Kendrick Lamar - Damn

The Guardian 100

Luscious harmonies and hints of psychedelic soul – plus guest support from Bono and Rihanna – couch brilliant, sharp-edged storytelling from an artist at the top of his game

In the weeks before the release of Kendrick Lamar’s fourth album, rumours circulated about its contents. Sources clearly blessed with assorted degrees of reliability informed the world that To Pimp a Butterfly’s follow-up proper would be more commercial than its predecessor, involve “African tribal elements and sounds” and be an album based not around the funk and jazz influences in which To Pimp a Butterfly and the subsequent outtakes collection, untitled unmastered, were rooted, but the harsh, spare sound of trap. But the most intriguing suggestion came from Lamar himself, who told the New York Times it wasn’t going to be another sprawling state-of-the-nation address: “To Pimp a Butterfly was addressing the problem. I’m in a space now where I’m not addressing the problem any more.”

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The Guardian 100

(Top Dawg/Interscope)
More than drugs, crime or gynaecology, greatness is arguably the meta-theme of all hip-hop, and Lamar both tells and shows his pre-eminence

For all Kendrick Lamar’s supernatural prowess as a rapper, he did not rise again last Sunday. Rumours had been circulating that Damn, the Compton lyricist’s fourth album, was only the first half of an Easter two-parter, with the second half following the Good Friday release – an Ascension, of sorts.

As it is, we just have Damn – 14 Bible-referencing stations of the cross, in which the jazz leanings of Lamar’s career-defining To Pimp a Butterfly album (2015) give way to yet another dial-shifting record.