OF ALL TIME?
and so forth, until DAMN. begins to feel like one continuous gush of rhythmic-rhyming thought.
As a lyricist, Lamar’s gift remains extraordinary. “I don’t love people enough to put my faith in men,” he confesses on PRIDE.,a song addressing morality, mortality, God and craft. “I put my faith in these lyrics.”
To believe in his words is to be dazzled by them. And if you really want to make your cranium spin, cue up FEEL. and hold on tight: “Look, I feel heartless, often off this, feeling of falling, of falling apart with darkest hours, lost it.”
Looks clunky on paper, but it’ll make your eardrums dizzy. And that’s the funny thing: he’s rhyming about what it feels like to go flying off the rails with a virtuosity that suggests he’s incapable of losing control.
So yeah, sure, Kendrick is the GOAT, blah-blah-blah, who cares. The perpetual conversation about whether this man is the Greatest Rapper Who Ever Crip-Walked God’s Green Earth only threatens to monopolise our attention and limit our listening. And there’s always more to listen for in Lamar’s music – especially in his voice, which expresses his humanity as vividly as his verses.
Lamar’s default timbre remains that raspy half-shout, where his throat sounds dry and his mouth sounds wet. You can hear wisdom and desire in that voice, regardless of the words.
He’s hoarse from rebuking the universe, but still eager to tell you more. Lamar knows his instrument, because he knows his body, because he knows himself. – The Washington Post