Grant Kirkhope, formerly of Rare and now working on Playtonic Games’ Yooka-Laylee, is a fantastic composer. What he’s not very good at is rapping, according to his own metrics. That hasn’t stopped him from laying down some fire new verses over a classic beat that old-school Rare fans will remember instantly.
Kirkhope’s most beloved composition is the “DK Rap,” a song from 1999’s Donkey Kong 64 that has come to define that era for a lot of ’90s kids. Anyone who’s heard that song one or a hundred times will immediately recognize the loop backing up this mysterious new track, which Kirkhope tweeted today as a tease of something more to come.
It’s clearly going to be tied into Yooka-Laylee, an homage to the Rare platformer days of old. The game launches on April 11, and the video’s description suggests that a true reveal of what Kirkhope’s working on is coming just ahead of that.
Notably, he’s warning fans to keep 10 a.m. ET on April 1 open for what’s likely the real, full-length version of the song. That would be April Fools’ Day, meaning it’s fair to be a little incredulous. But either way, we have more of Kirkhope’s classic stylings to listen to for now — and our condolences to Kendrick Lamar, one of the rap game’s top performers, who had the misfortune of dropping his own new track right before Kirkhope’s.
Update: The “Yooka-Laylee Rap” is indeed a thing. It’s 100 percent not as much of a banger as the original “DK Rap,” but Kirkhope doesn’t sound like he’s totally out of the game just yet:
Correction: Yooka-Laylee won’t be out until April 11. We’ve amended the release date above.
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