On Monday, HBO announced that it had drafted rapper Pusha T to rap over a beat inspired by Nicholas Britell’s earworm of a theme for Succession, the network’s terrifically entertaining saga about horrible rich people making each other suffer. Pusha T tweeted out a preview for the upcoming track, “Puppet,” earlier in the week, and a full version will be released on Friday. Here’s a little sample:
It sounds like Pusha T’s take on Succession will focus on the show’s recurring themes of family, fortune, envy, jealousy, privilege, passed on legacies, and secrets, as indicated by the sample lyric, “Family, fortune, envy, jealousy privilege, passed on, legacy, secrets.” But it really doesn’t matter anymore what Pusha T was trying to say about Succession, because on Wednesday, comedian Demi Adejuyigbe—last seen observing September 21, our last good holiday—completely and permanently obviated the need for anyone else to augment the theme from Succession ever again. Here’s his arrangement, which cuts right past the symptoms of grotesque wealth and power listed by Pusha T to ask the central question at the heart of Succession: Who will Daddy kiss?
NASA’s top musicologists will be studying the song for years before their official report is finalized, but initial results indicate there is no way for Adejuyigbe’s arrangement of the Succession theme song to be improved upon, making this the first perfect song in human history. “It’s the part where he reads the names of all the characters like the theme from Mortal Kombat that pushes it over the edge,” said those very real musicologists. “Whatever Pusha T has cooked up for Friday, there’s no way it’s that funny or good.” It’s not the first time Adejuyigbe has crossed paths with Pusha T; in 2018 he released a parody of a Drake diss track alleging that his “rapping is doo-doo.” At the time, critics believed Drake was the primary target of Adejuyigbe’s satire, but in light of the surprise release of Adejuyibe’s Succession theme, it seems his alliance with Pusha T was transactional at best. As it happens, that’s just the kind of merciless scheming it takes to win a kiss from Daddy, so if Adejuyigbe doesn’t get a cameo on Succession next season out of this, the upcoming Waystar Royco shareholder meeting is going to be tense.
