“Playing The Long Game” was Panda Bear’s first official single since releasing Buoys in February 2019. In the vein of some of the album that preceded it, it attempts to capture a “hyper-modern” sound inspired by mainstream reggae and trap artists of the year, like Bad Bunny and Migos.
Waking on a may be cloudy, may be rain
Playing at a may be cloudy kind of game
Slip on every step amidst a morning rush (Slipping on)
Crashing like a fact and now I'm in its clutch
I'm juking all the baggage
Keep it in a straight line
And if when separated
I can keep it in the right mind
(Just one time)
And then I slip into a feeling (Feeling, feeling, feeling, feeling, feeling, feeling)
Slip into a feeling, write a little rhyme
Ladies riding refuse like a rooster's cry (Cry)
I'm tickled with a gobble, what you gonna do?
Vision like a bubble right in front of you
Even when a noggin is a cup of dread
Used to be a comment, was a temporal thing
And every single good jam dries
Drying on the vine
Like a little sweet thing
Rotting in a can
playing the long game was written by Panda Bear.
playing the long game was produced by Rusty Santos & Sebastian Sartor & Panda Bear.
Panda Bear released playing the long game on Wed Oct 09 2019.
In a press release, Noah Lennox explains:
[It’s] about a brief series of thoughts I had one morning about who I am, what I’m doing, and where I’m going."