Big Sean – “Control (HOF)” (Feat. Kendrick Lamar & Jay Electronica)
Last night, rap Twitter exploded. The context: Funkmaster Flex premiered “Control (HOF),” a track that won’t appear on Big Sean’s forthcoming album Hall Of Fame because of sample-clearance issues, a seven-minute rapfest that features verses from Kendrick Lamar and Jay Electronica. The takeaway: Kendrick murdered that. He raided and burned it like a longship full of Vikings. He spent years abroad, as his dragons grew and his armies massed, and he invaded that. He achieved computer-system sentience and then launched his missiles at strategic locations in that. I mean, he reduced that to ashes and rubble. He ended that.
Kendrick’s verse comes in the middle of the track, and it reduces everything around it to an afterthought. There’s other stuff going on in the track: A really-trying-hard Sean verse, a rare appearance from the reticent Jay Elec, a stormy No I.D. beat. But seriously, that Kendrick verse, that’s what you need to know about. Listen below.
Hall Of Fame is out 8/27 on G.O.O.D. Music.