Right there, on my mama, Kendrick said: “Imma get Rihanna on this.” That day. From there, me, Sounwave, and DJ Dahi got in the studio and started to put drums on that motherfucker. But still make it sound just like the sample, but with a different edge.” I turned the sample around, set it up, and then hit Sounwave. It was a Bruno Mars sample of “24K Magic.” I was like, “Whoa, that sounds crazy.” I said, “I wanna replay it, reverse it, change the key, add a third harmony - do all these things to it. 9th Wonder has a producer under him named Khrysis, who sent me a record to play on. “LOYALTY.” came about because I was working with Rapsody and 9th Wonder. Because we were already saying like, “Yo, you know we are trying to do what we didn’t do before.” So we knew that the more extreme we went on Butterfly - musically and using influences from different genres of older music - that he was gonna use a different, opposite energy for the next record. TERRACE MARTIN: Kendrick first approached me about this particular project in the middle of To Pimp A Butterfly. And we’ve been loyal to each other throughout every project.” With Kendrick, that song represents a lot because he and I are loyal to each other. “Loyalty to me is the first base of life. “Loyalty represents some unconditional, agape love type shit,” he said over the phone from Los Angeles.

When I reached the Grammy-nominated Martin in the days following the album’s magnanimous release, he was eager to speak about the bones of the track. “Is it money? Is it fame? Is it weed? Is it drink?” Like at several other points on the album, the bad gyal-featured track finds Kendrick Lamar in exceptional form, as strident and unyieldingly sincere as ever: “Tell me who you loyal to,” he questions. “It’s so hard to be humble,” Rihanna intones across the song, which was co-produced by Terrace Martin, DJ Dahi, and in-house TDE beatmaker Sounwave. Of DAMN.’s 14 tracks - each one anxious, berserk, and beautifully intransigent in its own right - “LOYALTY.” might be the most measured: equal parts pop, funk, and brooding rap hymnal.

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