The Witzard

View Original

Warp Records Presents: Flying Lotus & Kendrick Lamar - "Never Catch Me" (Electro-Jazz Fusion)


Flying Lotus' latest Warp Records-released creation, You're Dead! features a wide array of contributions from an unlikely gamut of collaborators including Kendrick Lamar, Snoop Dogg, Jazz pianist Herbie Hancock, Angel Deradoorian, frequent collaborator Thundercat, and even Lotus' own rapping alter-ego Captain Murphy; but according to a flurry of late night Tweets the other night, for whatever reasons, additional tracks recorded with super-star guests Pharrell, Chance The Rapper, Mac Miller, and supplementary Kendrick Lamar material were ultimately scrapped. Aside from dwelling on what could have been... Flying Lotus unleashed the first Lamar-assisted single from You're Dead!, "Never Catch Me" nearly one week prior to the album's release, last Wednesday, October 1st. It's an oddly heartwarming life-affirming, death-defying clip, which only showcases a brief milli-second glimpse of Steven Ellison (Lotus) himself, who's quietly seated at the funeral mass of two young children.


Director Hiro Murai has managed to create a brilliant music video treatment, which perfectly suits "Never Catch Me"'s jittery piano-laden beat; "I can see the darkness in me and it's quite amazing / Life and death is no mystery and I wanna taste it," Kendrick Lamar ferociously raps as our two life-less corpses miraculously rise from the dead. None of the seated church on-lookers seem to notice the morbid/awesome event that just occurred right before their eyes, as the kids dance and twitch down the length of the aisle along with Lotus' infectious beat, fleeing their own Requiem Mass. Bursting out into the sunlight once again, they perform a quasi-choreographed dance routine outside the church in front of a group of school children, yet still, no one appears to notice the two undead adolescents; before long, they hop into the back of their own hertz, in which they decide to go for a triumphant "joy ride," ultimately cruising off into the sunset as "Never Catch Me" abruptly fades out. Flying Lotus' genre-blending 19-track Electro-Jazz Fusion album, You're Dead! is now available in a number of assorted audio formats on Warp Records.