Kendrick Lamar - 2017 Album - DAMN

i'll be right. thanks.

the way songs will drift into each other so it's not easy to identify specific sounds with each state helps with this.

^^^^^^I'm totally feeling this. It's something Whiney nailed with his review, talking about the different levels of how "humble" and "pride" are explored in the album. At first the way so many songs would jump around to totally disparate beats really annoyed me in how jarring it was but I'm starting to come around on how well that works as a vehicle for Kdot exploring themes.

I still haven't really gotten into Feel or Lust and would love to hear more about what works (or what doesn't) for people on those tracks. Part of what makes it hard for me to dive into Lust is how much I hear Andre3000 cornballism (which i generally love but for me doesn't jibe well with the material on this album) in the beat, subject matter and flow.

lust - it was the tick-tock hook and shuffling beat, and as mentioned the 'might as well overheat' line, that caught me immediately.

and playing it now it's the variation in pacing and tone that keeps me coming back to it, so the stuff below is probably irrelevant to how it 'works' for me. but the pacing is also the pattern, meaning and progression of the track so...

much of this doesn't seem to be *about* lust. the thirst seems to come from the daily routine bit that keeps getting interrupted and repeated and varied and looped and built until the strings kick in leading up to the trump inauguration, before 'reverting back to our daily programme '. as if it all builds until it reaches an insupportable level.

this seems to be a part of the overheating - but i guess we've all experienced the way things like lust co-exist with the boring daily detail of going to work. it's transformative (everything about your life is consumed by it) but doesn't interrupt. maybe that's why i find the 'might as well overheat' line keeps haunting me - it's an *option* to let it all burn you up, at least it isn't part of the loop; it would be a release. but can I do it? (and as in the rest of the album if it's a personal option that also means it's something of a political option - allow a moment to burn you up).

as in the rest the album, it's a fine line being agonised and wrestled over, viewed from the different angles of each track (who am I? what do each of these things mean to me? where does loyalty begin and end? what do i feel? etc). it's monomania on the self that isn't self indulgent.

but the bit where he wonders what he's lusting about, accompanied with that whining/siren, overheated guitar, is unclear. it might be that the looping crazy repetition-with-variation, including the most disruptive and disastrous variation, provokes lust, lust as a way out. i mean the obvious equation is of lust with the heat, but maybe the heat of the repeating days, is the thing that causes the lust. 'lately my lust been heightened' 'lately i lust over self' 'lately i lust over self' 'lately lust turned into fear' (more x-reference). this is lust as a response, allowing overheating from the simmering.

and it all focuses into quite sweet desire and restraint of just wanting to hold the person's hand.

(on the way the intensely personal has become so socially popular - i thought rebecca black got it right on twitter: "Kendrick somehow made an album that I can chill to myself at night but that I can also blast in the car to get hype with my friends")

yes that rebecca black.

Does anyone else now find themselves performing completely mundane household tasks while silently singing to themselves "when I [perform this mundane household task] I'ma make it look sexy"?

And "Feel" - what can I say - standout of the album for me in many ways. Spectral production feels like Burial and the rhyme just build layers and layers and layers. Sensational bassline too. Whoever said he has no cadence upthread made me actually scoff aloud, this track is the most beautiful extended vocal riff I've ever heard. Needs rainy weather or dusk, headphones, walk the streets, pay full attention and let it overwhelm you.

Does anyone else now find themselves performing completely mundane household tasks while silently singing to themselves "when I [perform this mundane household task] I'ma make it look sexy"?

― Matt DC, Monday, May 1, 2017 9:40 AM

Since 1995.

Yeah, FEEL. is great! again his delivery is totally appropriate to the days of information overload. love the way he builds to the point where he's just straight out righteously shouting - again transformation through intensification. also two really important lines? 'I can feel that the dream is more than process' and the 'the feeling of apocalypse happening but nothing is outward'

still can't work out why the sparse, burial style is so effective, something also, yes, about a ground of, not melancholy exactly, but dusk/rainy weather mood.

xpost lol MDC

Does anyone else now find themselves performing completely mundane household tasks while silently singing to themselves "when I [perform this mundane household task] I'ma make it look sexy"?

https://twitter.com/djperry1973/status/855147481964982277

Also, every song on the album placed on Billboard's Hot 100 chart this week, with DUCKWORTH at #63 being the lowest-charting song. He has 9 songs in the top 40.

I love this album a lot but this is ludicrous.

pretty funny to think of "Blood" as a Hot 100 single

I wonder how much of that is due to people streaming the album and, instead of resuming it when they get back from something, starting over again. So you end up with the singles being high on the list due to people seeking them out, and then everything else just charts in order of album sequence

This has happened twice in the UK this year - once with Stormzy and then again (to a frankly ridiculous degree) with Ed Sheeran, to the extent that he had maybe nine songs in the top 10.

(Short answer - yes, streaming is to blame).

I immediately thought of Ed Sheeran; didn't this happen with Drake, too?

It's interesting from the standpoint of "what songs are people obsessed with this week" but it definitely turns the Hot 100 into something besides "top singles of the past week"; maybe it hasn't been that for a while and it's only in the past few years of meme-hits and total album dominance that I've noticed.

It happened to Lemonade and Life of Pablo as well--whenever a big new album comes out, the Hot 100 gets all screwy because of 14 or so debut tracks from the huge new album.

imo the Ed Sheeran week was a hilarious self-own by the people of the UK

there's a few albums ever year -- like anything that "sells" ~350k+ in its first week? -- that place pretty much every song in the hot 100... drake definitely just did it

it usually seems like there's a people's champ pick that is higher than the rest of the album tracks... i.e. "passionfruit" or "too good" off views or "sorry" from lemonade that then becomes a single. maybe in kendrick's case "DNA" counts but they clearly already had a video filmed for that so it's not quite the same.

and then as you go down the chart there does seem to be an ordering effect

i walked into my local "Best Buy" today and purchased this on "compact disc"

bout to take the long way home from work

yeah the number of songs charting isn't unusual in this era. Beyonce and Sheeran pulled this off too.

Your horse and buggy has a CD player?

Xp

if i gotta mean mug Οὖτις i'ma make it look sexxy

It's something Whiney nailed with his review, talking about the different levels of how "humble" and "pride" are explored in the album. At first the way so many songs would jump around to totally disparate beats really annoyed me in how jarring it was but I'm starting to come around on how well that works as a vehicle for Kdot exploring themes.

I haven't yet listened to this all the way through but I'm on my second pass through the first half - think I'm gonna listen to the end this time - and "Loyalty" strikes me as a screamingly obvious second single. I don't see how it won't be a huge hit. Obviously his skills are titanic, but he just keeps getting better at making records, doesn't he?

The production on this is amazing in a way I'm not sure I've heard before. Can't pin it down ... beats you could build a house on, obviously, but also drama in the tracks that gives him a springboard without distracting from his lyrics.

I may be the only Kendrick fan on ILM who's listening to "Humble" for the first time in May, but on first pass it's easily the weakest song on the record. "First pass" emphasized - I could be totally wrong here.

nah you're probably right, but that's just because the rest of the songs are amazing

HUMBLE is okay. I didn't love it when I first heard it and it's not one of my favorites on the album.

it sounds better as part of the album flow than as a single imo

^^^ agreed

This is quickly becoming my AOTY. There are other recent albums that I was excited about, but I haven't given them much time because I keep coming back to this instead. Just flows so well, and no skipable moments.

it sounds better as part of the album flow than as a single imo

― duped and used by my worst Miss U (President Keyes), Monday, May 8, 2017 12:49 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^ agreed

― her squamous hamhocks (DJP), Monday, May 8, 2017

this.

third week at #1 y'all

The seagull sounds on Pride and the Rick James sample at the end of DNA are both such perfect touches to their beats.

I like the theory going around that the tracks should be listened to in reverse order to get different messages. I'm not sold that it was an intentional move by Kendrick but the way different themes are peppered throughout makes it work. Like how Element starts with Kid Capri introducing the "ain't nobody prayin for me" motif, but if you flip the tracklisting that announcement comes right after Feel, the song that's built around that line.

my daddy commissary made it to commas is a good line

killer verse here
https://www.audiomack.com/song/bottomfeedermusic/mask-off-rmx

was listening to this on the living room stereo the other day and started after skipping to the middle - made me realize how *slow* so much of this album is, tempo-wise.

GIMME SOME GANJA!
GIMME SOME GANJA!
GIMMIGIMMIGIMMIGIMMIGIMMIGIMMIGIMMIGIMME SOME GANJA!

Well, this has been out for a while now and a lot of listens and this one seems to be threatening to burn out a little faster for me than GKMC or TPAB, both of which I'm still listening to a lot, but 'DNA.', 'ELEMENT.', 'FEEL.', 'LUST.', 'XXX.', 'FEAR.' and 'DUCKWORTH.' all rule.

The only reason I don't play this album 24/7 is because I don't want my kids to pick up the cursing and the n-bombs.

If you discount the opener, that's more than half the album!

xpost

this is also a great album to listen to while hiking, especially when you're carrying a heavy bag

this is gonna be one of the best albums of the year for me (and everyone else), no problem.

Oh yeah, this is without a doubt one of my favourite albums released this year too, and yet another installment of what is turning out to be an incredible run. I don't think it's a 5-star, 10/10 album like GKMC or TPAB are, but it's incredibly close - more like a 4.999-star, 9.999/10 album. The only flaw I can really find with DAMN. is that it doesn't seem as endlessly replayable as GKMC or TPAB, but since those albums are (IMO) masterpieces, that's not really much of a flaw when it comes down to it.

this album is the best

The only flaw I can really find with DAMN. is that it doesn't seem as endlessly replayable as GKMC or TPAB

I find the album to be endlessly replay-able. More so than Butterfly (I still prefer Butterfly). Replayability one of those things I can't explain.

I've listened to this way more than the others

I can't stop listening to this record. First Kendrick record that I really got all the way into - I liked the last one but it felt like such a Big Weighty Artistic Statement that it was harder for me to find a way in (especially at my age, where I have less time to really delve into Big Weighty Artistic Statements). Maybe I'll go back and give it more time now. Damn has more straight bangers on it AFAICT, and that hooked me enough to dig more into the weighty artistic statement aspects of the album, which are also great. DNA is the first rap song I felt compelled to memorize in many years.

Also the story on and behind Duckworth is insane.