Wickedness and Weakness

The caterpillar goes to work on the cocoon which institutionalizes him
He can no longer see past his own thoughts
He’s trapped
When trapped inside these walls certain ideas start to take roots
Such as going home, and bringing back new concepts to this mad city
The result?
Wings begin to emerge, breaking the cycle of feeling stagnant
Finally free, the butterfly sheds light on situations
That the caterpillar never considered, ending the eternal struggle
Although the butterfly and caterpillar are completely different
They are one and the same

Light shines onto Kendrick Lamar’s most personal thoughts though a grander, more colorful stained-glass window with DAMN. Lamar ruminates on several atomic emotions and themes in each song on the album, titling each track with its respective topic. Like many of his contemporaries, Lamar conveys his feelings about topics like LOVE, LUST, FEAR and GOD through rhythmic and rhyming prose and punchlines. On DAMN, Kendrick uses unique artistic elements to convey his complex message poignantly within a sonically excellent album. The butterfly spreads his wings beyond life in Compton to the universal human experience, the memories of the caterpillar shaping his flight.

DAMN exists in two forms: the standard edition (released first), and the collector’s. Both contain the same tracks, and have the same runtime. The collector’s edition, however, lists the tracks in reverse order from the standard. By reversing the tracklist, Kendrick plays with his most over-arching motif. The standard edition of the album begins with BLOOD. In this track, Kendrick does not rap, instead opting for a story in spoken word. In BLOOD, Lamar approaches a blind woman struggling to find something she has lost. He offers help and is promptly gunned down. The final track of the album, DUCKWORTH, sets the story of Kendrick’s origin, and ends with the pop of the assailant’s bullet exiting the gun. The album then “rewinds” to right before Kendrick meets the woman, revealing that the twelve tracks in between have been Kendrick’s life flashing before his eyes. By reversing these bookends in the collectors edition, listeners hear Kendrick’s thoughts as his life progresses linearly from beginning to end, instead of from end to beginning, offering the listener an alternate perspective on life’s march from birth to death.

Several of DAMN’s tracks exist within the larger album as part of a contrasting pair; DNA follows from BLOOD. Through a reversal of the familiar, the collectors’ edition forces the listener to think about DAMN’s issues in a new light. Beyond titles, Kendrick also pairs songs by contrasting theme. ELEMENT and FEEL contrast sharply in message. ELEMENT sees Kendrick bragging that they ‘can’t take [him] out [his] element,’ on a high from his recent successes. FEEL, the following track on the collectors’ edition, laments on Lamar’s lack of trust and hope for the world around him, which stems from his belief that “ain’t nobody praying [him]”. FEEL’s dagger drives deeper into the chest because it was puffed out so much in ELEMENT. Kendrick asks rhetorically from again from his high, “This what God feel like?” in GOD. He spends the song boasting about his position, saying that there “ain’t nothin’ in life [he] can’t handle.” This self-confidence anthem, however, plays only a foil to its subsequent track, FEAR. Kendrick spends FEAR’s seven minutes baring his lifelong demons: beatings at the hand of his mother when he was seven years old, the omnipresent specter of death permeating every move of a seventeen year old Kendrick Lamar Duckworth in Compton, California, and the threat of losing the success he worked so hard to accumulate at his current age of 27. We see the world through the eyes of a divine Kendrick Lamar, on his path to his heavenly throne from his journey through hell, again made all the more poignant because of a contrasting pair.

In reversal of these pairs, Kendrick plays with the theme that each song conveys as an individual, and the theme each pair conveys as a unit. LOVE flows into LUST when Kendrick’s life flashes before his eyes, and reverses when the album follows his life from beginning to end. We think about LOVE differently when it stems from LUST, just as we would regard LUST that came from LOVE in a different light.

DAMN’s quality in storytelling stands shoulder to shoulder with its musical quality, which sets its apart as a special album. Kendrick throws punches at his enemies with the same creativity and passion as when he gives love to his allies. Kendrick delivers bars that are constantly begging you to rewind ten seconds to listen again. Hidden meaning and double entredre are baked into flows about The Martix and winning Grammys. The voice that delivers the lyrics is never dull, either. Lamar is a master at modulating his voice, and employs several different tones to suit the mood. He does this to great effect on YAH, where his nonchalant droning conveys the song’s drug-tinged feel. This saunter is matched by furious sprints on DNA, where the second half sees a litany of aggressive rhymes thrown at Kendrick’s opponents. Beyond Lamar’s voice, DAMN also stands out because of its value in production. Just as the painter would be nothing without the canvas-maker, the rapper would be nothing without the producer. DAMN’s producers deliver beats with a wide range of tempo, feel and complexity to match Kendrick’s range. 808 drums pound the chest in sounds like DNA and XXX, while lighter songs like DUCKWORTH play host to up-beat vocal samples throughout. Each song feels new and fresh; at no point does it feel like ideas and motifs are being repeated. A lack of repetition made all the better by Kendrick’s ease of transition between two opposite ends of the spectrum. Aggression in XXX does not feel out of place next to the vulnerability in LOVE, it comfortably complements it. Desperation in FEAR feels as authentic, and is delivered as masterfully as the braggadocio in ELEMENT.

Through this dichotomy, Kendrick shines light on the spectrum of human experience. By juxtaposing contrasting themes, listeners are forced to think about each end of the spectrum. In doing so, they must naturally think about the grey space in between, and where they sit in that spectrum. In the grey space, we explore how we grapple with the issues that Kendrick speaks upon in DAMN, and in exploring our own position, we are forced to think about our own lives. DAMN opens us up to a new viewpoint; perhaps we are closer to one end of the spectrum listening to track six, only to shift towards the other on track seven. Forcing us out of our point of view and into that of another opens our mind — this is the hallmark of great artistry.

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