Kendrick Lamar has finally broken his silence and it looks like he’ll be coming back with a bang, teaming up with Baby Keem on a new song called “Family Ties.” A snippet of the track was shared by Tidal on Wednesday and ignited fans’ excitement thanks to teases of some spicy lyrics from Kendrick.
The “Family Ties” preview that was shared by Tidal plays the tail end of Keem’s verse before the beat abruptly switches. The menacing voice of Kendrick rises through the snares as he says he’s going to be “smoking on your top five tonight.”
Those brief three seconds from K-Dot were enough to set social media ablaze, with fans equal parts hyped and shocked that Lamar appears to be returning with such ferocity out the gate. Some fans harken back to the days of “Control,” when he ripped through the entire rap world on the Big Sean song and name-dropped J. Cole, Big K.R.I.T., Wale, Pusha-T, Tyler, the Creator, and even Sean and Jay Electronica, who were on the track with him. While “Family Ties” may not deliver the same type of hip-hop-shaking verse that “Control” did, it could elicit a similar from fans since it’s the first new verse we’re getting from Kendrick in a long time.
Not long after the viral Tidal snippet, Baby Keem—cousin to Kendrick cousin and a part of K-Dot and Dave Free’s pgLang—dropped a clip of an upcoming “Family Ties” music video made by Free. Lamar is billed as Oklama and Normani credited as a co-star:
Since the audio was cryptically reversed, a fan took the liberty of flipping it, revealing almost 20 more seconds of Kendrick’s verse. He can be heard saying he’s “the Al Green offspring” and that “Dave Free got at least one B in the oven”:
While we wait for the full track from the talented family members, check out what people have to say about the preview:
