On the latter, Lamar examines the titular emotion while using crystalline lyrics to fully depict different characters, each of whom is fearing for his life in his own way. Lamar turns America’s woes into a moment for prayer and self-reflection on the former, with Bono’s soothing burr acting as a release valve for Lamar’s questioning of the heavens: “Is America honest, or do we bask in sin? Pass the gin,” he intones slowly over a velvety bassline. The two songs that follow, the clamorous “XXX.” and “FEAR.,” combine the personal with the political in stunning fashion. “YAH.” uses woozy beats to take on Rivera and muse on Bibilical prophecies, while Rihanna struts around the boastful yet suspicious “LOYALTY.,” which pivots on reversed-tape samples and name-drops Lamar’s new nickname of choice, “Kung Fu Kenny.” The one-two punch of “LUST.” and “LOVE.” explore the conflict between the physical and the cerebral, with “LOVE.” gleaming in a way that brings to mind the midpoint between Enya’s plush synths and trap’s stuttering drumbeats. The album’s sounds are more in line with current hip-hop trends than 2015’s skronk-steeped To Pimp A Butterfly, which placed Lamar firmly in the pantheon of top-tier MCs. That leads into the harsh beats and boastful verses of the invigorating “DNA.,” which flips clichés about black culture on its head while also slamming hip-hop’s most prominent critics-like Geraldo Rivera, who said, “This is why I say that hip-hop has done more damage to African Americans than racism in recent years.” Lamar and Atlanta hip-hop mastermind Mike WiLL Made-It use the sample to great effect, dropping Rivera’s voice into part of a verbal melee with Lamar and an ominous-sounding countdown. I don’t like it,” Fox commentator Kimberly Guilfoyle says. That fades into a prismatic sample of Fox News commentators complaining about the lyrics to his breakout single “Alright,” which he performed while perched atop a graffiti-covered police cruiser during the 2015 BET Awards. opens with the shimmering, ominous “BLOOD.,” a free-verse parable about a meeting with a blind woman that ends with a bang-a gunshot that cuts the narrator’s life short. shows that if nothing else, fame has driven him even further inside his own head, making him almost obsessively reflective about his place in the world-as a pop star, as a black man, as an American in 2017.ĭAMN.
Lamar’s steadily increasing success over the past few years has culminated in some of the spoils only enjoyed by those at the very top of the pops-Grammy Awards and nominations in the cross-genre “big five” categories, collaborations with superstars like Beyoncé and Taylor Swift, big-money headline stints at festivals like the annual desert bacchanalia Coachella, where he’ll headline the Sunday-night installment of this and next weekend’s festival.
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