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Pusha T and Kendrick Lamar’s Stark ‘Nosetalgia’ Video Vindicates Kanye West’s Rant

Pusha T, Kendrick Lamar, "Nosetalgia," video, 'My Name Is My Name,' G.O.O.D. Music, Kanye West

At a listening party for Pusha T’s upcoming My Name Is My Name, Kanye West passionately laid out his G.O.O.D. Music label’s marketing strategy: “We make good music.” Easier said than done, of course, but the unshowy video for the album’s slow-rolling Kendrick Lamar collaboration, “Nosetalgia,” (via NPR) applies that deceptively simple approach to the fullest.

Amid muggy guitar, rattling clave, dinosaur-plodding drums, and the occasional KRS-One sample, the former Clipse half and the Drake-baiting good kid, M.A.A.D. city rapper start with from vintage-Pusha coke-game specifics, then swerve to Lamar’s gripping portrait of a drug dealer’s child who grows up to repeat the cycle. It’s all deftly performed, but not in a way that calls attention itself, and that’s also true of the video: a simple, black-and-white affair, that shows Pusha and K.dot strolling through Compton. “Every verse is a brick,” Pusha declares. Kanye might add, “We make good videos.”

My Name Is My Name arrives on October 8, with DONDA-helmed artwork, and it’s streaming now. Unfortunately, it appears that Joaquin Phoenix didn’t actually produce the album’s “King Push,” despite what Pusha himself had said. In a statement, Phoenix told XXL: “While it was widely reported that Pusha T used my beat and that I produced his song, I can’t take any credit. A friend’s son played me his music, and all I did was make an introduction to Kanye’s camp.” This is Joaquin Phoenix, though, so who knows.