Purple Hearts

Kendrick Lamar just put out his newest album, Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers. I wanna take the time to write about one of my favorite songs off of it, Purple Hearts featuring Summer Walker and Ghostface Killah.

What I find so great about this song is the rhythm it's built around. The main loop has a rhythm that accents the and of the fourth beat, before the actual first beat of the bar. You hear it at exactly 0:11

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This gives the song such a great bounce. The tone of the drums and the instruments compliment each other well. There's a lot of different parts throughout the song in the melodies. The main part sounds like a keyboard with a wah effect, it plays with a lot of the kick drum hits. You can hear a piano in the right ear throughout the track, it's noticeable at 0:10. There's also some sort of synth or keyboard playing arpeggios filtered throughout the mix in the song, it pans back and forth. On the first hook, during the last time Kendrick says "Yeah baby", you can hear another synth play a melodic line. During the verse that follows, it continues to add to the track. You can also hear a note being held after he says, "This my undisputed truth", this pops up a couple more times.

There's a lot going on in terms of layering the melody. Beyond just the tone of the drums, the rhythms used in the snare rolls, open hi hat hits, and variation of the closed hi hats, all create such a strong loop. The vocals from Kendrick are executed great, the melody stands on its own and his tone compliments the track. I love the way the vocals are layered for the second hook. The second verse has a lot of great of melodic lines from Summer Walker, like the, "yeah, yeah, yeah" at 2:53. I also like the way Kendrick has a couple lines mixed in.

The piano changes and a string section is introduced for Ghostface Killah's section. The bass that starts to play matches compliments his verse, and builds up for the return of the hook. I love the way his last line leads into it. Then the last hook has the added section from Ghostface Killah's part, it sounds like a reversed piece. The way the piece comes together at the end feels triumphant.

That's one of my favorite songs off of Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers. A couple of my other favorites are Father Time featuring Sampha, Silent Hill featuring Kodak Black, and Mother I Sober featuring Beth Gibbons. We Cry Together is also amazing with The Alchemist production.

Thank you for reading.