Pharoahe Monch decided to go to the dark side, and this time around he’s a part of a band called Th1rt3en (with Daru Jones and Marcus Machado).

‘Palindrome’ is clearly about wordplay; the definition says that it’s “a word, phrase, or sequence that reads the same backward as forward, e.g., madam or nurses run.” As you could see in the lyric video, he delivers the verses in a mostrous way that you’ll flip out on the words he used.

For example:

A Christian Malcolm X minus all his conviction/I lie and tell’em that there’s no X in Nixon…”

A year ago, Pharoahe Monch was interviewed by Take It Personal Radio about what to expect from his upcoming album. In the interview, he mentioned that the album was going to be bar-heavy and rock-influenced, since he’s a huge Led Zepplin fan. Expect it to be more Black Sabbath, though.. since he said that this is his darkest project ever.

For those that aren’t in the know, Pharoahe has always had this interest in symbolism with the number 13. For example, the name of his band (and how it’s spelled). Secondly, the number of letters in his name is 13. In the lyric video above, you see the word ‘trescadecaphobia’ (sp?) – which means the ‘fear or avoidance’ of the number 13 (which kind of plays into the taboo of the day ‘Friday the 13th’).

In a 2014 interview with Complex, he’s ending the PM moniker after his PTSD album and taking on the new moniker, 13 “for my new rock sound.”

There’s no telling if this song will be on any project yet. Im sure we’ll find out later in time. This song has initially dropped as a flyer for his performance at the Kennedy Center this past Saturday.

(The intro was from the Summer Madness 2 event brought to you by URL when Loaded Lux battled Calicoe back in 2012.)