Lil Durk has been through a lot lately, including the deaths of close associate King Von and brother DThang, as well as a downright scary feud with NBA YoungBoy. But Durk remains one of the biggest stars in all of rap. At midnight tonight, he’ll release his much-anticipated new album Almost Healed. We’ve posted the inspirational J. Cole collab “All My Life,” and the album also includes collaborations with people like Future, 21 Savage, Kodak Black, the late Juice WRLD, and, uhhh, Morgan Wallen. (Durk already played a role in Wallen’s whole image-rehabilitation thing; the two of them collaborated on the song “Broadway Girls” last year.) Today, ahead of the album release, Durk has shared a video for the LP’s first two tracks.
The first track on Almost Healed isn’t a song. It’s a skit called “Therapy Session,” and the person playing Durk’s therapist is Alicia Keys. She asks him how he’s processing his losses. In director Steve Cannon’s video, the therapy session turns out to be a dream, or a hallucination, and it leads right into the angry, emotive track “Pelle Coat.”
“Pelle Coat” is the great unburdening. Over a heavy, melodic beat from Chopsquad DJ, Lil Durk sing-raps about traumatic memories and losses and about the strange position that he’s currently in, where fans are going online and telling him to commit revenge murders: “Mornin’ time I get on my knees, I pray to Allah/ Forgive me for the shit that I did/ Let me get closer to my kids/ Can you protect all my friends?” Check it out below.
Almost Healed is out 5/26 on Alamo/OTF/Sony.
