Alexandre Moors & The Little Homies Present: Kendrick Lamar & Ron Isley - "i" (TDE)
"It's music that's gonna thrive in the club... it's not anything like what you've heard from Kendrick before. It's not like anything else that's out there right now," Hot 97 DJ Peter Rosenberg ambiguously lamented about a fragmented chunk of Kendrick Lamar's highly anticipated, as-yet-untitled forthcoming third album. Lamar recently told Rolling Stone that he's recorded "a bunch of tracks" with illusive super-producer Dr. Dre, Pharrell, Rahki, and in-house TDE production team Digi+Phonics. While he additionally referred to the album as "aggression and emotion"-filled, lead single "i" is a light-hearted, self-affirming affair. It seems as though Kendrick Lamar even recruited bass virtuosos Thundercat to add an appended Funked up bass intro onto "i" for its recent Alexandre Moors & The Little Homies directed video treatment. "Stop! Stop! We talkin' about peace... a piece of yours... a piece of mine... a piece of mind... one nation, under a groove," a dapper white suit-clad man feverishly exclaims, as two men start brawling amongst dancing club-goers whilst Lamar getting his hair braided; atop Rahki's stuttering Isley Brothers-indebted neck-snapping groove, he abruptly starts dancing/walking his way towards the front door.
It's nearly a milli-second glimpse, but "Dr. Funkenstein" himself, George Clinton is seated by the door with a copy of his premier, rather long-winded, memoir: Brothas Be, Yo Like George, Ain't That Funkin' Kinda Hard on You? in hand. "And I love myself / The world is a ghetto with big guns and picket signs / I love myself / But it can do what it want whenever it want, I don't mind," Kendrick Lamar ferociously raps as he dances through the city streets, a trove-full of jubilant club-goers in toe, as they weave in and out of a barrage of real life injustices. Juxtaposed against the impending daylight, "i" suddenly morphs into an echo-voiced almost Chopped-N-Screwed ditty, Lamar leaves an impromptu dance party and jumps into the back of Ron Isley's slick purple-hued Cadillac; wailing his impassioned verses out of the car's rear window, nearly splattering onto the freeway below. "i" speeds back up to nearly double-time syncopation, amongst blaring car horns, as Isley's Cadillac pulls back up to the same club wherein the video began, in fact, quite similarly, as an entranced Kendrick Lamar gets his hair re-braided following the night's events.