Some of these choruses, especially one from Rihanna and one from the singer Zacari, seem written with an ear for radio play-a rarity in Lamar’s career. Washed-out ’70s soul textures provide atmosphere, but many of the beats drive and whir with the tense energy of vogueish trap music. The newsman’s voice threads through the roiling chorus for the tracklist’s first proper banger “DNA,” and then Lamar lays it out: “You mothafuckas can't tell me nothin' / I'd rather die than to listen to you / My DNA not for imitation / Your DNA an abomination.”ĭamn is the blazingly talented rapper’s fourth proper album, following up the sprawling jazz catharsis of 2015’s To Pimp a Butterfly with a set of songs that, as hinted by its terse title and no-fuss artwork, makes a virtue of straightforwardness. Now Lamar has a reply, and he doesn’t so much debunk Rivera’s dubious statement as use it for kindling on his explosive new album Damn. He was commenting at the time on Kendrick Lamar’s performance of his protest song “Alright” atop a police car at that year’s BET Awards.

“Hip hop has done more damage to young African Americans than racism in recent years,” the Fox news pundit Geraldo Rivera said in 2015.

Kendrick lamar albums tracklist