"Brother Kendrick Lamar! He's not a rapper, he's a writer, he's an author! And if you read between the lines, we'll learn how to love one another," yells a preaching voice at the beginning of Kendrick Lamar's uplifting new single "i."
But to love one another, we first have to love ourselves. That's the message the 27-year-old rapper, whose 2012's Good Kid, M.A.A.D City album garnered critical acclaim and an Album of the Year nomination at this year's Grammys, is pushing on this uptempo song.
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It's his first single from his untitled third studio album, the awaited follow-up to Good Kid, M.A.A.D City. The new album doesn't have a release date or title.
Lamar repeatedly raps "I love myself" during the hook of "i":
And I love myself (the world is a ghetto with guns and picket signs)
I love myself (but it can do what it want whenever it wants and I don’t mind)
I love myself (he said I gotta get up, life is more than suicide)
I love myself (one day at the time, sun gonna shine)
Dangeroo Kipawa, CEO of Lamar's Top Dawg Entertainment label, praised the rapper's message in a tweet in which he forgot to turn off his caps lock:
WE GOTTA RESPECT DA YOUNG MAN 4 USING HIS PLATFORM 2 SAY SOMETHING IN MUSIC. NOT LETTING A GIMMICK OR INDUSTRY STANDARDS DICTATE HIS MESSAGE
— dangeroo kipawaa TDE (@dangerookipawaa) September 23, 2014
Meanwhile, Lamar directed his 4 million Twitter followers to buy the song on iTunes:
#i http://t.co/udpAqrGSBi @iTunes
— Kendrick Lamar (@kendricklamar) September 23, 2014
The song, which samples Isley Brothers' "Who's That Lady," quickly catapulted to No. 1 on Twitter's Trending 140 chart, which ranks tracks based on acceleration of mentions every hour:
.@KendrickLamar is still at No 1, but @Pharrell is holding down No's 2 + 3 on the #Trending140 http://t.co/c42T7VUorW pic.twitter.com/0RfqtsThRd
— billboard (@billboard) September 23, 2014
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