YN Rich Kids and not the next Method Man. Also, I am still hungry where them Cheetos? — The weed song is a well-loved rap trope, and “Full of Dat Weed” might be this year’s best addition to the canon.

Producer Kuya Beats scatters soft, cool synths over deep bass swells and busy drums, leaving the track wide open for Bay Area MCs Kool John, DB tha General, and Plane Jane to talk shit. The trio fills it admirably, playing nicely off each another in markedly different styles. Kool John sets the table with his blunted, low-key drawl, DB tha General darts around the beat in a nasally staccato, and Plane Jane attacks with bouncy, forceful bars. Kuya’s production brings out the best in DB, in particular — he reigns in his typically unhinged delivery to great effect.

The get-fucked-up anthem lives and dies by its hook, and this one is sticky as hell. Kuya snatches one of the many quotables from Young Bleed’s “How Ya Do Dat” and flips it into a dumb-out gem, infectious and purpose-built for repeated hollering. Burn one, or two, or six, and listen loud.

— “Twitch” comes nestled in Winter In Prague, Vince Staples’ tape with producer Michael Uzowuru, standing as yet another stellar example of two dudes dudes vibing together, making rap magic. Uzowuru’s beat admittedly does most of the legwork here (kilters on off, whirs on unlimited), but as Vince kicks his one-and-done verse you start to notice a sneaky lyricism to his near Poison “Fallen Angel”-level tale of a girl gone wild and then deeply sad. “Become a ho” becomes “bungalow” bleeds into “bunch of dough,” and suddenly his poor subject has a kid and is shacked up with some dude who can’t stand her. Tyler, The Creator has gone on record saying he actively dislikes Staples, and through the lens of “Twitch” the difference between the pair of young rappers becomes glaring. At his best, Tyler uses his words like wrecking balls, every syllable having the potential to destroy. “Twitch,” meanwhile, is a slow burn. It’s my sister.

Roc Marciano’s sophomore album, Reloaded, opens with a scene from “Pimps Up, Hoes Down,” in which King James is crowned “Pimp of the Year” at Chicago’s 24th annual Players Ball. Humbled by the prestigious award, he downplays the monetary perks offered by his profession and insists that “it’s really all about the respect.” The quote leading into “Tek to a Mack” is a respectable mission statement, but earnestness is a virtue better suited for Roc’s Metal Clergy counterpart.

Moral compasses are intended to guide the actions of law-abiding citizens, not the itinerary of underworld megalomaniacs. Marciano’s work is often accused of being regressive, but revivalists aren’t supposed to carve out their own signature sound. “Tek to a Mack” bears evidence of his artistic growth since 2010’s Marcberg. The writing is brilliantly facetious.

Every fourth bar is punctuated by a dynamic stab from an unidentifiable instrument, at which point it’s difficult know whether to smirk or grimace at the prospect of Roc pushing your yarmulke entirely rearward. Time Crisis 2nd Strike Hd Ipa Downloads. It’s the most infectious gun show since Biggie unveiled eleven Mac-11’s at Madison Square Garden. You can’t find this pimping in a pamphlet. In light of the cautious acclaim garnered by Reloaded, perhaps he should have tapped his other favorite documentary, American Pimp, for the album’s introduction. There’s one particular scene where the Hughes Brothers encourage their subjects to make the distinction between authentic pimping and the diluted brand of flash peddling purported by Hollywood executives. Over a time-compression montage featuring Huggy Bear, Kramer, Eazy E, Velvet Jones and Conan O’Brian’s Pimp Bot 5000 portraying pimps as witless, foolhardy caricatures, Mike “Rosebudd” Thompson shares his conspiracy theory. “They have to include that little punk shit to make the pimping look raggedy,” he explains.

“Otherwise, they’re just applauding pimping and libel to be turning some young bitches out!” For Marciano, buzz words such as “traditional” and “boom-bap” fall under the umbrella of punk shit. The sound of pure triumph. Doing two awesome things: AT THE SAME DAMN TIME. There are those who have touted Future’s auto-tuning inventiveness — the fact that his album is as cohesive as they come and a more interesting than it has any right to be, as evidence of the fact that the ATLien deserves his propers. But for me, “Same Damn Time,” and any other Future song that I can get into, is about the simplest pleasures. This one is an ode to a drugged out, almost childlike astonishment at one’s capabilities. You mean I can put bells and brass, the aural signifiers of success on a song, at the same damn time?

You mean I can cook up drugs, and be on the phone, at the same damn time? In the past few years, a lot of rappers have made songs in which they list off the pleasures of being rappers, and all the beautiful things they own, and all the wonderful activities they get to partake in, because, you know, they’re rappers. But I can’t think of one other song in which the artist in question is so delighted, jubilant, nay, ecstatic, to be experiencing what he’s experiencing. It makes me outrageously envious of Future and almost disturbingly happy for Future. And, believe it or not, I can feel both emotions simultaneously.

— How did we get here? Here being planet Hip-Hop circa 2012. Where has the underground gone? MF Doom is giving interviews. The dropped a piece on Chief Keef before the release of his first proper album.

And even gave El-P and Killer Mike a full spread. What happened to “unsigned hype,” both the and what that title connotes? Have the blogs killed it? Does that make me complicit?

Are we supporting the artist or enabling the addict? There’s not enough space here to get into any of this stuff.

But you get the idea: “Zero Dark Thirty” makes me ask a lot of questions. It’s what art (and artists) is supposed to do. I hope you have many of the same questions. But above all else, I’m glad these things matter to Aes.

Deciphering Aesop Rock lyrics, especially those of “Zero Dark Thirty,” is like reading Eliot’s “The Wasteland.” You don’t grasp everything on the first, second, or tenth sitting. You step back, walk away, think about whatever stuck to your gray matter, and revisit. And ultimately, if you’re not well-versed in all things rap music, well acquainted with the canon, then you will be utterly lost, left alone in the post-apocalyptic world dodging “mothmen munching textiles.” Why else would Rock release a series of videos explaining the tracks (some more than others) on Skelethon prior to its release? He is tired of being misunderstood (see the myriad of explanations for lines on ).

If I could venture a guess, I’d put my money on the fact that “Zero Dark Thirty” is Rock’s confession, the verbalization of one unconscious and yet all consuming burning thought over clattering drums: He knows he is alone. The “huntable surplus” is no more. He is the invisible man, scribbling away underground and bouncing off of the billion bulbs blaring on the walls. Is it any wonder why the track samples P.E.’s “Public Enemy No.

1?” Aes Rock is the of the underground bubble of the early-aughts. Where is his New Yorker piece?

Maybe they’ve already asked. And maybe he doesn’t want one.

Regardless, he’s grown, lyrically, sonically, and conceptually on each and every record since then. “Zero Dark Thirty” is where you begin. The rest of the record(s) waits for you to listen. “Anything less would be ri-god-damn-diculous.” — At this point, French Montana is the rapping equivalent of DJ Khaled.

I can’t think of another artist more dependent on guest cameos. Luckily, for this (almost) song of the year contender, everyone brings their A game. Ross and Frenchie’s verses mirror one another. They are slow and plodding in a way that suggests a boss’ confidence, with punchlines worth dropping out the beat for. Account Cracker Weepcraft Register. The 2 Live Crew sample that opens “Pop That Pussy” comes off manic, breathless — a beat that opens at 11 and never really let’s up throughout French Montana’s instant stripclub anthem classic. Rick Ross is Galactus, lording over the proceedings with his gut bucket baritone and it’s very hard not to listen to him chanting “WORK” like a monk, over and over without getting motivated to go out and open a business or fuck a stripper.

Drake, who didn’t release an album this year but contented himself with showing up seemingly everywhere to steal songs from some of rap’s biggest names, makes the bold decision to rap on beat, and in this syrup saturated company he’s practically Busta Rhymes in quadruple time. The approaches are studies in contrast. French and Ross sound nearly careless, the verses are exercises in brushing the shoulders of their mink coats. Drake is unapologetically hungry and borderline desperate to assert his dominance, and he’s incredibly successful in accomplishing that goal. The craft and emphasis in every punchline connects and it is an all out assault, a clinic in writing a successful big time clear channel radio cameo in 2012.

Which brings us to Wayne, still stuck in the doldrums of a post incarceration hangover, this is as bad as we’ve heard from him. The entire affair is utterly forgettable and had this song been a minute and a half shorter I’m pretty sure it would’ve landed about 5 spots higher. But yeah for the sheer kinetic energy wafting off the production here this has to be an all time DJ go-to for turning a party into a ratchet ass episode of Cops. It will be inspiring booty dropping the world over long past 2012. — Abe Beame “Hookers at the Point” spares no detail in mocking hookers and johns.

Action Bronson gleefully depicts the the prostitute’s transaction with evident delight in every awkward, pitiful moment surrounding his star hooker, Cindy. It’s disgusting and I’ve struggled to identify why I like this song beyond surface-level reasons like these: • Bronson is a great storyteller and challenges himself to do something interesting with the narrative. First, he introduces us to Cindy, the neighborhood whore and quickly sets the tone (“That’s what she gets for being a whore, though!”). Next, he shifts character and becomes the hooker by hitching up his voice – and not the powerful, morally vexing woman from Kendrick Lamar’s “Sing About Me”, mind you. Bronson’s character is a vicious caricature.

Then Bronson becomes the equally pitiful john, noting his second character shift by changing his voice again and opening with “Dos en el morning”, because Dano, the pathetic Bronx truck driver, is half Puerto Rican. • Party Supplies’ beat is a left-field stroke of brilliance. The sparse two note beat follows minimalist classics like “Tried By 12” and “Brooklyn Zoo”. It’s functional too in that the lolling melody makes you feel like you’re staring at the minute hand of your watch, waiting to find out if you have an STD. The stillness makes Bronson’s voice and lyrics that much more stark. That should be reason enough to laud “Hookers at the Point” while rationalizing the vileness as a quirk of Bronson’s sense of humor.

But I think there’s a perverse charm as well. Action Bronson, himself a tubby oddball, seems to harbor an affection for his pathetic characters. He peels up the city’s nasty underside for everyone to see and has a great big laugh about it, because he’s one of the freaks too. The first time I saw him, he was in the studio with Statik Selektah while Statik and Termanology live-streamed the making of an EP. He introduced himself to the camera with a feigned rapper tough guy act and hyped his single, “Get Off My PP” to scattered laughter. Then he went in the booth and recorded a verse that made me check for him ever since.

— Andre 3000 has popped up now and again since The Love Below to remind us that he deserves his place in the canon (most notably, to my mind, on “”), but he just can’t bring himself to make an album, and on the best veteran collaboration of the year, he explains why: “I hated all the attention so I ran from itI’m a grown-ass kid, you know ain’t never cared about no damn money, Why do we try so hard to be stars, just to dodge com(m)e(n)ts?” I don’t want fame, I don’t care about fortune, and I don’t want you guys talking about me—what’s the point of working? Funny thing is though, Andre just can’t help himself.

And when he says that he used to be a way better writer and a rapper, near the beginning of his verse, he’s lying. Since he stopped making music consistently, every time he finds himself on wax, dude murders everyone, delivering theses at top-speed, the most comprehensive verses being made right now. As even our favorite rappers resort to lists, prepackaged slick phrases and basic storytelling to fill their bars up, Andre is still telling it like it is, fast or slow, always nuanced and always in keeping with the basic subject matter of his song. He raps like no one else does. He raps like no one else can. Maybe the King of the Hill actually needs to live on the goddamn hill, but, seemingly whenever he wants to, Andre can retake his spot at the top, and he doesn’t ever even have to push. — It begins with a gang initiation and ends with one of Beth Gibbons’ most frightening vocal performances.

It features Osama Bin Laden, burgundy blood, and a female cop frisking our narrator’s lady friend. For God’s sake, it’s titled after the founder and inaugural year of the Crips. Schoolboy Q may have the reputation of being the wild, hot-headed gunslinger of the Black Hippy collective, he may not have learned too much in school, but dammit if he can’t paint an incredibly vivid picture. He had to have at least gone to art class. Kendrick gets all the ink as Black Hippy’s poetic visionary, but Verse One of “Raymond 1969” is just as poetic and harrowing as Lamar’s best work, as Q focuses on both the still and moving moments of the aforementioned gang initiation. A twelve-year-old hits a laced blunt and stages an execution and a home invasion.

It’s a brutal and chilling moment, which only amplifies upon learning the reward for taking human lives: “Didn’t get a comma nor a sentence for the karma/Just an imaginary stripe so he can hold his head in honor.” The remaining two verses are a melange of scattershot images, each no more or less important than the last. The Portishead sample only lets up at the end and the lives at stake are never spared. Q never apologizes for habits or contradictions. He believes in having a moral code, but he sees the fear in his own mother’s eyes when she looks at him. “Raymond 1969” represents the Los Angeles rappers tried to warn you about before the Rodney King riots. It represents the parts of Los Angeles that are still this way, the parts that aren’t blinded by the glitz of Hollywood or the shiny, free-trade coffee bean of Silverlake.

But they’re not worried about what kind of threat they face at home. They’re worried about Osama.

— “Lately I’m getting the feeling that I came in at the end,” Tony Soprano said once. “The best is over.” Rick Ross is the last wheezing gasp of an era gone, one final fat motherfucker trying to recreate the glory days of lavish crime narratives and the even more lavish luxury rewards. He started off a fraud, a bit player trying to hustle his out-of-breath gasps into something more than a collection of two bit Miami misdemeanors. When he eventually won hearts, it’s also because he won minds; he faked it so hard that we decided he had to have made it. Maybach Music Group was once a brand of fatuously illegitimate opulence — rap’s bootleg Louis handbag — but Ross no longer conjures even that tacky glee.

“Stay Schemin’” is cold and joyless, a creeping, crotchety synth line augmented with what passes as capos in these end times: French Montana fanuting his way into dictionaries and uh Drake. No wonder Rozay can barely think of more to say in his verse than “fuck it.” Even Drizzy’s stupidly sexist opening gripe — “It bothers me when the gods get to acting like the broads” — conveys the sense that something good is over and all we can do now is scrabble amidst the scraps. French Montana might have that Ghost, but his verse is a weary one about the labor of moving work, not the rewards. No wonder that sing-song hook sounds weary; the scheming is never-ending and the returns ever diminishing. — Keen observers might note that this is the THIRD time I’ve written about this song. That’s gotta mean something, right? I’m a busy person; so there’s no way I’d devote 3 different posts to ONE Chief Keef song if it wasn’t good – in a numb, mindless sorta way – but good nonetheless.

“Love Sosa” stands on its own merits and don’t bother waiting on another backhanded compliment because I’m out of those. And that’s not because I’m scared of dirty, dreadlocked 17 year olds.

But before we get to Keef, let’s discuss Young Chop a bit. It’s fair to say this is song that separated Young Chop from the legions of Lex Luger imitators still cashing rap checks in 2012. Chop’s “B.M.F.”/”Hard In Da Paint” moment if you will. This hypnotic concoction of twinkly cocaine synths, ominous horror strings and drums de jour provided the perfect platform for Chief Keef to calmly mumble and chant his way on to many playlists this year.

I think I tweeted about this song for a month straight after the snippet leaked. And even better is the fact that unlike Keef’s other big song this year, “I Don’t Like,” Love Sosa is idiosyncratic enough to ensure that no one will be riding this wave under the guise of “giving” the kid a good look. Simply put, before Keef, there was (is?) Waka.

Before Waka, there was Lil Jon and before Lil Jon there was Tim Dog. While that isn’t the most chronologically detailed or accurate goon rap timeline, the point I’m making is that there’ll always be a lane for youth powered aggro rap. Each half-generation probably gets the rappers they deserve and World Star Hip-Hop suggests that this is one unwashed ass generation. Keef is just the next up in a long-standing trend and Love Sosa stands as his magnum opus, as well as one of the best songs of 2012.

Here’s to Keef never working with B.o.B. You don’t have to love Sosa, but you will hail, or at least, acknowledge the Chief. — I really want to know where these guys are rolling to that night in the “Bird On A Wire” video. Jody Highroller, Bronson and the gang are leisurely strolling down the street, brown bagged malt liquor in hand, a couple of unlit spliffs in the mouth, delving deep into the night as the sun comes down in the City of Angels.

It’s game time in Los Angeles and the boys are coming out to play. All we really know for sure is that something epic is about to happen. I meanthey are rolling with Simon Rex and the Alchemist. It’s definitely on tonight. “Bird On A Wire” is the bro anthem of the year. It captures the carefree spirit of a night out on the town with your boys when the feeling of invincibility washes over you and anything can happen.

Harry Fraud’s spacey, psychedelic beat sounds like summer twilight and provides the proper atmospherics for the duo. The unlikely union of Action Bronson and Riff Raff have a yin and yang alchemy that simply compliments the other. Bronson, the novelistic underground rap foodie, is the duo’s leading man as he drops an instantly iconic verse dedicated to the tailor made leather suits, karate and the other finer things in life.

Meanwhile, Riff Raff, the drawling quasi-novelty rapper with a penchant for the absurd, proves he can be more than an ironic fashion victim — with a slyly understated verse aspiring to better days and sunny weather. It’s a combination that could have easily ended in disaster, but proves that opposites can make beautiful music together. On some Jodeci shit. — Don’t like Grime? Too bad, it’s already heresort of. Because if London’s alien futurism was too bizarre the first time around, rap has slowly caught up by increasing the tempo, using weirder and weirder synths and encouraging emcees to snort a shedload of drugs. T.I even signed Chipmunk, although I don’t think Americans have to worry much when it comes to foreign emcees stealing their jerbs.

At least not while Danny Brown’s around. Tearing into UK producer Darq E. Freaker’s chopped up organs with all the fury of a banshee, Brown introduced a much lighter, party-oriented persona on this one after last year’s dire XXX. Surprisingly, this approached proved to be just as successful, inciting crowds to riot, bloggers to blog and just about everyone to wonder what the hell was going on because let’s face itthis song is weird.

Who the hell tells girls to “shake their asses for a hipster n*gga” while endorsing PBR over a beat fast enough to cause seizures in the elderly? And that’s not even counting the chorus’ blatant drug endorsements which make his previous habbits look tame in comparison.

The entire track is a loud, obnoxious assault on good taste and common sense, accompanied by a video straight out of Tipper Gore’s worse nightmare. Danny Brown may have previously called himself the hybrid but this evil combination of Eminem, Rick James and Tempa T was something else entirely. Re-wind selecta! — We don’t always reach a consensus on which song gets to hold the banger of the summer belt each year and if I recall correctly, I expressed a great deal of panic at 2012’s early candidates for banger of the year. I mean, people were seriously tryna sell me on that “Cashin’ Out” shit being the club banger of the year.

But I needn’t have fretted so much. Between Yeezy, 2Chainz & Future we would have been just fine in 2012, but one man gazed across the desolate rap landscape from some random hotel room equipped with a home studio and decided that we could do so much better. That man was Juicy J.

You peasants should be thankful and I get the sense that you are – after all, “Bandz” is Juicy J’s first solo appearance on the Billboard charts. It’s still a bit difficult to fathom how this song became the behemoth it was in 2012.

It wasn’t the guest appearances; Lil Chainz and 2Waynes weren’t on the original version of the track and based on the ever-reliable Twitter charts, “Bandz” was well on its way to blowing up before they got added. Maybe it was the Mike Will Made It production – after all, he had an excellent year making hits for everyone from the aforementioned 2Chainz to Future and even a bonafide popstar in Rihanna. But the masses don’t live by beats alone – no matter how trippy, martial and catchy they are. And it certaintly wasn’t Juicy J’s alignment with Wiz’s Taylor Gang. Wiz can’t even make himself a hit these days. So why “Bandz?” All those factors probably contributed to the answer in some small way, but ultimately, the lion’s share of the lean and pills should go to Juicy J and his pedigree.

The truth of the matter is that his (and by extension, Three 6 Mafia’s) highly influential style of catchy hook and verse chanting alike has always been chart-ready. Long before synths started ruling our rap airwaves, that Memphis shit always sounded as if it was designed to rule our ears and asses. I mean, who doesn’t dig a good chant? Chants are awesome.

Like cross-culturally n’shit. Chanting is good money everywhere – from America to Papua New Guinea. Add in clapping and we’re outta here. Its the most communal bonding ass shit ever. I’d make a list of instances in which chants come in handy, but I’d be here all day. Chants are that important and awesome because they appeal to some base innate instinct within everyone – even people who can’t twerk. And Juicy J has known this for almost 20 years.

And so it came to be in 2012 that we bonded over a chant expressing an undeniable truth about one of our most esteemed sub-species: the stripper. Women want to be her, men want to throw hard earned money at her and Juicy J provided the druggy soundtrack to these respective transformations and transactions as only he could.

And we liked it. Because it’s the truth – strippers will do stripper shit like twerking and pussy-popping, i.e., dancing, when you toss copious amounts of cash in their general direction. Because we’re all primal, idiotic beings that worship cash and love strippers. Don’t deny this inalienable truth. That would be some un-American, heathen shit. So be grateful, because Bandz was probably the soundtrack to 80% of the bad decisions you made in 2012.

You know, all that ratchet pussy you couldn’t say no to either — Our own childhoods are strangers. While snippets of moments and faces remain, half remembered, second hand events and anecdotes stay with us: the sense of wonder, confusion, fear, animal instinct and unbridled emotion. But they’re all lost when self awareness dawns. In Hip Hop this problem has been often remedied largely through sentimental detail. Hardships: Sharing a bed with your young relatives who have yet to master bladder control, the embarrassment of being teased by your P.S. Classmates as the poor kid with hand-me-downs, the ass whoopings you would receive from your surly grandma. Joys: The unexpected moments of kindness, games you’d play with your friends in the streets you grew up in, the rare family get together.

But it comes with a degree of context, a reminiscence. Enter Kendrick Lamar, a bright young artist who made a name for himself by addressing many of hip hop’s well worn themes in ways that defy it’s established tropes and archetypes. And “Cartoons & Cereal” might be his masterpiece to date. Of course, Kendrick covered issues of frustrated, alienated youth before with his stirring,. But he was occasionally accused of tackling the confused, violent and misogynistic tendencies of Regan babies with a heavy hand. The knowing elusiveness of “Cartoons & Cereal” is testament to his growth as a songwriter, and on its own merits, a fucking incredible song. I’s my favorite song of this very good year in Rap because it raises more questions than it answers.

It brings into focus the challenge of calibrating a moral compass when your role models, authority figures and heroes are characterized as criminals by a country that thinks of poor, desperate teenagers that way. And the “good guys”, the paragons of virtue in the society you’re confined by are regularly seen beating the shit out of your friends and neighbors on the evening news. It communicates the frustration and disorientation that comes with growing up in a predatory concrete jungle. Kendrick playing the desensitized latchkey kid raised by a TV set and ducking stray shots through the living room window. It offers no easy solutions to the problems that come hand in hand with such an upbringing. The structure is as brilliant and challenging as its scope.

7 minutes, with a few Kendrick verses sprinkled sporadically around bridges and hooks, including an affecting snippet of a Gunplay verse that buries the track. And what a verse. What an inspired choice. Gunplay is in full Big Rube mode here, balancing Kendrick’s brilliantly intricate wordplay with tertiary, 4,000 year old wisdom. It’s a role Big Boi perfected with Andre 16 years ago, the street corner preacher to Andre’s precocious, existential introvert and for this one shining moment, it’s arguable he even manages to improve upon it. As for Kendrick’s part, the beauty lies in how difficult the whole thing is to pin down. He crafts two perfect, labyrinthine verses that function as Rube Goldberg devices: impossible to unpack in a single listen and filled with gems in its nooks and crannies.

Bleak observations and images are scattershot from producer THC’s ticking hi-hats, alien rattles and murky spaceship synths. Are the reflections his own or is the whole thing impressionistic? These questions are nagging, but largely unimportant. The opening salvo of Gunplay’s verse is isolated and strewn through the song because more than anything else it conveys a desire to relate experience, to put who you are, what you feel and what you’ve been through into words that can be understood and related to by everyone.

“Cartoons & Cereal’s” reflections are universal because they’re so inscrutable. The song is like Kendrick’s coyote in the moon, as large and ominous and ultimately impossible to fully process as the formative years that shadow us throughout our lives.