I don’t like it,” Fox commentator Kimberly Guilfoyle says. That fades into a prismatic sample of Fox News commentators complaining about the lyrics to his breakout single “Alright,” which he performed while perched atop a graffiti-covered police cruiser during the 2015 BET Awards. opens with the shimmering, ominous “BLOOD.,” a free-verse parable about a meeting with a blind woman that ends with a bang-a gunshot that cuts the narrator’s life short. shows that if nothing else, fame has driven him even further inside his own head, making him almost obsessively reflective about his place in the world-as a pop star, as a black man, as an American in 2017.ĭAMN. Lamar’s steadily increasing success over the past few years has culminated in some of the spoils only enjoyed by those at the very top of the pops-Grammy Awards and nominations in the cross-genre “big five” categories, collaborations with superstars like Beyoncé and Taylor Swift, big-money headline stints at festivals like the annual desert bacchanalia Coachella, where he’ll headline the Sunday-night installment of this and next weekend’s festival. It feels as vital when its protagonist is musing on unconditional love as it does when he’s railing on now-President Donald Trump. On Friday he released DAMN., his staggering fourth album, which brings together tightly wound beats, allusion-rich lyrics, political and personal reckonings-and, hey, even Bono!-to create a richly omnivorous album.

Kendrick Lamar has become the most important MC in America over the past few years, and the reasons are apparent on even a glancing listen to his impressive catalog-his verbal dexterity, his capacity for reflection, his ability to fuse black music’s past with its next generation.

Kendrick lamar albums worst to best