A cohesive album from various artists from different genres and parts of the globe.
You can feel Kendrick's influence all throughout the album, but it's not overbearing. He knew exactly where to make he's presence felt. The TDE team did a brilliant job of getting such a wide range of musicians on one album and make its runtime less than an hour.
The movie isn't out, but you just know from listening to the album that the songs are going to blend into it perfectly. Yugen Blakrok, a relative unknown, even in her own country, hands down has the best verse on the entire album. Jay Rock on Kings Dead comes in a very close second.
The tracks aren't overwhelming either. Just one out of 14 tracks have 4 artists on it. That's the aforementioned Kings Dead. The rest all have 3 or less artists. That makes each track feel special and not bloated. I was even impressed with Babes Wodumo keeping up with Zacari on Redemption.
This album is sure to bring the artists of America and the U.K. to the shores of South Africa for further collaborations. They were not only matched by our own throughout this album, but some of them out shined their overseas counterparts. That's an accomplishment in itself.
This albums accomplished everything it set out to do, wetting people's appetite for a movie already in no need of promotion. This will just make those same people more ravenous to see the movie.