Golden flowers on a white piano, a room that looks like it’s holding its breath. John Legend sits and sings a single sentence you can’t forget: “I lost my brother, but I gained an angel.”
Offset steps in and answers with specifics, the kind you only say when you’re tired of generalities, a line about a wedding ring, a memory that won’t sit still, a name you can’t say without changing shape.
Never Let Go settles at the soft centre of KIARI, Offset’s third solo album released on 22 August 2025 via Motown and UMG.
Apple Music frames the record as a self-portrait, and this track as one of the places where grief for Takeoff is written plainly.
It appears late in the sequence as Track 16, and you can feel why; it reads like the quiet after you’ve said everything else.
Legend’s hook works like a chapel refrain, piano carrying the vowels until they sit round the room.
Offset takes the verses like a diary entry you decide to read out loud.
Short, clipped images do the work: “Play back all the memories,” “I even lost the wedding ring.”
The bareness is the point. There is space between the lines and the mix respects that choice, vocals up front with just enough weight in the low end to keep the track warm rather than glossy.
The video keeps the same temperature. Legend at the piano, flowers crowding the frame, Offset moving through the room in slow disclosures; it plays like group therapy with only two speakers and an audience of one who is gone.
Coverage has called it a dedication to Takeoff, and the visual ends with a message in that spirit, a promise that the light does not fade. It matches how the song feels: ceremonial, but private.
Migos disbanded in 2023 after Takeoff’s death the previous year, and Offset talks about keeping tributes close throughout KIARI.
You can hear it elsewhere, but Never Let Go is where it stands still long enough to be named.
The line everyone quotes is also the one that unlocks the track’s shape.
“I lost my brother, but I gained an angel.” It is not clever for its own sake. It is a sentence you say to keep going.
Part of why the song holds is the casting. John Legend’s tone brings a lived-in calm that lets Offset write in immediate detail without the record tipping into spectacle.
The producers list reads like a tight room rather than a crowded one, Fridayy, London Jae, Go Grizzly, Pooh Beatz, Cheeze Beatz, Sam, and you can hear the restraint in the choices, from the unhurried piano to the way drums arrive as punctuation, not a headline.
Credits confirm that Patrizio “Teezio” Pigliapoco handled the mix and Colin Leonard the master, which explains the vocal clarity and the rounded top end that keeps the sheen from going brittle.
Fan response in the first week mirrored the tone. On r/hiphopheads, the video thread reads like a small vigil, with comments as simple as “Damn i miss takeoff.”
That plain talk suits the song. YouTube numbers back the attention; the official upload passed the seven-hundred-thousand mark within days, which is exactly the level where a single starts to travel on sentiment rather than campaign.
If you have followed Offset’s public steps since 2022, this track sits neatly in the catalogue of how artists keep their people close once headlines stop moving.
Quavo’s Without You did that in 2023, all raw edge and prayer. Never Let Go chooses tidiness without being neat.
The writing is specific, the production leaves the air in, and the hook turns grief into something you can carry without pretending you’re fine.
There is also a smaller story inside the big one. Plenty of artists make tribute songs.
Fewer let a line like “I even lost the wedding ring” sit there without framing it, as if the studio were a kitchen table and the job were simply to say the thing.
When a rapper known for precision gives you that kind of plainness, it lands harder than any high-wire rhyme scheme.
So what are you left with after the flowers, after the piano, after the room goes quiet again.
A promise to hold tight, a title you end up saying like a vow, and a question that doubles as a charge to the listener: when memory refuses to behave, what can a song keep safe.
Release & credits
Song: “Never Let Go” by Offset & John Legend. Album: KIARI. Release date: 22 August 2025. Label: Motown Records; ℗ 2025 UMG Recordings, Inc. Writers: Kiari Cephus, John Roger Stephens, Francis LeBlanc, Jaucquez Lowe, Kevin Price, Darryl Clemons, Darryl McCorkell, Samuel Sanders, Jordan Walker, Jerel Nance. Producers: Fridayy, London Jae, Go Grizzly, Pooh Beatz, Cheeze Beatz, Sam. Mix: Patrizio “Teezio” Pigliapoco. Mastering: Colin Leonard.
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Full Never Let Go Lyrics from OFFSET & John Legend
Chorus: John Legend
I lost my brother, but I gained an angel
I remember all the times we had, forever I’m grateful
If I could get one more time to see you again
I would hold you tight and never let go, my friend
I lost my brother, but I gained an angel
I remember all the times we had, forever I’m grateful
If I could get one more time to see you again (Woah, yeah, yeah)
I would hold you tight and never let go, my friend
Verse: Offset
Uh, uh
Legend on the NAWF (Legend), legend in the game (Legend)
Playback all the memories, hopin’ they don’t fade (Fade)
Bando to the jet, jet to the stage (Stage)
Hard to see my nigga in that grave, this shit crazy (Crazy)
I’d give all this shit back just to get you back (Give it back)
Tatted on my back, know you got my back (Got my back)
The chains and the ice don’t amount to that (Ice)
Lost my nigga, lost my dog, I can’t handle that (I can’t handle that)
Lost myself in the process, I can’t go back to that (Can’t go)
Scratched the paint off the whip, everything black on black (Black on black)
Guess I’m emotional now, I’m not approachable
Got a Glock inside the vocal booth
Can’t trust these niggas, fuck ’em, how I’m supposed to get over you? (Hey)
Ain’t been the same, ’cause the pain fuck up everything (Pain)
I mean everything, I even lost a wedding ring (Ring)
Need to talk to you, my brother, just say anything (Anything)
‘Til we meet again
Chorus: John Legend
I lost my brother, but I gained an angel
I remember all the times we had, forever I’m grateful
If I could get one more time to see you again
I would hold you tight and never let go, my friend
I lost my brother, but I gained an angel
I remember all the times we had, forever I’m grateful
If I could get one more time to see you again (Woah, yeah, yeah)
I would hold you tight and never let go, my friend
