Kendrick Lamar just surprise-released his new album, GNX, and while hip-hop fans celebrate, one person isn't quite so happy: Father John Misty, who just had the release of his new album Mahashmashana completely overshadowed.
Shortly after Lamar's album dropped, Misty took to Twitter/X, writing, "not now I'm furiously scribbling my seeming response to."
When a fan responded that they were sorry he "happened to drop on the worst possible day to drop a new album," FJM pointed out that this is a pattern: "it's okay only other times it's happened was 2012, 2015, 2017 and 2022."
Digging into the numbers, the two artists have indeed synchronized their album releases for more than a decade. They released albums in 2012 (Fear Fun and good kid, m.A.A.d city), 2015 (I Love You, Honeybear and To Pimp a Butterfly), 2017 (Pure Comedy and DAMN., which came out within a week over each other) and 2022 (Chloë and the Next 20th Century and Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers).
FJM didn't mention 2018, although there's a correlation there, too: Misty released his album God's Favorite Customer the same year that Kendrick curated (and performed on much of) the Black Panther soundtrack.
Sorry, Mr. Misty! Anyhow, back to listening to GNX.