Credit: Alamy

Mac Miller collaborated with Kendrick Lamar on a song from his 2016 album The Divine Feminine, but it almost didn’t happen. The pair teamed up on the Tae Beast and Aja Grant-produced ‘God Is Fair, Sexy Nasty’, which appeared as the closing track on the album.

“I’ve always been waiting for the right moment and the right kind of song, ’cause everyone always gets Kendrick and they’re like, ‘I want him to rap well for a long amount of time,’ you know?” Mac told Go 95.3. “That’s what everyone wants, but he does so much more than that. He’s brilliant. So, I wanted to get him on something different.”

Mac was working on the album in secret at the time. Kendrick FaceTimed him before coming to New York City, then, after performing on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, Mac got him in the studio and played ‘Dang!’ and another song produced by Metro Boomin. Kendrick was convinced by ‘Dang!’, but Mac really wanted to get him on ‘God Is Fair, Sexy Nasty‘.

Kendrick told him to email the beat, but Mac wanted his vocals there and then, so he had a trick up his sleeve. Because Kendrick required some radio drops, Mac let him into the booth to record what he needed. After letting him finish his recordings, Mac smartly played ‘God Is Fair, Sexy Nasty’ through his headphones, and Kendrick couldn’t help but record vocals over the instrumental.

“He was literally walking out, heard the beat and got right into creation mode,” he said. “So I kinda forced him to do it.” Mac knew that he himself couldn’t focus on a conversation when music was playing in the background, so he figured Kendrick would be the same. The rest is history.

K.Dot sings on the chorus, “Hearts on my timeline/ Bullet to your rose, then I watch your petal fold/ Don’t you know your body been mine?/ I know you know I know/ Sexy, nasty/ Have no guideline/ One day, four time/ You don’t mind that I don’t care/ Your divinity has turned me into a sinner God is fair/ And your beauty/ Can even make hell have a winter.”

This wasn’t the first time they collaborated on a record. In 2012, Mac collaborated with Kendrick on ‘Fight the Feeling‘, a song that appeared on his Macadelic mixtape.

“This one feels like a real moment like we were in the studio together, like we created something,” he told Zane Lowe about ‘God Is Fair, Sexy Nasty’. “All these artists have their own planets that they work on. You gotta create something new together for me. I don’t want to go do a song with Kendrick and make a Kendrick song.

“What does our song like? It’s such a feeling and a journey that’s why I love that record. It goes so many places. It sounds like being in the ocean, relaxing, calm, floating and just like there and comfortable in your thoughts, and that’s how the record ends, which is so awesome.”

He added, “I’m so used to the record ending in death. It’s alway these depressing declines which is like the demise of myself. This album actually ends with comfort.”