“I been goin’ through somethin’/Be afraid,” he says, a warning that is followed by frantic double-time verses that slink around oblique piano stabs and brisk drums. Prompted by narrator Whitney Alford, his romantic partner since high school, Kendrick opens the record by framing his honesty as dangerous, the first of many disclosures to come. The search for the longer answer propels the album. The short answer is his family and his homies. His main priority, however, is clarifying who, exactly, Kendrick Lamar represents. His final album for his longtime label home Top Dawg Entertainment enters a world shaped by the pandemic, #MeToo, and the global protests against police brutality, events Kendrick comments on across the record while recounting how he’s spent his hiatus. Aside from the splashy launch of pgLang, his opaque media company with Dave Free, and a few scattered features, Kendrick has kept a low profile. and curated the easygoing soundtrack for Black Panther-eons in the rap world, and quite a chunk of regular time too. Five years have passed since Kendrick released the punchy and vivid DAMN.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |