American rappers Cordae and Anderson .Paak have once again rekindled their musical bromance releasing their latest collab single ‘Two Tens’. This tag team kicked off four years ago when the pair worked together with J. Cole on ‘RNP’ which is taken off Cole’s Grammy-nominated debut offering The Lost Boy.
The song is produced by J Cole under his Dreamville record label.
Taking up the structure of a light-hearted dialogue in a club, the rappers engage in lyrically deft banter. The interplay suspends the two in a threadbare web of quick rhymes, slow tempo snares and a sparse piano loop; the transparency of the production clear enough to let them play. Cordae’s old-soul perspective
“See I’m not tryna be overbearin’ or give you a lecture / I just want you to see this shit from a different perspective / See every hoe is a dog, and every dog has its day / You can be lovin’ on every mutt that be fallin’ astray”) foils .Paak’s wayward tendencies (“Man, I love this bitch / we gon’ travel and fill up the bucket list / Have ’bout ten kids on the ranch on some southern shit”.
A noteworthy quality about ‘Two Tens’. is the seamless nature of the transitions between the hooks and within the verses. The texture of their lyrics is even, blending to a point that cadence switch and the voice change become the only two ways to tell who’s part has just ended and who’s has started.
Despite the yin-yang-like contrast of their personalities, the output is consistent. The one-half of Silk Sonic evinces confidence that belies him being a feature; his youthful confidence and hedonistic worldview checks the former YBN member, striking a balance that puts both artists on the same level of play.
It’s not a commonplace thing in today’s hip hop music for a collabo to be sliced the way “Two Tens” is.
Lead artists normally prefer the song cut disproportionally, with the feature taking the smaller, less significant phase of the song. On “Two Tens”, Cordae and .Paak are each other’s batteries, complementing each other like Run the Jewels on “Get It” without forgetting that Black man swag of Jay and Ye in the final verse of “Niggas in Paris”.
“Two Tens” is a brother-like reunion, a hip hop lesson on how to exploit each other’s strengths and cover any exposed weakenesses to create a song where both parties shine equally. This is what happens when an oldish man with a juvenile mind meets a young man with wisdom ahead of his years over Jermaine production.
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