In his second performance of the night, Kendrick Lamar performed “Father Time” on the Saturday Night Live stage.
During the performance, Lamar raps in a bedroom set-up, complete with a bed, a nightstand, and a chair. A man is seen in the chair with his back turned. The man is later revealed to be Sampha, who joins in and sings the song’s chorus.
“Father Time” is one of the more confessional songs on Mr. Morale And The Big Steppers. In an interview with GQ, producer Sounwave said working with Lamar on this album was therapeutic, especially after feeling isolated during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I’m a perfectionist,” Sounwave said. “So that whole 2020 of me locked in, making music with just me and my thoughts, I hated everything. ‘This is terrible. Nobody will ever like this. Who would ever sing on a song like this?’ I didn’t have that one person to be like, ‘No, this is good!’ I missed that. I didn’t realize that. And Kendrick is king of that. Even if it’s something terrible, he can hear something small in there and flip that to where it actually makes sense. A lot of our songs in the past came from that. When you take that element out, you get lost in your head where you kind of go mad.”
K. Dot and Sampha perform Father Time on #SNLPremiere pic.twitter.com/fj7v4g3jBa
— Eric Diep (@E_Diep) October 2, 2022
Check out a clip of the performance above.