Yes, quite good. Really, really very good.

Honestly I think my previous attempts to compare Kendrick to Bob Dylan were not that far off point. That's the direction he seems to be choosing, and that's fine. It just means his focus is likely always going to be lyrical. Style, genre, sonics, everything else will be secondary.

But we need rappers like this.

y'know what's a band I love that I feel doesn't seem to get the praise (I think) they deserve? The Violent Femmes. I've been super into that band since high school. At the time lumped them with say The Pixies as this sort of 80's starting band that was way ahead of their time. But over the years I feel like nobody really talks about them or anything. I feel like their legacy is forgotten. Maybe relegated to just "Blister In The Sun" I guess. But it's strange to me. That band was really weird, interesting and unique. I don't know. Just me?

Nevermind. Been listening to Ween the past hour and rather talk about them. A much bigger obsession for me. OMG I love ween.

Yes your comparsion was on point. I can see Kendrick winning a Nobel prize in decades to come. He's just that good.

Does HUMBLE satirize and mock the average mainstream rapper? Wondering how it'll come together within the context of the album.

"My next album, the whole industry on a ice pack".

I think they reached peak maturity on Hallowed Ground, their second album. That's an unheralded classic, for sure. I'm not sure I'd call them "ahead of their time," because their whole shtick is kind of built on perennial adolescence. And sonically, they really just used the tropes of punk, country, new wave and to some extent goth, to make a weird concoction across genres. The Pixies definitely did the same though, on their first two albums. And Young Marble Giants tread similar territory on Colossal Youth. Flaming Lips did the immature country goth thing several times in the '80s, between Hear it Is and Priest Driven Ambulance. But yeah, the Violent Femmes' first two albums are classics of the weirdo '80s "Left of the dial" era. And Hallowed Ground would be on the list of my favorite albums of the decade.

After that they pretty much went to shit, slowly, over a decade and a half. I remember seeing them pop up on Sabrina the Teenage Witch and wondering what the fuck was going on. They had possibly the worst '90s/2000s out of any of the '80s alt bands, even Dinosaur Jr. put them to shame, and they were basically just a Mascis solo project until '07.

Ween is a better band, and more inventive and influential. But I'd probably pick Hallwoed Ground over any single Ween album.

That's what I have to say about that, my friend.

Probably. I mean, why wouldn't it? Kinda seems like that's been part of Kendrick's approach for some time now. Remember that line from "Untitled 2," ... "I could put a rapper on life support / I guarantee that's something none of you want?" That seemed to be a pretty direct (and frankly chilling) mission statement for dealing with the competition.

But this is not very "Dylan-like" of him. Maybe he's going into battle-rap mode for at least a while. I'm not sure he could effectively take on Drake on the pop culture level. Not in the age of Trump. Not when Drake is the passive listening of choice for all the world's music non-fans.

See Gibbs is a rapper I like, and normally I would be interested, but knowing that we're getting a new Kendrick album in less than a week, I just can't be bothered about anything else.

Yeah I listened to TPAB today. "Mortal Man" is still my jam on that album. Holy fuck.

Yeah, TPAB and that song in particular have made me tear up a few times.

HUMBLE. debuts at #3 on the Billboard HOT 100 chart. The hype is real, friends.

Yeah, I don't think I ever teared up over a Kendrick song until Trump won.

I found my lip quivering during "The Blacker the Berry" the other day, and "Mortal Man" too.

I can't believe Kendrick directly called out Trump AND Vladimir Putin. What balls, for a major hip-hop figure to do that. Yowza. I mean, Kanye took on Gerorge Bush back in the day, but he's obviously not interested in that kind of thing anymore ( :( ) ... but no a lot of major players are willing to go there.

Wow @ the #3 debut! Maybe he can take on Drake after all.

I played "Humble" in my car today, blasted with the bass up n' stuff, and I now really, really like the song. It took the car to make "FACTS" sound dope too.

I'm glad the song doesn't have the "Mike Will MADE IT!!!" shout out on it. I'm so sick of hearing that stupid thing.

Am I alone in feeling a bit... Underwhelmed by the new Kendrick single? I mean, it's not bad, and the video is great, but it's no King Kunta...

Not sure if you read the post leading up to this, but I was pretty underwhelmed by it on first listen (and second listen, and third). It honestly wasn't until yesterday when I blasted it in my car simply because I couldn't think of what to listen to that I heared it... it's just a no-frills all-out banger.

No disrespect to louder, but I don't really think it's even comparable to "King Kunta" (though it's more comparable to that song than it is to "The Blacker the Berry," which was my original point of comparison), because "King Kunta" was still a pretty lushly produced track with a lot of moving parts.

"HUMBLE" is just a bang-yer-dead bullet track man. It doesn't have his best rapping or his best lyrics, and it certainly doesn't feature anything close to the production of his best songs, but blast it in your car and I'm pretty sure your head will bob and your windows will vibrate. There aren't a lot of tracks like this in hip-hop anymore. It's just an assault. I dig it, even though I still think MikeWillMadeIt is an overrated, overused and generally boring producer.

So here I am, waiting for the Kendrick album with no clue what's going on.

Yep. I made sure I stayed up until after midnight so I could check iTunes. Did so. Saw nothing.

Got up at 6 this morning and went right for the iTunes Store. What's this? OMG it's something new! Click, Severian, Click! Buy!!!

But nope. Just a pre-order for an April 14 release that's apparently just called "ALBUM." and has all black cover art and no track names.

I'm hoping this is just place-holder information. Call me shallow, but I really hope the album has an actual name cover. I would be way more on board with the idea of doing a nameless/faceless thing if he hadn't JUST done EXACTLY that with untitled, unmastered. To do pretty much the same thing for what's supposed to be a next-gen project that he did last year for his coda project for 2015's album... it feels way too much like he's repeating himself.

I'm sure it will be dope even if it's called "ALBUM" and has an all black cover (cuz there aren't enough "Black Albums" in the world with Prince, Metallica, and Jay Z), but I'd rather it have a bit more to it.

God dammit I was really excited to wake up to a new Kendrick album. Now I have, like, no reason to feel happy today. Guess it's gonna be a "hit-the-bar-alone-after-work-and-watch-the-Mariners-probably-lose" kind of day. :(

Kdot's fourth album has an official title (and thankfully it's not "ALBUM."), tracklistinf and cover art.

Kendrick Lamar - DAMN., (April 14, Aftermath/Interscope/TDE)

Front:


Back:

Looks good! I can see a storyline where God condemns Kendrick to go to Hell or something along these lines. Can't wait.

damn
dam/
verb
1.
(in Christian belief) be condemned by God to suffer eternal punishment in hell.
"be forever damned with Lucifer"

I don't think "Humble." is satire anymore. Kendrick has a lot to brag about as he lets us know on the verses, but whenever the hook comes on, he reminds himself to stay humble.

The image on the cover is dope but the text is very amateur looking.

If the letters on the white side of the back cover are rearranged, it spells out "death 2 the leader".

The leader = Donald Trump?

Well it's just splayed across the cover there in a super basic typeface. Times New Roman or Georgia or something. Too big. The period doesn't even fit.

Not gonna lie it kind of looks like a mixtape. A far cry from the detailed cover art of good kid and TPAB.

Have you noticed Kendrick has a thing with punctuation? Every album title has been stylized in a very specific and strange way except for TPAB.

It's not "Good Kid, Mad City" or even "Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City" ... it's good kid, m.A.A.d city ... this leaves several questions, but the one that really gets to me is, why is there no period after the "d" in m.A.A.d?
It's not "Section 80" ... it's Section.80
It's not "Untitled, Unmastered" ... it's untitled unmastered.
It's not "Damn" ... it's DAMN.

That kind of stuff makes me think the font and typeface were chosen deliberately, and for a reason.

Prolly.

For some reason I also feel like "Duckworth" is going to be about Trump. Maybe that's just because Trump kind of looks like a fat ass Howard the Duck to me.

Wouldn't be original cuz Tribe did it first. :D

Also, Duckworth is actually Kendrick's real last name.

Yeah, I always liked the punctuation on his album titles. Not sure why but they just fit the whole aesthetic.

Guess "DAMN." will make more sense soon. Kendrick's expression does make it seem like he just realized that he missed his opportunity of ending up in Heaven.

Still don't get why/how Bono paved his way to be featured on the album.

Regarding U2, think of it as Kendrick's version of featuring Chris Martin on "Homeciming."

Also, Kanye opened for U2 on a major tour, and Graduation was inspired by a conversation with Bono about how hip-hop albums often lacked the singular focus and cohesion of rock and pop records (what with the skits and the multiple versions of the same song that permeated hip-hop album culture at the time), making it difficult to translate into stadiums, where, Bono believed, hip-hop belonged. Graduation was a response to this, with its consistent sound and lean all-killer, no-filler tracklist.
This was more or less the death of the skit. And Kanye was primed and ready to transcend genres, which he did over following 9 years of sonic experimentation and boundary-pushing.

:D

The cover image I posted it really low res. The font is pixelated as fuck. The back image looks cleaner, so hopefully it looks good in the end.

I have to say, this is not the kind of album cover I expected or was hoping for. But ... y'know... I've gotten used to that....

*cough*



*cough*

Guess who just bought DAMN.?

My ass.

Gonna wait until tomorrow to listen to it. As always it was up on iTunes early.

Can. Not. Wait.

I hope NR is gonna love this album. Definitely nothing like TPAB or uu. Lots of half singing half rapping shit.

I like how it starts right off with samples of Fox News pundits misinterpreting Kendrick's BET performance. He even uses that "hip-hop has done more damage than racism" line! Ha!

First listen, shit is real. More satisfying than my first listen to any of his other albums, I think. There's a lot of shit going on that K. hasn't done before.

"GOD." sounds like a Kanye track! Seriously! Those exuberant synths!
"DNA" goes hard as fuck.
"YAH." almost sounds like a Drake imitation. But it's solid and dope and funky and good. Excellent production on that track.

I've "LOVED" (literally... I've clicked the little heart) on 3/4 of the tracks the album. Listened from start to finish, listening to several songs twice.

Fucking fire. Better not be any flip-flopping on this shit friends. This is a good album. It will probably blow up and we'll all get sick of hearing about it, but let's not forget that this shit is dope.

Re: NR

I'm not sure. You know, he mentioned that Section.80 was his favorite Kendrick album, and I think that kind of gets to the heart of why NR is not super on-board with TPAB and untitled unmastered..

Section.80 is a very different album than any of the others. It's soulful and bouncy. He semi-samples Kanye on "HiiiPower," and on my personal favorite joint, "Fuck Your Ethnicity," there's an ecstatic vibe that a lot of his darker and more epic stuff lacks.

I think NR likes ecstatic shit. I do too, for sure. Big time. It's easy to get bogged down by the weight of some of dense hip-hop odysseys. Ecstatic hip-hop, like Kanye and Chance and Tribe ... it lifts you up, even when it's moody.

Kendrick moved into more funky and sprawling territory on good kid, m.A.A.d city, which NR likes a little less than sec.80, I believe. Then he went from funk to fucking gangsta free-jazz, and there wasn't a lot of ecstatic stuff going on, even though TPAB is objectively brilliant. Same with untitled.

DAMN. is more ecstatic than the other recent ones. There's a lot of textured sounds, flavors, different shit going on. Still a bit of that jazzy airy feel, but in general it's much more "straight" sounding. Less loose. Not a bad thing. I dig the fuck out of it.

damn, sev done crawled inside my ears and wrote y'all a summary. That was legit. Dude kinda nailed it on the head.

It's true that the past couple years I've listened to less hip hop than I used to. Much listening time has been spent shifting on jazz and 90s stuff and so on. Ryan Adams & Wilco & etc.

So it seems like what Sev says is true - the hip hop that I am connecting with is stuff that feels good. Coloring Book is a great example. Some uplifting stuff.

Anyway, I will be giving the K. Dot a try. I always do.

And to clarify: I don't hate TPAB or UU. But, they're not my cup o tea either. It's like, I can admire the mastery and brushstrokes of some genius painter - but I don't always connect w/ the painting.

Yeah, this Kendrick album is pretty much his Yeezus. It's hard and banging and more "current" in terms of sound, but also pretty weird and eclectic. Somehow, it's a much easier listen from start to finish than both GKMC and TPAB. Wow.

Yeah, I just said something like this in the "most anticipated" thread. DAMN. is to To Pimp a Butterfly what Yeezus was to My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Not only because it's a follow-up to a career-defining record, but also for other reasons.

I'm not sure why it is — DAMN. is a much different sounding album than Yeezus, but it has a similar kind of balance of powers so to speak. It's a shrugging off of expectations... and it's extremely emotional, but has moments of silliness. It also kind of balances REALLY hard-edged rapping and heavy dancehall-inspired production and samples with an oddly tender kind of emotional bareness.

It actually does sound a bit like Yeezus now that I think on it. It sounds more like Kanye than any Kendrick album since Section.80. Hmm. Still, there's nowhere near as much sonic experimentation going on in Kendrick's discography as there has been in Kanye's. I never thought I'd feel like Kendrick was truly Kanye's equal because of this. But he's just such a Fucking MASTER lyricism and storyteller -- his skills in this area rival Kanye's penchant for big-picture culture-shock epics. He's definitely the Bob Dylan to Kanye's Beatles. For fucking sure. And he's got a hell of a production team. This shit sounds INSANE.

I'm THOROUGHLY fucking satisfied with this shit my friends.

Of course I will never love Kendrick as much as I love Kanye. DAMN. is not as good a record as Yeezus. But, fucking hell... he's just scary talented. A terrifyingly gifted rapper, with an ear for classy instrumentals and an intellect that is just unparalleled in hip-hop.

I kind of hope this album gets bigger than VIEWS. Fucking who the fuck would give a fucking fuck about Drake with this shit out there?

What're y'allz favorite songs so far?

Me, I just can't get enough of "DNA." Nothing in recent memory goes quite that hard. Holy shit.

Not sure it my favorite though. I love all of the first few and last few songs. I think "YAH." and "ELEMENT." are my picks for now. "ELEMENT." has a chorus like whaaaaaaat?


That might be the most catchy chorus I've heard all year.

And I totally fucking love the shit out of "HUMBLE." now. Just like "FACTS." Actually the song kind of reminds me of "FACTS" at times. One part in — I forget which one — just really has a similar cadence or vibe or something.

If Kanye isn't done with music forever, I want him to become best friends with Kendrick and I want them to make many songs together. I think we took the objective and undeniable complete and utter awesomeness of "No More Parties in LA" for granted, guys. Shit, Kendrick and Kanye rapping over a Madlib beat with a GFK sample for over 6 minutes? WHAT THE FAAAACK?!

When will something that awesome happen again?

I'm bored. So glad there's a new album worth talking about.

I was very luke warm to Damn at first but it is a many layered album that is just now starting To show itself. There are some truly bizarre musical moments and of course his story telling is better than anyone's at the moment. I am waiting patiently with a bottle of wine hoping that there is a second part at midnight.