Really Doe

Album: Atrocity Exhibition (2016)
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Songfacts®:

  • Danny Brown tapped Kendrick Lamar, Earl Sweatshirt and Ab-Soul to lend braggadocius rhymes to this uptempo track. Ab-Soul and Brown are frequent collaborators, having previously worked together on "Terrorist Threats," "Ride Slow" and "Way Up Here." However, this was the Detroit rapper's first collaboration with Lamar and Sweatshirt, though both Brown and Lamar had verses on A$AP Rocky's "1 Train."
  • The production by Brown's fellow Detroit'er Black Milk features a chill beat and twinkling bells. Black Milk works mainly with Detroit artists, but previously collaborated with Kendrick Lamar on the Compton rapper's 2009 track "Wanna Be Heard."
  • The song was four months in the making due to the difficulties in tracking down Earl Sweatshirt. "I'm friends with everybody, Ab Soul - we always do stuff together - then with Kendrick it was just waiting for the right time," Brown to BBC Radio 1's Annie Mac. "It was really just hard to get Earl, it took a lot of effort and patience but I made it happen because I knew it was going to create history. They're like my favorite rappers."
  • Brown revealed to Beats 1's Zane Lowe that Lamar heard the unfinished song and wrote the hook and a verse, prompting the Detroit rapper to complete it: "[Kendrick] went to the studio and heard it and just took it," he said. "Then he came back and he had a hook on it, a bridge... and then I reached out to Earl and Ab. We threw their verses on it. So, it's really his song."

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