Photo: Press
So here it is. Kendrick Lamar has just dropped his new album, DAMN. And if you subscribe to Spotify then you can check it out below.
Arriving after 2015’s highly acclaimed To Pimp A Butterfly and last year’s untitled unmastered – and just a few weeks after he shared the video for ‘HUMBLE.’ - DAMN is light on guest appearances although it does feature Rihanna and um, U2 and Zacari. It also includes contributions by Mike WiLL Made-It, BADBADNOTGOOD, the Alchemist, DJ Dahi, James Blake, Sounwave, and others.
Like the previously released HUMBLE. and the album title, all of the album’s song titles are capitalized. The tracklisting is:
01. BLOOD.
02. DNA.
03. YAH.
04. ELEMENT.
05. FEEL.
06. LOYALTY. (feat. Rihanna)
07. PRIDE.
08. HUMBLE.
09. LUST.
10. LOVE.
11. XXX (feat. U2)
12. GOD.
13. FEAR.
14. DUCKWORTH.
The album is sure to stir up a load of controversy from the outset. The first two tracks of the album, ‘BLOOD.’ and ‘DNA.’ feature samples from Fox News in which host Geraldo Rivera takes a swipe at the rapper’s performance of ‘Alright’ at the 2015 BET Awards.
The news presenter wasn’t bowled over with Lamar rapping from the top of a police car and yelling, “We hate the po-po, wanna kill us dead in the street fo sho” and “My gun might blow.” Rivera claimed that Lamar’s lyrics had “done more damage to young African-Americans than racism in recent years” and deemed the performance “counterproductive” and “exactly the wrong message.”
Speaking on TMZ Live in 2015, Lamar hit back at the conservative news anchor saying: “How can you take a song that’s about hope and turn it into hatred?” He added that “the overall message is ‘we’re gonna be alright.’ It’s not the message of ‘I wanna kill people.’” He went on to say that the BET Awards appearance was “a performance piece” after the “senseless acts of killing” of Michael Brown, Freddie Grey and others.
He concluded: “Hip-hop is not the problem. Our reality is the problem of the situation.”
The samples on the new album show that Lamar is taking a pre-emptive strike at his detractors, including Geraldo Rivera. Indeed, the news anchor is specifically targeted on the track ‘YAH.’ when Lamar raps: “Fox News wanna use my name for percentage/ Somebody tell Geraldo this nigga got ambition.”
But he’s not the only target of Kendrick Lamar’s righteous ire – bankers, the judicial system and the police also come in for some flak. But hey, check it out for yourselves and let us know what you think.
