Kendrick Lamar needs to know you can hear him

Did you fools not hear this man?

That’s the message, more or less, of Kendrick Lamar’s vehement new song, “Humble,” which the celebrated Compton rapper released Thursday, a week after he burst back onto the pop scene with “The Heart Part 4.”

The earlier track, Lamar’s first solo cut since “Levitate” in early 2016, served notice to his peers that “a hip-hop rhyme savior,” as he describes himself, was returning to active duty.

“The five-foot giant woke up out of his sleep,” he raps, before promising to put “the whole industry on a ice pack.”

In response, the Internet promptly lost its mind. But evidently that wasn’t enough for Lamar, who reiterates his threat in “Humble,” whose title refers not to his manner but to that which other MCs should assume in his presence. (The song is thought to be the first official single from an album expected to drop next week ahead of Lamar’s headlining performance at Coachella.)

“If I quit this season, I still be the greatest,” Lamar raps over a swinging funk groove produced by Mike Will Made It. “My left stroke just went viral / Right stroke put lil’ baby in a spiral.” In the song’s stunning music video, Lamar delivers these lines as he swings a golf club atop a car in the Los Angeles River.

Then he goes ahead and takes Jesus’ seat in a live re-creation of Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper.”

For all its braggadocio, “Humble” — like “The Heart Part 4,” which took shots at Donald Trump and former L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca — goes wider too, with lines about Lamar’s growing resentment of a culture addicted to artifice.

“Show me something natural,” he raps, like “afro on Richard Pryor” or “ass with some stretch marks.”

After that he gets back to stunting, comparing his rhymes to “that Grey Poupon, that Evian, that TED Talk.”

Listen up — or expect more mustard soon.

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Twitter: @mikaelwood

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