If there’s a Father John Misty album out, you can sure as hell expect Kendrick Lamar to drop, too. On Friday, a few hours after Lamar surprise-released GNX, Josh Tillman joked about the fact that the pair of musicians have released music within weeks (sometimes days) of each other five times before.
“Not now I’m furiously scribbling my seeming response to,” Father John Misty wrote on X Friday, joking about the unexpected overlap between Lamar’s GNX and his own Mahashmashana.
In his replies, one follower wrote, “I’m so sorry that you happened to drop on the worst possible day to drop a new album.” Tillman then joked: “It’s okay only other times it’s happened was 2012, 2015, 2017 and 2022.”
And he’s right! Well, kind of. This year is the first time that Lamar and Father John Misty albums have arrived on the exact same day. Before GNX–Mahashmashana, the closest they’d come to each other was a week, in 2017, when Misty released Pure Comedy on April 7, and Lamar dropped Damn on April 14. (His label, Sub Pop Records, even posted an edit of Tillman’s album with the Damn font on Friday.)
In 2022, Misty came out with Chloë and the Next 20th Century on April 8, and Lamar released Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers about a month later, on May 13. In 2015, Misty released I Love You, Honeybear on Feb. 9, and Lamar followed on March 15 with To Pimp a Butterfly. And in 2012, they weren’t super close, but did drop the same year: Tillman released his first LP under the Father John Misty moniker, Fear Fun, in April 2012, before Good Kid, M.A.A.D City came out in October of that year.
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Although Tillman didn’t mention it, the pair of musicians also released the same year in 2018. FJM dropped God’s Favorite Customer the same year as Lamar’s Black Panther album, which Lamar curated and performed on.
Obviously, Tillman was all jokes about there being any sort of competition. He later clarified: “Hm how do I tell em my albums don’t chart.”
