“Mask Off” (Remix) [ft. Kendrick Lamar]

When Kendrick Lamar brought Future out to perform “Mask Off” during his epic headlining set at Coachella, he seem poised to spring a surprise verse on the song. Anticipation engulfed the crowd but Future soon drifted off stage, no alterations made to his FUTURE smash. It seemed like a missed opportunity. More than a month after the performance, the official “Mask Off” remix has surfaced. Fueled by the song’s momentum, Kendrick takes a “conscious rap” victory lap over the ubiquitous flute riff that spawned its own challenge. While Future’s original is about being brazen and destitute enough to commit a robbery without a mask, Kendrick’s remix is about masking and his refusal to conform to social pressures.

Few things are more fearsome in rap than Kendrick playing for keeps, and on the remix, he dismantles the logistics of becoming a rap star, weighing his path to success against a more conventional one. “How y’all let the braids on TV?/How y’all let the hood at the table?/Now y’all don’t even know how to rate him/Niggas lookin’ like I’m a created player,” he snarls. His singsong flow vaults into a full-on wail that descends effortlessly into an elastic series of bars. The feature is situated at the center of Future’s original song, which remains otherwise untouched, and their messages are at odds with each other, but there isn’t much of a disconnect given the players involved. More than anything, it feels like Future merely cedes space to Kendrick, letting him do his own thing. A Kendrick unconfined by the narrative pressures of an album can be a different kind of formidable, using the sheer force of his raps to make plain his supremacy. This isn’t a remix; it’s a revival.