I resent Justin Charity of The Ringer for having the capacity to recall anything Kendrick Lamar did before 2011's
Section.80, because if he hadn't made reference to Kendrick Lamar's (to some) inexplicable love for Lil' Wayne I would be drawing so many more comparisons to Lamar's mostly terrible 2009 mixtape
C4. For those unaware, a brief recap: from 2005 to 2009, Lil' Wayne was the most exciting thing in rap. What started with a feti****ation of Cam'ron's work on
Purple Haze among Pitchfork writers blew out into a full blown orgy of dramatic prose hellbent on imbuing "my new drop is berry, watermelon, plum" (Wayne, "Live from 504") with the depth of Homer's Odyssey on every internet-centric indie rock outlet.
It is devastating to me, listening to
DAMN., just how far from mimetic cultural memory the
Carter III era has faded.
So, again for those unaware,
C4 is Kendrick Lamar's longtime partner Dave Free gaining access to all the beats from that album, plus Jay-Z's "99 Problems" and some other loosies, and trying to make their own
Carter III from the cadavers. On paper, this [air quotes]only[/air quotes] sounds like a bad idea because Lamar was a mostly unknown actor on the world stage at this point, a troublingly awkward songwriter, and perhaps most importantly
not Lil' Wayne, Taker of Beats. Do not think time has been kind to this record; you will dissolve into the aether upon the very hope of such a thing.
But.
But. This is also to say that Kendrick did not start out as a storytelling rapper, or a highbrow rapper, or a rapper at all concerned with "bringing real rap back" or connecting the old with the new. Lamar has been open in the past about
To Pimp a Butterfly's sound having far more to do with the musicians he hired to work on it than the aspirations he had going into those sessions, and it always seemed clear to me that Lamar guesting on tracks with artists on as wide a spectrum as Travi$ Scott to Maroon 5 was an implicit reference to the days when he remade "Mrs. Officer" as "Famous Pipe Game" and sang, horribly off-key, "slam my wee-wee wee-wee wee-wee (like a pornstar)." One of the greatest rappers of our or any generation,
indeed. Kendrick Lamar's story is of an artist surrounded by other great artists and building on their greatness to find his own greatness within. Or, an artist who got distracted from making his
Lights Out or
Tha Carter by special circumstances.
"BLOOD." is sort of mean in the sense that it doesn't let the listener just listen to
DAMN. on its own terms; by nodding to the Kendrick Lamar known worldwide as some kind of oracle for the times with this spoken word intro, it's hard to get ready for his jokey stabs at Drake ("ELEMENT."), Kanye West/Rich Homie Quan/Young Thug ("GOD.") and Lil' Wayne ("HUMBLE.") songs. "BLOOD." makes it really easy to hear the back-masking and references to religion and conclude Kendrick is (was?) releasing a companion album on Easter Sunday (a day previous as of this writing). "BLOOD." makes it difficult to recognize that "DNA." is as much Spaceghostpurrp by way of KRS-One as any one message, song or anthem, and hard to reconcile all the artistic collages to come are not necessarily part of a bigger picture other than Lamar's portrait. That's not to say that "DNA." is not
pure insanity; I'm not sure any single moment in music this year will feel as visceral as the entirety of this song's second half. But his focus on heritage and history on this track is supposed to, I believe, let you know Kendrick is going to wander slightly unfocused through his past and make good on it.
Californians often like to remind people that Digable Planets weren't the only MCs making true free association fashionable in the early-90s while pointing to Aceyalone and his Project Blowed crew, so leave it to Okayplayer poster Original Juice to point out the similarities to Aceyalone's mid-to-late 90s style of focusing on a specific word or sound and crafting a song around it. "Huh", "yah", "uh, "ugh", "raw" are all sounds that define songs here as much as the content of Lamar's verses. Lamar nods at Juvenile's "Ha", forever in a cage match with "Make 'Em Say Ugh" for late-90s rap single most defined by a single noise refereed by every song you remember only for Birdman making his bird noise adlib.
The song where that happens, "ELEMENT.", is a lost
Wu-Tang Forever beat (again, Kendrick sees you, Drake) looped into a dosey-doe with some lost Missy Elliott concept record about violence as sexuality. It's funny and weird and reminds me of the Kendrick at the start of this decade who was coming into his own as a rapper but reached for clever turns of phrase frequently. Like most of this record, it's nice to hear him plainly and confidently do old things better than he used to. "LUST." is, alternately, just Andre 3000's "Vibrate" with an awkward hook ("let me put the head in" that both recalls
C4 Lamar in unfriendly ways and reveals, to this writer's extreme pleasure, just how much Lamar has grown in ability and confidence as an artist. It's Kendrick Lamar's take on another dude's song, and it's worse, and that makes
DAMN. a reminder of Kendrick Lamar's sentience.
He will fall some day, as all heroes do. But, for the few long, longtime listeners, it's also fun to hear that Kendrick isn't a horrific mess at this kind of thing anymore.
DAMN. is far from a death sentence for Lamar, but it does force the public to concede Kendrick Lamar will likely do whatever he wants to as an artist from here on out. Despite the uncut raw aesthetic of its artistic direction and titling conventions,
DAMN. is actually a pop record with a Rihanna duet that only side-steps expectations by making Rihanna dressing rather than the cake itself. It stunt casts "U2" (it's just Bono, c'mon) on a Public Enemy tribute and makes that work, recreates the manic energy of "A Milli" over a beat far less people will find objectionable ("HUMBLE.", and it sacrifices much of that prior song's danger in doing so) and features several references to luxury vehicles Lamar's biggest fans will likely never sit behind the wheel of. It features "PRIDE.", a song that would've felt like satisfactory album filler on
Section.80 but understandably can leave those late to the game confused about this D'Angelo by way of Andre 3000 mood piece. "PRIDE.", after all, is primarily boring.
DAMN. is a very good album, and when he does the thing you want him to do ("FEAR.", right?) it's more proof that Kendrick Lamar has come such a very long way from his beginnings as the young kid in his crew. He can just casually toss a song like that, or "XXX.", or "DNA.", off into an otherwise far more massively palatable experience. In some ways, this makes
DAMN. a far more impressive feat than his past three projects; despite a confrontational appearance, this is easily his most inclusive release.
DAMN. is the album Lamar needed to make at this point in his career. In a worst case scenario, this is his
Lethal Injection, and Lamar never again recalls how to manifest the rage of his hungrier days.
DAMN. is the album we should have expected after Lamar released that drunken video in defense of Lil' Wayne despite the rapper's abhorrent batting average over the past decade. The album we should've expected after his last one had critics breathlessly wondering whether any rapper had ever been better than this single 27-year old ("when I was 27, I became accustomed to more fear").
And thus I'm good with "LOVE." reincarnating a vibe from Kendrick we haven't necessarily heard since the hotly debated "No Makeup", if not slightly more recent "Poetic Justice". I'm
very down for the Lamar presented on "HUMBLE." because, uh, look at my last.fm stats some time. "DNA.", again, is definitive and revelatory and platitudinous beyond measure. "XXX." not only works, it may ultimately be what this record is best remembered for. At the very least, it's the most exciting political record since anything from Killer Mike's
R.A.P. Music, and I'll say it here that it's incredible the two most radical tracks on this album are attributed to hitmaker Mike Will. "DUCKWORTH." is Kendrick doing Last Song on the Album Drake on his terms, telling a truly captivating story about how he came to be the head dog at Top Dawg Entertainment in the first place by way of a chance encounter between his father and Anthony "Top Dawg" Tiffith decades ago (much credit due for the way his engineers and Danny Keyz weave three distinct 9th Wonder beats into a coherent whole, as well).
DAMN. is a reset button, not the harbinger of some Easter-themed concept on life and death that exposes Kendrick Lamar as hip-hop's Last Great Christian (in fact, it surprisingly reveals he considers himself a Black Israelite now, which I'm surprised is still a thing).
DAMN. may immediately feel like a crossover, whether in the sense of leaving his hardcore fanbase behind or a fake out, but Kendrick Lamar is the
second most popular rapper in the world if we work under the assumption Eminem is a retired recluse rather than an annoying husk of a man on a string. As easy as it may be to feel owed another
Butterfly or
mAAd City, it's hard to recall a time when the words "Kendrick Lamar" were interchangeable with "Bishop Lamont" or "Slim da Mobster".
DAMN. lets Lamar officially slam the reset button about as hard he can after a record as challenging as
Butterfly, and it also lets elite ****-posters like The Ringer's Shae Serrano
expertly skewer the perception that Kendrick Lamar must always be a tome waiting to be deciphered.
Everybody wins with
DAMN., if only we let ourselves.
Hate it or love it, it's necessary and it's real and not everybody is going to understand the importance behind it.
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