SHORT FORM — Nepotism Reaches A New Peak when Keem and Kendrick Link Up
I can’t lie to y’all: if I was rich as shit, I’d be fluent in the art of nepotism. I don’t need all that money for myself. The Strokes came from it, Clairo came from it, it might be possible Beach House* came from it, and when Baby Keem released DIE FOR MY BITCH back in 2019, all everyone could talk about was his ties to Kendrick Lamar (cousins, apparently) and investigate how they were connected and his sudden rise in popularity. But really, who cares for the most part how someone blows up as long as the music is good, right?
(The answer might be yes.)
Baby Keem and Kendrick Lamar are not and will never beat the nepotism allegations, thank fucking god, because this new song, “family ties”, is fucking insane. Post-Black Panther, all we’ve gotten from Kendrick is an announcement for the service company pgLang back in March, and a letter hinting at a final album for Top Dawg Entertainment attributed to “Oklama” (a pseudonym also used for him in the song’s music video) about a week and a half ago, so having a new verse as a lead artist is almost… stomach-churning, at least from the anticipation, and that anticipation only grows since you hear his voice about halfway through the 4-minute song
There are two main staples of Keem’s music: hard-hitting, reverberating drums and an incredibly loud and scratchy voice. It’s a formula that makes him stand out, especially with how atmospheric and enthralling his production ends up becoming, and helps him glide perfectly into the beginning of “family ties”. The horns that start the song are a bit reminiscent of Jay Rock’s single “WIN”, and Baby Keem carries over that same tough, boastful energy in his vocal performance. The way he raps sort of shifts in form over his verse, starting almost uneven yet anthemic, to more fluid and concise, to eventually just spitting a continuous flow of long, winding bars. There’s an excellent use of word-painting where Keem aggressively states “Beat ’em up!” while the drums and horns stutter under his voice, and amazing earworms ranging from “Put that on my mama, nigga, eight in the process/Niggas tryna tippy-toe through the progress” to “And niggas wanna play both sides/It’s a red dot, don’t get on the wrong red eye/It’s a headshot, Damien Kane, Woo them guys/Fuck around and bury two of them guys”. Baby Keem delivers an absolute onslaught of an opener, so much so that he’s still able to carry the song’s momentum through a pause in production and an incredibly smooth, velvet-sounding beat switch (bonus points for the faint flutes in the background) and fucking spits nonstop. It’s a new peak for him.
And then we get another beat change. The production gets more rushed, sort of like the second half of “King’s Dead”, and you hear Kendrick muttering before his verse (“Smoking on your top five tonight”, he repeats). There’s a vibe Kendrick gives off on certain singles (“The Heart Part IV”, “Control”) where it’s like hearing a royal servant announce the arrival of a regal figure in the court, and Kendrick on “family ties” is no different, opening with the declaration “I am the omega” and subsequently spends two minutes backing up his shit-talking. Some lines are both braggadocious and hilarious (“The Al Green offspring, guns and the melody/The big shot, wrist on cryotherapy” and “Yeah, Kanye changed his life/But me, I’m still an old school Gemini”) and there are new vocal inflections Kendrick displays too, at times sounding like a parody of the driest white guy in America and the most West Coast street rapper imaginable. Y’all don’t understand, there are tears in my eyes from listening to him say “Burn that hard drive (Burn that shit)” in such a ridiculously fun and comedically menacing drawl, and it’s more joyous to even hear him reference other stars in the game such as Megan thee Stallion (“Show my ass and take yall to class/I can multitask like Megan, brother”).
And the song ends with them trading bars in a woefully short amount of time, so in tune with each other that it’s like seeing the smoothest tag team I’ve ever witnessed in action since the Golden Lovers. Blood really might be thicker than water, and with Baby Keem and Kendrick Lamar both preparing for new album rollouts, the world might be theirs for the taking. We’ll see.
Stream here.
*: Victoria Legrand, if you ever see this I love you, this isn’t a dig I promise, please forgive me.
