The Pulitzer Prize-winner’s first album for five years is a double LP magnus opus of mind-bogglingly rapid, candid wordplay, an assortment of jazz, rock, classical and more, with so much to unpack, but further cements his place as hip hop’s leading innovator. It shows his partner and children on the cover, and the range of subject matter is vast, from fake news to false personas on social media (N95), Black Lives Matter (Savior – in which white and black people are targets of criticism, as well a defence of the trans community on Auntie Diaries. Father Time, featuring Sampha, is one of the standouts, in which there’s a candid confession of many sorts of ‘daddy issues’. On Savior Interlude there’s even string quartet and 74-year-old German self-help author Eckhart Tolle discussing the perils of a victim mentality. Even though there are a few guest rappers such as Lamar’s cousin, rapper Baby Keem, Ghostface Killah, and others, it is as Lamar’s brain is working faster than the words he so rapidly expresses. Some numbers are rather beautiful others painful to hear, including the visceral and violent couple’s argument number We Cry Together featuring actor Taylour Paige, in which the pair’s sweary salvos reach almost ridiculous levels, but also in which there are explosions of issues and names arising, from Harvey Weinstein to Donald Trump to how “R&B bitches don’t feature on each other’s songs”. It’s darkly hilarious and also disturbing. But the most raw and candid, and also delicate and rather telling, features Portishead’s Beth Gibbons – Mother I Sober links slavery and sexual abuse to issues of self-inadequacy and constantly trying to “chase manhood”. Overall, there are stronger and weaker tracks, ones of great originality, others of “bitch-and-ho” cliche, but on balance this is a work packed with confession and bite needs lots of time to digest. Out on pgLang/ TDE/ Aftermath/ Interscope.
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