The last we heard from ILoveMakonnen, the rapper was making some pretty straight up hip-hop on last summer’s Red Trap Dragon mixtape, but now it seems that a lot has changed since then. In the year that’s elapsed since then, he’s apparently gotten in touch with his emo side, because that’s the only way to explain his new track “Love,” which features Rae Sremmurd and is a guitar-driven mix of pop-punk and trap.
Blink-182’s Travis Barker is also featured on the Mike Will Made It-produced single, which definitely helps give the surfy guitar riffs some real pop-punk cred. There are no soaring pop-punk choruses here, but we do get to see ILoveMakonnen and Rae Sremmurd bust out the Carlton dance from The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air in the video, and that’s never not fun.
https://twitter.com/iLoveMakonnen5D/status/905528278701580288
The lyrics, which by the way are devoid of rapping and sung entirely with heavy Auto-Tune, are also pure self-loathing emo about an ill-fated romance: “Because of you I am / Fallin’ down / I’m smokin’ up / Since you ain’t around / I got my middle fingers up / F**k love.”
“Love” is ILoveMakonnen’s first new material since Red Trap Dragon, and since he came out as gay earlier this year. This isn’t the first track he’s been on in 2017, though, since he provided a guest verse on Lil B’s “Global,” from his recently released Black Ken mixtape.
Watch the video for “Love” above.
