An interesting tea for sure. I picked up a sample of this and some of W2T’s other really high end stuff to see how it was. I’m really not sure how I feel about this one. It definitely wasn’t a flavor powerhouse, but as he has said, flavor isn’t necessarily what Paul is going for on some of his teas. This one has a reputation of being a bit of a face-melter, and while I didn’t quite have that experience, I definitely picked up on some qi from it.
The dry leaf had a greenish and pungent smell to it – there may have been some florals in there, but it really just smelled powerful to me. It didn’t change much after a rinse. It mostly just smelled “shengy” to me.
I found the flavor to be simple but pleasant. Certainly some bitterness involved, but not enough to chase me away. Grassy at times, but mostly a buttery vegetal flavor in the first half of the session. The flavor started moving in a sweeter, fruity direction around 8 or 9 steeps in, most notably in the finish. By the time I was squeezing the last bits of life out of it, the flavor was slightly syrupy and a bit fruity.
The texture of the liquid was incredibly thick and sat heavily in my stomach. In the first session I did with this tea, I didn’t feel the qi starting to build until I was about four or five steeps in, and it sort of just flowed through me in a relaxing way. Not too face-melty, but nice feeling. The second session was more notable and…weird I guess. Starting very early on in the session, it was distracting me from whatever I was trying to do at the time. I kept hearing music in my head, but not any songs which I knew…strange hip hop beats or something. I don’t usually listen to that kind of music or anything. Maybe it was the Kendrick Lamar song which this tea is named after (which I have never heard). I pretty much couldn’t get anything done as I drank the tea this second time around.
I like this one, and it had a weird qi effect to it. That said, it hasn’t inspired me to buy a full cake of it for the price it goes for. I have enough left to do one more little session with it, so I’ll probably try that with 200F water like Oolong Owl did on her blog review. Glad to experience this one. That second session was sorta surreal.
Flavors: Bitter, Butter, Fruity, Grass, Sweet, Vegetal
