It’s the first album in Kendrick Lamar’s discography where tracks can more readily be taken individually. And yet, given the talent of the artist in question, and the producers he’s pulled in, this one is no less ambitious and rewarding than some of his previous entries.
After delving into the personal on 2012’s good kid, m.A.A.d. city and going broader on Butterfly, Lamar has found a middle ground on DAMN. that yields some of his most emotionally resonant music yet.
Countless rappers claim to have transcended the game. Kendrick Lamar actually does. There’s the sense his ambitions on DAMN. are even larger, reaching toward something more universal, fateful even spiritual in its reach to find the link tying all contradictions together.
DAMN revels in its own imperfections in ways that affirm Lamar’s place not just at the top of the hip hop heap right now but at the top of popular music. This is the work of a future all-time great in full command of his powers.
Even before you fully absorb Damn’s beat science, its self-referencing textural depths, and its ever-evolving balance of personal and political, you can’t help but hear this record as a rocket in the space race with Drake.
All in all, DAMN. is yet another stellar addition to Kendrick’s extraordinary body of work.
Three months in, DAMN. feels like our first Trump-era classic. It’s as bold and as hard and as hopeful as it is bursting with vitriol. It’s as distracting as it is inciting. It’s as cohesive as it is dense.
As on its predecessors, Damn. is packed tight with thoughts, anxieties, and anecdotes, but this time Lamar doesn’t even try to shape them into a big picture ... Lamar trusts every idea to stand on its own. When you’re making art this substantial, vital, and virtuosic, there’s no need to wrap a tidy bow around it.
DAMN. is an almost flawless hip-hop masterclass that crunches Kendrick's consuming concerns--life and death, pride and guilt, fate and freewill--into the tightest, most explosive package yet.
DAMN. benefits from this conciseness, as well as its repeated call backs to central thematic tropes throughout the album, with the sublime surprise of legendary DJ Kid Capri co-hosting the proceedings like a classic mixtape from his salad days during the 1990s.
DAMN. sees the rapper make a 180 degree turn from the sprawling jazz/funk/hip-hop odyssey of TPAB to deliver 14 taut, tough and wise cutting-edge examples of what’s possible in hip-hop today.
In all, DAMN. makes baseless any claims that Kendrick Lamar isn’t an all-time great.
It may not be nearly as overtly political a record as his last entry, but the state of things seeps into every crisis-in-song-form to be found here. The confidence displayed is easily misleading; more than anything, this is a breakdown in the form of an album.
DAMN. is a widescreen masterpiece of rap, full of expensive beats, furious rhymes, and peerless storytelling about Kendrick’s destiny in America.
With DAMN., Kendrick Lamar plays by the rules and then sets the rule book on fire, and continues one of the most impressive run of albums of any artist in recent memory.
A sonic departure from the jazz inflected funk of To Pimp a Butterfly and the hyper-melodic, west coast revival feel of good kid, m.A.A.d city, DAMN. is much more concerned with trading groove for thump and concept for straight spitting.
To Pimp a Butterfly was a far-reaching, symphonic suite of black music past and present, and in many ways DAMN. follows suit—just in a different way. Rather than using jazz and funk as emotional signifiers, he tells his story through the kind of rapper’s delights that old heads will deeply appreciate.
If his expansive, epic 2015 album To Pimp A Butterfly was Kendrick’s grand statement, the realisation of iconic status and a comment on US racial tensions in the final days of Obama’s presidency, then DAMN. sees a continuation of the rapper’s politicised vision, as he stares down FOX News and the Trump administration with strength.
With so much detail in commentary, religious comparisons and self-reflection it is truly a record that is worth anyone’s time, especially those who barely listen to rap to begin with.
For certain, Kendrick did not hold back on the religious undertaking of the album and it's a lot to unpack in one sitting. He continues to be transparent and although enjoys the title of Hip Hop's Savior, reminds himself as well as us all that he's simply mortal.
While this is his first album not buoyed by a concept since he became the undisputed greatest rapper alive, there’s far more to DAMN. than K-dot’s emphatic demonstrations of dominance.
Expectations were undoubtedly, and wholly justifiably, running at the highest level imaginable for Kendrick Lamar’s latest release ... So does DAMN. meet those expectations? Well yes – but by taking a surprising side-step rather than a pace forward in its artistic development.
’DAMN.’ does at times feel contradictory and the ideas he’s transmitting at times don’t feel fully formed, but this is where its genius lies. Kendrick offers a true snapshot of the eternal debates that we host inside our heads, and there is immense bravery and artistry in his depiction.
If To Pimp a Butterfly was the best rap album in 2015, Damn. is the platonic ideal of the best rap album of 1995, a dazzling display of showy rhyme skills, consciousness-raising political screeds, self-examination and bass-crazy-kicking.
Kendrick Lamar is at his most belligerent, confident, strident on DAMN.. But also his most tender, hurt, thoughtful. He switches tone within songs, and from song to song.
Damn is an album of bangers, but also an album of ever imperfect portraits told with supreme skill: loving and loathing and doing the wrong thing as often as the right. But that’s real. And through unflinching depiction, reality is revolutionary too.
DAMN. is a special piece of work. Although Good Kid, M.A.A.D City and To Pimp a Butterfly set Kendrick up as a sharp, sincere storyteller, it wasn’t until DAMN. that we were able to hear what happens when the lens was turned fully inward and onto himself.
At 55 minutes, DAMN. is incredibly knotty and impregnable in terms of being able to fully process everything at work here. Indeed, subsequent listens continue to reveal more and more of the lyrical subtext, allusions and introspective nature of his lyrics.
More accurate to say that, in an era where hip-hop feels defined by absurdly long durations and scores of filler, songs on DAMN. arrive, say what needs be said, and rarely ever let the beat ride out
DAMN. is a showcase for a rapper at his peak, blessed with a flow, nuance and unostentatious authority that currently feels unparalleled.
The triumphant Compton MC might have cut down the number of tracks on his fourth studio album ... but the ideas, thoughts and feelings it contains are massive, weighty things, from sexual tension to deep, dark depression.
DAMN. may be Kendrick’s most commercially viable body of work to date and contains a number of breezy tunes that should keep him on the Billboard charts for the foreseeable future, but it is at its best when the rapper delves inward.
His confidence positively gleams across dexterous modern-day parables whose fierce reflections, anxieties and grievances jab but never jar and rarely miss their targets.
DAMN. is one of Kendrick's most intriguing releases yet, delivering a series of tracks that are chaotic, layered, and deeply conflicted.
DAMN. is the first time in Lamar's career that he hasn't broken new ground, explored old themes in new ways or exhibited sonic growth. That said, it's a small blemish on an otherwise spotless catalogue.
DAMN grew on me so hard, that I nearly cried to God
I mean shit I hated that song for so long and thought it was the worst song Kendrick had made up to this point... but huh. It is so personal, and raw, and works wonders in this album. It sounds like everything about him is stripped back and he leaves this physical form to ascend and shout proudly. It is a beautiful moment
That's the thing about this project... in a nutshell many of these moments don't make sense. It is some of Kendrick's ... read more
Unlike Kendrick's last two albums, DAMN. does not have one central idea. TPAB was heavily focused on political and social issues, and GKMC was a concept album that told a story of being an adolescent boy growing up in Compton. And because of this lack of an idea or theme, I think that DAMN. is the perfect balance between the two projects.
There are introspective songs that move along slowly (FEAR.), bangers that retain Kendrick's lyrical excellence (DNA.), and unapologetically commercial ... read more
Damn is Kendrick's most polarizing album to date because of how cryptic he seems on it, over hated by listeners and Iauded by critics. I think that was the whole point, he succeeded in achieving that kinda like what Ye did with Yeezus or Frank with Blonde. The dichotomy is clear as day, wickedness or weakness? Good or bad? Doesn't seem very difficult to understand initially but whilst listening to this masterpiece he constantly blurred the lines between good and evil resulting in confusion and ... read more
1. BLOOD. - N/A
2. DNA. - 10/10 ⭐⭐⭐
3. YAH. - 7/10
4. ELEMENT. - 8/10
5. FEEL. - 10/10 ⭐⭐⭐
6. LOYALTY. - 6/10
7. PRIDE. - 9/10 ⭐⭐
8. HUMBLE. - 8.5/10 ⭐
9. LUST. - 10/10 ⭐⭐⭐
10. LOVE. - 5/10
11. XXX - 10/10 ⭐⭐⭐
12. FEAR. - 9/10 ⭐⭐
13. GOD. - 3.5/10
14. DUCKWORTH. - 10/10 ⭐⭐⭐
106/130
8.2/10 (Great 8.0-8.9)
I've avoided Kendrick for a while since he's absolutely beloved by most people here and I don't wanna end up like Paruko just being attacked for not liking this one guy, especially since I'm a lot more of a Pop and R&B fan rather than a Rap fan, luckily for me that probably won't happen because god DAMN. this shocked me, for the first few songs it doesn't really push the envelope for me but once it gets to PRIDE. it starts really going off and keeps going until XXX., the run from PRIDE. to ... read more
Incredibly high highs, with some of Kendrick's best narratives, but at times it can be a little unfocused and overly commercial. It couldn't end in a better note though.
Best tracks: DNA, LUST, FEAR, DUCKWORTH
Worst track: LOYALTY
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