After sharing "FACTS" on New Year's, Kanye West began Pablo season a week later with "Real Friends," a beautifully honest lament on how difficult it is to sustain true friendships as one gets older. It still stands as one of Pablo's most memorable tracks and also as one of the most remixed tracks of the year, with laudable reworks coming from Erykah Badu, Dave East, Kirko Bangz, and Waka Flocka, whose "Flockmix" of "Real Friends" might just be the best of the bunch. One of the reasons why Flocka's remix was so poignant is that he rarely takes on instrumentals like this one (produced by Kanye, Boi-1da, Frank Dukes, and Havoc). He's also not known to get quite so introspective. Flocka uses his remix to pay tribute to the friends he's lost in the streets, and he expresses fear about some of his living friends going out the same way.
The video is made up of camcorder footage taken during Waka's European tour, which was filled with many raucous shows and inspiring memories. It ends with him standing under the Eiffel Tower and giving some loose change to a fiddler in the Metro. "Real Friends" showed up on the recently shared tracklist for LeBron Flocka James Pt. 4, which is supposed to be a joint tape between Waka and 808 Mafia boss Southside aka Young Sizzle. Waka told fans that LBFJ4 as well as another tape, Flock Curry (DuFlockaRant Edition), will both drop this month.
