J. Cole & Childish Gambino team up for the poppin’ “Who Dat Pt. 2”

J. Cole and Childish Gambino collaboration? Thanks to Peter Rosenberg’s (who?) mixtape What’s Poppin, we get quite a treat. Both have achieved blog cult status at this point, consistently putting out great raps with awesome beats. Cole tends to stay a little more in the traditional hip hop musical style, with largely simple thumping bass beats that allow him plenty of room to shine lyrically. Gambino (aka Donald Glover), on the other hand, pairs his unique rhyming rhythm with an almost indie style, with lots of instruments (on stage he has a serious band, with piano, strings, bass guitar, etc). So how do they make their styles come together? By choosing one music style and going lyrically hard.

Taking the beat from Cole’s song “Who Dat” and calling it “Who DatPt. 2”, the rappers take their turns laying down sick verses (there is a third rapper in here, SD, who gets in a nice verse too, but I honestly don’t know much about him except that his full name is Spencer Datt and he’s new on the rap scene). Now, I think J. Cole is easily one of the best rappers on the scene right now, and his verse is solid, but I was blown away by how much more effective I found Glover’s. He has such a strong, raw (sometimes nasally) voice that putting him on a track with anyone else is hard, because his voice just jumps out of the music. On this track it means it was a good thing that he went last, because that way you can listen to the rest first and enjoy it before being blown away by Glover’s verse. Take a listen for yourself below:

J. Cole featuring Childish Gambino and SD – “Who Dat Pt. 2”