Kendrick Lamar Drops New Song, ‘The Heart Part 5’

Kendrick Lamar dropped his first new solo single in nearly four years on Sunday night, called “The Heart Part 5.” The song arrives just days before the long-awaited release of his fifth solo album, “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers” on May 13.

The song’s video begins with Lamar rapping by himself in front of a red screen, but occasionally has the faces of other rappers and controversial public figures photoshopped over his: Kanye West, Nipsey Hussle, Will Smith, Kobe Bryant, OJ Simpson and Jussie Smollett are six that we noticed after a couple of viewings.

The song’s lyrics blaze by too quickly for an easy transcription, but the faces seem to have connections to the lyrics: West’s appears during a reference to being bipolar, Hussle’s during the line “I’m in heaven,” and so forth.

The song opens with a spoken introduction with Lamar thanking “everyone who’s been down with me, all my fans, all my beautiful fans” before he bursts into rapid-fire rapping over a jazzy musical backing that turns into ’70s soul for the chorus.

The song is the latest in Lamar’s ongoing series called “The Heart,” reaching back to 2010.

Lamar unveiled the long-awaited “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers” album last month.

Responding to an earlier tweet from SK that says, “Kendrick Lamar is officially retired,” the rap titan responded with a link: oklama.com, which leads to a note that reads:

“The following statement was released today by oklama, through his company pgLang at 11:00 a.m. PT in Los Angeles, CA:

Album: ‘Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers’
Release date: 5/13/2022

All factual information for this release will come directly from this source only.”

Lamar’s last full-length project was 2017’s Grammy-winning “DAMN,” which was released just two days before his headlining Coachella set, also led to his Pulitzer Prize and made him the honoree at Variety’s inaugural Hitmakers event.

He followed a year later by curating and contributing several songs to the “Black Panther” soundtrack, including his duet with SZA, “All the Stars.” In 2021, he featured on two songs from his cousin Baby Keem’s latest album — “Range Brothers” and the Grammy-winning “Family Ties” — although those appearances just seemed to energize and make his fan base even more impatient.

There have even been several false alarms, such as a social media frenzy ignited last summer by his record label TDE, but that turned out to be a tease for the Isaiah Rashad album. As several fans pointed out on social media, Lamar announced his long-awaited new album via a minimalist fax page similar to the one Michael Jordan put out in March 1995 to announce he was ending his retirement and returning to the NBA.