Posted in: Movies | Tagged: black panther, HRL, kendrick lamar, marvel, sza
Kendrick Lamar to Produce Black Panther: The Album; Hear the First Track
Marvel is pulling out all the stops for Black Panther's quasi-soundtrack. The studio has signed superstar recording artist Kendrick Lamar to produce Black Panther: The Album, Music from and Inspired by the Film. Lamar is joined by Anthony "Top Dawg" Tiffith in producing the album, which will apparently feature both tracks from the movie and tracks that are inspired by, but do not appear in, the film.
Marvel made the announcement on Twitter and kicked things off by offering the first track, "All the Stars" by SZA and Lamar, to listen to for free on Spotify. All the Stars is SZA's first new song of 2018. Both SZA and Lamar are set to clean up at the Grammys this year. Lamar's 2017 album Damn was nominated for Album of the Year and track Humble was nominated for Record of the Year, while SZA was nominated for Best New Artist, amongst a total of 12 nominations between the two of them.
Landing Lamar to produce the album is almost a shockingly hip move for Marvel and underscores Black Panther's pop cultural appeal, as it's set to be the first blockbuster movie of 2018 and is projected to out-earn the solo movie debuts of every Marvel character other than Iron Man — a situation that could even improve as we get closer to the release date if the movie continues to get this kind of publicity.
Check out All the Stars on Spotify by clicking the link in the tweet below. Directed by Ryan Coogler and starring Chadwick Boseman, Lupita Nyong'o, Michael B. Jordan, Daniel Kaluuya, Forest Whitaker, and Angela Bassett, Black Panther (The Movie) is set for release on February 16th. The album will presumably drop around that time as well.