Kendrick Lamar

Ever since debuting with Die A Legend in 2019, Chicago rapper Polo G has been pretty intentional about stating his goals and following through on them — many times within the titles of the projects he’s released. For instance, after stating he’d “die a legend” on his first project, he followed up by calling himself The Goat in 2020. Now, he’s days away from dropping Hall Of Fame, and you can’t say the young rising star doesn’t aim high.

In a new feature in Complex about the upcoming album, Polo states another one of his goals — and the one caveat preventing him from pursuing it as aggressively as he normally would. He tells Harley Geffner that while he’d love to work with rappers like J. Cole and Kendrick Lamar in the future after being shouted out by Cole’s Dreamville partner Ibrahim Hamad, he wants “to get a little bit better lyrically in that style before I would jump on that type of song.”

Hall Of Fame will see him taking steps in that direction, sharing mic time with lyrical all-stars like Lil Wayne and Nicki Minaj, but as Geffner notes, he may not be as far off as he feels. Look no further than his recent LA Leakers freestyle, which impressed Rap Twitter over its use of DMX’s “Ruff Ryders’ Anthem,” and Polo’s verse in BET’s 2020 Hip-Hop Awards Cypher, where he stood toe-to-toe with hard-hitters like Chika, Jack Harlow, and Rapsody.

Hall Of Fame drops 6/11 via Columbia Records. Pre-save it here.