DAMN.

As A Human Being, I Am Constantly Searching For Myself Within Every Construct There Is; Religion, Society, Hip Hop And Many Others With The Most Difficult Being The One I Mentioned First. Religion Has Always Baffled Me From A Very Young Age When I Had Blind Faith And Nothing More To My Name. Not Even The Clothes I Wore. So You Can Only Imagine The Level Of Relief I Felt When I Heard That Kendrick Lamar, My Favourite Artist(Popular Belief Which May Or May Not Be True) Is Making An Album About ‘God’. Finally, I Thought, I’m Going To Get His View On This Mystery That Has Swallowed Most Of Our Imagination And Has Limited Our Wings To A Certain Height Of Soaring. Simultaneously, It Has Just As Often Been Cited As The Source Of Power For Both The Vile And The Proclaimed Saints.

Weeks Later He Released The Heart Part IV, A Song That I Had On Repeat More Than My Daily Bathroom Routine (Brush Teeth While The Bath Water Is Running And When One Event Has Reached It’s End, So Has The Other). Needless To Say, I Was Excited To See What Mr. Duckworth Had In Store For Us. ‘Damn.’ , It Was To Be Called. A Vague Name And Attached To It Was An Album Art That Seemed To Have Been Conceptualised With Just As Much Effort, Or Lack Thereof. This Got A Few People Mad, Saying He Does Not Take His Packaging Serious And Consequently His Fans Too But This Only Heightened My Curiosity. Most Packaging Is Made To Attract, This One Was Created To Arouse The Opposite Effect. Reverse Psychology Is What It Was, In My Opinion.

Fast Forward To The 14th Of April, The Album Was Released And I Managed To Get My Hands On It 24Hours Later. As Soon As I Pressed Play, My Ears Perked Up In Hope To Hear Something Resembling Whatever Gospel Would Be Preached On, By Kendrick Lamar At Least. I Mean, Judging By TPAB, It’s Beats Were Selected Perfectly To Match The Message That Was Being Spread Then, I Expected The Album In Question To Be Identical In Perfection. Upon Listening To The First Song, Blood, Everything Was Just As I Had Expected. But Don’t Judge A Book By Its Cover And Definitely Not By First Impressions As Well. As I Browsed through The Album, I Heard A Lot Of Modern Type Hip Hop In The Album. This Conclusion However Was Reached On The Basis Of How The Beats Sound And It Was My First Listen So You Can’t Really Blame Me If I Thought It Was Bad Album. I Listened To It More And Fell In Love With It. Soon After I Succumbed To The Seduction Of Its Greatness Scientax Asked Me To Do The Review And This Is What I Think Of It Or Rather, About It:

“Damn Isn’t As Religious As I Thought It Would Be. To Put That In Proper Terms, It Isn’t In The Direction I Ever Could’ve Imagined Kendrick Taking. It Is More Of A Self Evaluation Than An Evaluation Of God. Unless Of Course, Like Kanye West Calling Himself Yeezus Christ, Jigga Calling Himself JayHova Or The Most Obvious Case, Eminem Calling Himself The Rap God, This Is K Dot’s Way Of Claiming His Deity Identity. An Identity That Most Of Us Had Already Long Awarded Him On The Grounds Of One Hiii Power Verse. Maybe I’m Reading Too Much Into Something That Isn’t There. One Thing’s For Certain Though, The Album Has Been Mirrored(Doesn’t Take A Genius To Figure That One Out). The Question Is “How Is This Mirror Effect Significant To The Message Being Conveyed?” Comparing Lust To Love, Displaying Humility On Pride And Pride On Humble etc. What Purpose Does It All Serve And What Is The Morale We Are Supposed To Pick From This? I Asked Myself. And Then It Hit Me. A Eureka Moment That Was Born When My Playlist Got Messed Up In A Glitch And Duckworth Played Right After Blood.

“Is It Wickedness?? Is It Weakness?? You Decide...Are We Gonna Live Or Die??”

The Lyrics Were Looping In My Mind Even When I Was Listening To Duckworth. Now Listen To My Logic:

The Narrator In Heroes Once Said “Was The Die Cast From The Beginning? Or Is It In Our Own Hands To Alter The Course Of Destiny?” And This Is What I Think The Whole Album Is About. Kendrick Is Challenging Us To Question Whether It’s Our Circumstances That Lead To Our Habits, Or Is It In Our Natural Self That Those Habits Are There In The First Place? Which Is Why He Mirrors All These Things, He Wants Us To See Both Sides Of The Story. In One Song He Paints A Plot Where The Situations That We Find Ourselves In Are The Ones Responsible For Our Actions, Like When A Rat Is Forced To Chew Its Way Out Of A Corner Because That's The Only Way It'd Survive And In The Next Song His Brush Tells A Different Tale, The Opposite. He Tells One Where We Are What We Are Because We Are What We Are, Nothing External To Be Credited For That, As If It’s In Our Genetic Coding.It's For This Reason I Strongly Believe The Whole Album Might Have Been Built Around 'DUCKWORTH', To Put Emphasis On The Story He Tells In The Song And At The Same Time Blow Our Minds Away.

I MAY BE WRONG, I MAY BE RIGHT BUT THIS IS MY LOGIC AND I FUCK WITH IT.