Metro Boomin’s Anthemic ‘Superhero’ and ‘Creepin”: Vault Tracks That Long ‘Foreshadowed the Album’s Tone’

variety.com:

Mike Wass A densely layered multimedia project that combines music, comic book art, holograms and mini-movies, Metro Boomin’s “Heroes & Villains” is wildly ambitious.

That scope and vision comes through in the music. “Superhero” sets the tone for the album with its propulsive beats and “The Dark Knight”-referencing Kanye West sample, while “Creepin’” finds the producer rebuilding Mario Winans’ 2004 classic “I Don’t Wanna Know” from the ground up.

Pulling together disparate sounds and influences is Metro Boomin’s superpower, used to full effect on “Superhero (Heroes & Villains)” featuring Future and Chris Brown, which first surfaced online in 2021. “We did the song probably a couple of years before it dropped,” Metro remembers.

When the sweeping track reappeared in late 2022, it had a new outro and a clip of Jay-Z ruminating on living “long enough to see yourself become a villain.” The Batman-referencing line stems from West’s “So Appalled,” which Metro Boomin revisited by chance. “I was in the car one day and I was listening to [West’s 2010 album] ‘My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy,’ and it came on,” he says. “I heard the line and it stuck out to me.” Allen Ritter, one of the song’s co-producers, calls the sample “foundational” for the whole project. “It’s not just a sample,” he says. “It’s a foreshadowing of the album’s tone and narrative.” Ritter contributed to the new outro of “Superhero.” He played Metro a sample during a studio visit, and it caught the producer’s attention.