Kendrick Lamar & Baby Keem Sample Bon Iver On New Song “The Hillbillies”

Many will note that cousins Baby Keem and Kendrick Lamar (actually, producer EVILGIANE) sampled Justin Vernon on their new song, just 13 short years after Kanye got to him. But don’t sleep on the Russian nesting doll of samples at work here: “PDLIF,” the great and underrated Bon Iver track that serves as the foundation for Keem and Kendrick’s new “The Hillbillies,” itself was built from charming UK jazz weirdo Alabaster DePlume’s “Visit Croatia.” That’s a lot of awesome songs stacked on top of each other!

And yeah, I’m ready to call “The Hillbillies” awesome after a couple listens, though maybe that’s my enthusiasm for the source material talking. The song definitely has “hype-building pre-album loosie” vibes rather than the “proper single” feel of “Family Ties” and “Range Brothers.” It would be a blog-era classic if we were still in the blog era. (The blog you’re reading this on is timeless and transcendent, not confined to a particular epoch of internet history.)

OKAY, time to listen to the thing. Please look out for Tyler, The Creator in the music video. And as always, please don’t live in fear.

If the Baby Keem situation means we get a lot of extra Kendrick Lamar music between album cycles, I’m cool with that.