The other day I was listening to the Discovery station on Apple Music and I heard two songs in a row transition almost perfectly because they basically sampled the same song:
- Middle Name by ThaMonster
- Beautiful Death by Boko
It doesn’t matter what streaming platform you use (if any), it always feels like a minor miracle when one random song flows immediately and neatly into a second random song. But now I wanted to know more about the sample.
The sample (and even ThaMonster’s track) sounded super familiar, and my initial research turned up—of course—Kendrick Lamar’s Pray (or Prayer or Mr. Morale depending on who you ask). ThaMonster is clearly covering Kendrick, both on the track and the lyrical structure. Boko as well (though lyrically a bit less).
Now I had to find out more about the track. The producer on Kendrick’s track was The Alchemist, and the website Who Sampled indicates it was an “interpolation” of the song Say a Prayer by Nigerian band T-Fire. I guess that just means the kernel of the source track was used? It isn’t merely faster than T-Fire’s song, but the bass line differs quite a bit and the recording is much clearer. Additional digging yields little beyond some Reddit comments comparing part of the tune to Michael Jackson’s Earth Song, which would make sense given the first verse’s references to MJ. Perhaps The Alchemist performed the whole track based on a collection of influences?
Since Kendrick’s song was leaked and never part of an official release, I don’t know whether we’ll get more official information than this. It’s the end of my research road…for now.