The Best Albums of 2017 The Best Songs of 2017 Damn, Kendrick

You almost have to hit pause to process it all. is an embarrassment of riches, and the sprint between “DNA.” and “Humble.” has a breathlessness to it. These songs are muscular, aggressive, and catchy: There’s a duet with Rihanna (“Loyalty.”), a tenacious three-minute song of self (“DNA”), and the fiery hit that in April became Kendrick’s second Billboard Hot 100 no. is probably the most concise and accessible stretch of music he’s ever released. Kendrick Lamar tends to default to the loquacious and epic, but in this order, the first half of Damn. This gives a hallucinatory vibe to the 13 tracks that follow, as though it’s an otherworldly missive from the afterlife. … You’ve lost … your life.”-she shoots him dead. The first track on the standard edition is “Blood.,” an ephemeral interlude in which Kendrick recounts a chilling dream: He meets a blind woman on the street and offers to help her, and rather than accept his assistance- “Oh yeah, you have lost something. When you play it as it was first released, Damn. But then I tried it, and it took me only one listen to become a believer. I didn’t think it would make much of a difference-it all sounded a bit excessive to me. I hadn’t actually tried listening “14-1,” as the true heads say. I’d heard about it, of course, but until Kendrick released the collector’s edition. In an extensive post arguing this theory at the rap blog Ambrosia for Heads, one writer called it a “double album within an album.”

My work will be in our future TDE dates tho.” Kendrick fans on Reddit and other message boards, however, were already onto a new theory. “ThankU 4 the desire of always anticipating new music of my own. grew so loud that Kendrick had to dispel them himself. The red pill and blue pill takes practically wrote themselves.īy April 21, rumors about Nation. came out Kendrick’s collaborator Soundwave tweeted a picture of Morpheus. Because no internet conspiracy theory can exist without a connection to the Matrix, fans made much of the fact that the day before Damn. cover took pains to place the “O” in the same spot, like a halo.

was positioned above Kendrick’s head in such a way that made it look like devil horns. (Get it? Damn … nation? Anyway.) On the first release, he stood in front of a red brick wall the second’s wall was blue. Someone speculated that the album would be called Nation., and just as quickly, a fake cover started to make the rounds, designed to look like a companion piece to Damn. Almost immediately, rumors circulated online that Kendrick, that benevolent rap messiah, would drop another new album on Easter Sunday. is meant to be listened to back to front.ĭamn. But it was also confirmation of the long-held, much-discussed fan theory that Damn. is so complex that eight months out from its release it still has some fresh secrets to whisper. It was an elegant flex: an assertion that the original songs are so great that the listener doesn’t need any bonus material, and that Damn. Most “collector’s editions” tend to be overpriced affairs bloated with B-sides, demos, and unnecessarily shiny packaging, but this one was different-just the same 14 songs from the original album, but with its tracklist arranged in reverse. On December 8, Kendrick Lamar released the collector’s edition of his acclaimed 2017 album Damn.

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