Wine and Cheese: Kendrick Lamar and The Weeknd

The hip-hop and R&B titans always put on an extravagant performance when on a track together.

It’s your dream collab. The artists you add back-to-back to the queue. The pairing you can’t get enough of. You know they sound good together, but why? Welcome to Wine and Cheese, a series investigating the why and telling you all about it.

Written by Thomas Galindo

Photo courtesy of NPR

Kendrick Lamar is the 32-year-old, Pulitzer Prize-winning, multi-platinum, Compton-based wordsmith with 13 Grammy awards. The Weeknd is the 29-year-old seductive Toronto-based singer, with three Grammy awards, and a chokehold on today’s R&B scene only matched by the likes of Frank Ocean. These two certified superstars and established musicians have two songs together that are as high-quality as they are dramatic.

The Weeknd dropped his third official album Starboy in November 2016. The album — more pop-oriented than any of his previous work — included chart-topping bops and head-turning features such as Lana Del Rey, Future, and Daft Punk. Among these features was Kendrick Lamar, on the ninth song “Sidewalks.” This was Lamar’s first collaboration with The Weeknd. 

In “Sidewalks,” we immediately see the duo mesh and take from each other to give an unexpected performance. The song is a typical chip-on-your-shoulder, “the city raised me” anthem that is not uncommon in Kendrick’s discography to say the least. What is surprising about this one, however, is Kendrick is not the one driving home that idea in this track. While Lamar spits a verse about women, superstardom, and drugs that are typical motifs in The Weeknd’s songs, The Weeknd comes with a verse and beautifully sung hook about how he wouldn’t be here today without the streets he was raised on. He opens the song with the bar, “I ran out of tears when I was 18, so nobody made me but the main streets.” While The Weeknd sings his way through his verse and the “Sidewalks saved my life” hook, he matches the level of lyrical prowess and conceit of a Kendrick Lamar song. Kendrick took the route The Weeknd usually takes with bars like “Light limo tint with light women, dark women in it, aw Kenny, good game. She wanna hang with a Starboy, the sun and the moon and star, boy.”

In contrast to the chill, laid back “Sidewalks” which felt like it could be played with a live band at a jazz bar, “Pray For Me” from the “Black Panther” soundtrack is an upbeat banger to get your blood-flowing as though you’re being chased by a panther through the African jungle. Black Panther: The Album dropped in early 2018 and was orchestrated mainly by Kendrick Lamar and the rest of his label, Top Dawg Entertainment, although it includes original songs from various artists. Many of the tracks on here are hard-hitting bangers produced by Top Dawg’s own Sounwave, including “Paramedic!” with SOB x RBE, Kendrick Lamar, and Zacari; “X” with ScHoolboy Q, 2 Chainz, Kendrick Lamar, and Saudi; and “King’s Dead” with Future, Jay Rock, James Blake, and Kendrick Lamar. 

On this same Grammy-nominated album, “Pray For Me” is a song where we see The Weeknd and Kendrick share a message in unison about sacrifice and commitment to a cause. In The Weeknd’s opening verse, which is practically a bridge to lead us to the chorus, he sings “I’m always ready for a war again, go down that road again, it’s all the same,” demonstrating his devotion to fighting for what he believes in. Kendrick matches his energy, with a more self-righteous tone, as if he were a savior for this cause. In his verse after The Weeknd’s passionate “Who gon’ pray for me?” hook, Kendrick spits bars such as “Who need a hero? You need a hero, look in the mirror there go your hero/who on the front lines of ground zero?/My heart don’t skip a beat even when hard times bump the needle.” At the end of the song we see the duo harmonize the outro of “just in case my faith go, I’ll live by my own law,” representing the song’s message and matching the themes of loyalty in the Black Panther film.

Whether it be borrowing from each other’s bags and fulfilling their counterpart’s role well, or coming together to use their strengths to craft a meaningful, uplifting banger, Kendrick Lamar and The Weeknd never fail to put on a head-turning performance. While most songs from the original movie soundtrack did not make it in the film, “Pray For Me” is incorporated well into the movie just as the heroes, T’challa, Nakia, and Shuri, enter a lavish casino on a mission. Both tracks do well in achieving the aesthetic they strive for, which adds to the versatility of these two icons. It can be tough to live up to the hype these names alone can create for themselves when put on a track together. But Kendrick Lamar and The Weeknd put their talent and adaptability to good use, and are 2-for-2 in the hits category together.