Top Dawg Entertainment’s golden child just announced that he will be releasing his last album with the label very soon, sending Twitter through a frenzy, K Dot’s peers have been releasing project after project, while the Compton native hid in his cave without a smartphone for months, I once wrote an article on what is next for Kendrick Lamar, he has launched himself to be a concept album artist, although he was able to give us classics with every concept or every musical challenge, but it is safe to say that he came to a dead end, after running out of the the next idea, as all albums have to be so far apart as ideas go. What can he possibly do now? A gospel album? A rock one? maybe, but those concepts are easy to flunk and have a first low bar album.
The YTS theory is that, the concept album blueprint, is basically something that came with TDE and for him to escape that cage, is leaving, to explore more sounds, the new sounds and new artists, or maybe try out more acting after his debut on POWER. This is the Hip Hop version of the Messi situation, the face of the franchise leaves after being groomed by them for the longest time.
This was announced through an open letter on oklama.com, weird link, if you ak me, this to us feels more like a business move by both parties, how more can they grow hype for album’s anticipation than letting us know it is the last of some sort? A full strategic publicity stunt by the whole time, Kendrick Lamar will come back to TDE after getting whatever he needs from the outside. The people at the forefront of music can do whatever it takes to push for another classic, even if it mean losing their number 1 artist for a few years.
Question is, what happens to Black Hippy? Where can he possibly go, will we get more music with him being out of his deal? This might be a positive change, it can go either way, better albums or horrible ones, but we hope for the best as this is our most celebrated lyricist of our era. May we get more features and more appearances on countless content.