Three days after releasing Big Fish Theory, his anticipated and very well-received second studio album, Vince Staples brought a dark and serrated album cut to his third appearance on The Tonight Show.
The performance of "Love Can Be..." — which features Damon Albarn of Blur, actor and reality show mainstay Ray J and polymath artist Kilo Kish — doesn't see Staples enter the song's frame for some time, opening with Albarn intoning the song's title, buried in his favorite, white-noise vocal effect.
When Staples does finally take the mic, he delivers two verses that have him working out the give-and-take of money and fame. "I can make time or I can make money," closing with a Kendrick Lamar reference: "this d*** ain't free."
"I look at an album like an art exhibit, it's like a solo show," Staples told Pitchfork last week . "Then you present them all, you put them on the wall, and people gawk at it."
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