Rap songs not having featured artist in title

Question

In most rap songs, if there is a featured artist on the track they will be listed in the title in brackets.

For example:

Earl Sweatshirt - Centurion (Feat. Vince Staples)

Link to the song

Notice how Vince Staples is listed as being featured on the track. Moving over to one of Vince's songs, you can clearly hear Kendrick Lamar's verse in the song, however he is only listed in the production credits.

Vince Staples - Yeah Right

Link to the song

This confused me as I don't see any reason for an artist not to be listed.

Why do artists do this? Does it have something to do with their labels or publishers?

Answer 1

This is a question that, in my point of view cannot be answered with hard facts, the reason behind the song-name is in the hands of the artist(s) and no artists are the same and all artists have their own perception of creativity and aestetics. Therefore I am going to answer this with my thoughts and views on the question

I think it's a matter of how the artist(s) want the song to be viewed before listened to since everyone have preconcieved notions and a name could make people not want to listen to the song the same way as it could make people want to listen to a song. The artist(s) might want the listener to listen to the song because of the main-artist or the title.

It could also be so, that the artist whose song it is want to surprise the listeners with another artist, "Is this Kendrick that's rapping? It sure sounds like him".

It could also be an aesthetic decision. For example Kanye, on his album The Life of Pablo, he didn't have any names in the titles when the album released (this did change on some streaming services later on) and this was out of an aesthetic point of view. He wanted it to look clean.

Again this is only my thoughts and views on the question.