Metro Boomin’s new album, Heroes & Villains, is out now and already garnering enthusiastic responses from fans. And while the music, which features such collaborators as ASAP Rocky, Don Toliver, Future, Gunna, John Legend, Takeoff, The Weeknd, Travis Scott, 21 Savage, Young Nudy, and Young Thug, is rightfully receiving most of the attention, Metro’s commitment to the concept of the title also shines through. The intro, which features John Legend, is punctuated by a sample of the very embodiment of the hero/villain dichotomy: The Boys‘ Homelander, who masquerades as the former while acting very much like the latter.
In the show (and the comic book series it’s based on), Homelander is a patriotic-themed, corporate hero in the vein of Captain America and Superman (his most immediate analogs), but like both of those institutions, he’s actually corrupt, selfish, and vain. The sampled speech in question comes from the second episode of the third season, long after Homelander has gone “mask off” with his closest associates. In it, he declares himself superior to the common person (physically if not morally) and rails against “cancel culture,” because of course he does.
Fans were very much here for the sample, praising Metro for hitting that nail right on the head (unfortunately, any message that he may have had gets muddled, since the very next song features Chris Brown, Black music’s own Homelander if ever there was one). Clearing the speech must have cost a fortune, but then again, that’s probably why it’s on the intro — the track most likely to rack up enough streams to make that fee worth it in the end. Check out some of the fans’ responses below.