#12 - Baby Keem & Kendrick Lamar - "family ties"
Everything about “family ties” screams cinematic. The horns at the start announce the song like it’s a regal procession: here comes the Royal family. But nah, Prince Philip is six feet underground and Baby Keem is rampaging over ceiling-rattling bass blasts. It’s so bouncy and alive. One of my favorite moments early on is when the beat trips on itself for a second, repeating the same micro-refrain as Keem yells “beat em up, beat em up, beat em up.”
The first time I heard Kendrick appear in the second half, a stupidly wide grin came over my face. The beat switch is too dirty, especially juxtaposed against what his cousin was rapping over just a few seconds before, a somewhat light, groovy melody. Kendrick’s beat is hard as concrete. “Smoking on your top five to-night,” he says balefully, and he sounds immortal.
Keem’s high-pitched, wavering tone makes a great foil to Kendrick’s stern, forceful inflection, and vice versa. Although the duo’s verses are separated on this song both lyrically and sonically—there’s not really an overarching theme, and they each rap over radically different beats—it feels like they were in each other’s brains making this.
The song is loaded with clever quotables and infectious flows, but it’s also a showcase of silliness. Keem’s eccentric squeaks and mouth sounds are matched by Kendrick’s dorky tone switches (“My mental is amazing, brother,” he says, like Hank from King of the Hill). Two great rappers at their goofy and serious bests.
Check out Baby Keem:
The list:
#20 - aya - "what if i should fall asleep and slipp under" and "Emley lights us moor"
#19 - rrodney - Jersey club remix of Trippie Redd ft. Playboi Carti’s “Miss the Rage”
#18 - aghast - “thas wut i do” (prod. lungskull & wavebird)
#17 - Yves Tumor - “Secrecy Is Incredibly Important To The Both of Them”
#16 - kaystrueno - “PRETTY B!TCHES NEVA DIE”
#15 - kurtains - “spawn”
#14 - Ecco2k - “PXE”
#13 - vertigoaway ft. schizoscriptures - “Break This The Breaking Point 2”