Here’s why I’ve been playing ‘LOYALTY.’ all summer
King Kendrick and Bad Gal Riri are the perfect duo to give us a lesson on loyalty.
It’s like Riri can do no wrong. Whatever she lends her voice to is a guaranteed hit — and she knows it. I mean the radio doesn’t stop playing her hits either which is probably why you can almost always find me humming a Rihanna song or feature. The one stuck in my head this summer has been “LOYALTY.,” the Kendrick Lamar hit infused with the Bajan queen’s vocals.
While the song really isn’t “summery,” neither was my summer. “LOYALTY.” is the song that’s carried me through my morning routines, work-filled days, and nightly music sessions over the past few months. I didn’t hit the beach and buy a nutcracker (if you’re from New York, you know what I mean), catch Shakespeare in Central Park, or travel to a place where the streets are beautifully lined with palm trees. I spent my summer in rainy and cloudy Syracuse: searching and failing to find things to do without a car after working my 9 to 5 internship.
But one thing summer has given me is lots of time for self-reflection. “LOYALTY.” combines Rihanna’s laid back, but attention-commanding voice with Kendrick’s half-sung, half-rapped bars to deliver a message about the importance of loyalty — a topic with no shortage of exploration in the hip-hop world. Loyalty is law and the duo makes their confident requests for unconditional realness over a reversed sample of Bruno Mars’ “24K Magic.”
Like Rihanna and Kendrick, I also value commitment and loyalty. Loyalty to family and the people closest to me are two of my dearest values in life. But this summer after a series of unfortunate events from personal relationships to professional ones, I was reminded I also needed to be loyal to myself, my beliefs, and loyal to the confidence I have in my talents — even when the world’s tests and pressures get to me and doubt starts to settle in.
Kendrick knows that his words are poetry. His signature flow has the power to shift culture while telling important stories. He raps:
My resume is real enough for two millenniums/
A better way to make a wave/stop defendin’ them
I meditate and moderate all of my wins again/
I’m hangin’ on the fence again/
I’m always on your mind/
I put my lyric and my lifeline on the line/
And ain’t no limit when I might shine, might grind/
He looks back on his wins, knowing that he hasn’t reached his limit, and uses his feats to ask for loyalty because he knows he deserves it. This summer I realized I need to take a hint from K. Dot. I need to own my talents and my passions and remain loyal to the vision I’ve set for myself.
And if something or someone makes that more difficult to me out of pure bad intentions, I’ll keep it moving, knowing that reaching my goals will be satisfaction enough. For the time being, I’ll hit the doubters with this nugget of wisdom.
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