Braggadocio, flamboyant personas and diss rap is nothing new in hip hop, but the genre’s current chief innovator and Pulitzer Prize winner presents an artfully inventive form filled with eye-poppingly agile, madcap, mischievous wordsmithery, in this surprise new release filled with playful stylistic switches and some surprise targets. Lamar’s sixth LP, and his first on his own label PGLang, is also given some shiny polish by superproducer Jack Antonoff. The scope of Lamar’s wordplay sparks and fizzles from the very first, (prologued by Deyra Barrera), the stylish Wacced Out Murals, which sets up a “me versus them” situation and follows up with another attention-grabber, Squabble Up with an entertaining, satirical video. Both of these take aim at longstanding public frenemy Drake (see the recent Grammy nominated Not Like Us), as well as Drake’s apparent endorser Snoop Dogg, plus Lil Wayne. Is this serious or just all part of the showbiz drama? Perhaps we should take note that Lamar’s own grandma gets a diss too (later on TV Off). It’s all super slick, strange and infectious, and slips somewhere between the skilfully acerbic and brilliantly ridiculous. And, as in the rest of the album, as well as grandiose self-comparisons to being some god-like figure, here the way to enjoy it is to seek some sense of ironic role-playing rather than thinking he’s gone full wacko Kanye. The inventiveness and speed of delivery, not only on that track, but others such as the sparse, scratchy whistles of Hey Now (with dody6) the Latin-infused self-aggrandising Reincarnated, TV Off, the perky, pizzicato delivery of Peekaboo (with Azchize) the jerky stop-start title track, the guitar-intro and soul-funk Heart Pt 6, and finally to another Latin-esque and R&B feel - the passionate closer Gloria (the second duet on this album with Sza). All of this shows that Lamar still simply moves too mind-bogglingly fast to be pinned down, and is still at the top of this particular game, one which he also ‘won’ by getting the Super Bowl gig. In reference to that, as he raps in the the title track: “Tell 'em Kendrick did it, ayy, who showed you how to run a blitz?” Out on PGLang / Interscope.
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