“This what God feel like,” Kendrick Lamar, clad in an all-white ensemble, rapped during his headlining Coachella weekend 1 set at the music and arts festival in Indio, California. Three days after dropping his third studio album DAMN., Lamar debuted several cuts onstage, which included the ethereal presentation of “GOD.”
The reflective track finds the Compton spitter meditating on his wins (“Laughin’ to the bank like, a-ha/ Flex on swole like a-ha”) while the wavy beat was a collaborative effort among a team of beatsmiths comprised of Yung Exclusive, B?kon, Anthony “Top Dawg” Tiffith, Cardo, Sounwave, Ricci Riera and DJ Dahi.
Dig a little deeper into SoundCloud, though, and inklings of the melody first appeared on “End of the World,” an !llmind and M31RK-produced beat off the beat ‘tape #BoomTrap Vol. 2 that was released on blapkits.com, a site that hosts different sound loops and drum kits for other producers to cop and build upon. Riera was able to flip the synth snippet (which appears at the 2:10 mark below) and add his own drums for what would eventually be the soundscape for Lamar’s “GOD.”
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“When you first play that song and hear that opening melody and on the chorus, those actually [came from] a full chord melody that I recorded on one of my sample packs,” !llmind tells Billboard. “I think it was kind of a cool thing that happened because most of the time when someone samples music, it’s from the ’70s or older stuff — you really don’t hear new music being sampled.
Continue reading at Billboard.