Mick Jenkins has announced his fourth studio LP. The Patience, due out August 18 via RBC Music/BMG, will be the Alabama emcee’s first full-length since 2021’s Elephant In The Room. The news comes with the album’s lead single, “Smoke Break-Dance” featuring JID.
The new song places the two rappers’ complementary flows — nimble and knife sharp but unhurried in a distinctively southern way — over a low-key, jazzy beat produced by Stoic. Its beautifully shot and edited music video, courtesy of Andre Muir, features a snippet of a woozier, unreleased single potentially called “Color Theory” (based on its hook), prefaced by a bell hooks quote about patriarchal self-mutilation.
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“As best I can be, I am a person who does everything within his power to change his situation,” Jenkins writes in the press release announcing The Patience. “I think with some level of consistency that behavior inevitably leads you to a point where you have to wait. A point where the things that now need to happen to move you forward are no longer in your control. I see this as a period of time in one’s journey, no matter the length, where the unseen things must take place; the muscles must tear and repair, the understanding of a concept coming to you in a moment completely devoid of artistic intention. It’s through these moments where I’ve found myself being the most frustrated with patience. And this body of work sounds like that frustration.”
