Kendrick Lamar releases highly anticipated album Damn


Rapper Kendrick Lamar released his fourth studio album late Thursday night, a 14-track compilation titled Damn. The album follows 2015's To Pimp a Butterfly and last year's untitled unmastered, a collection of unreleased demos.
Like Lamar's previous offerings, Damn features heavily political lyrics: The song "DNA" samples a rant from Fox News' Geraldo Rivera criticizing Lamar, while the songs "Yah" and "XXX" both mention Fox News. The ninth track, "Lust", chronicles the aftermath of last year's presidential election. Esquire transcribed the relevant lines:
We all woke up tryin' tune to the daily news / Looking for confirmation hoping election wasn't true / All of us worried, all of us buried, and the feeling's deep / None of us married to his proposal, make us feel cheap / Stealed and sad, distraught and mad, tell the neighbor about it / Think they agree, parade the streets with your voice profit / Time passin', things change / Reverting back to our daily programs / Stuck in our ways / Drones
Some sharp-eyed observers speculate Lamar will release another album Sunday, based on clues in Damn's lyrics and on his social media accounts. You can read more about that at The Verge, or listen to Damn on Spotify here.
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Kimberly Alters is the news editor at TheWeek.com. She is a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.
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