Kendrick Lamar is set to release another album (his fourth) this year and goes on to be a creative force, manufacturing an album’s worth of hard hitting, uncompromising yet musically fluid Rap and Hip Hop year after year. He has breathed new life into these genres as they grew stale with materialism and predictability as the last decade went on. His new single ‘The Heart Part 4’ still rings home those pin point social commentaries, but this single seems to have a greater personal dimension. He’s gone out of his way to make a point of some of his contemporaries and the most powerful person in the states in Donald Trump. Musically it has shades of the West Coast Rap of two decades with easy, softened beats and instrumentation, but in this case it is warped and hazy. This is played against a heavy, vibrating beat which whilst a little more typical of ‘Diss’ tracks, it does offer up a clear light and shade within the track with greater depth the end product. Lamar’s style is as slick and effortless as ever with any word rolled off with ease. This is certainly more abrasive and its personal in more ways that one, perhaps that makes people feel uncomfortable as a form of entertainment. The thing is with Lamar is that entertainment is a secondary aim. He has a message and whether it’s about the hollow nature of certain Rappers or the intense domestic and geo-political tensions surrounding his nation, you can guarantee Kendrick Lamar is rapping about it. Rapping about it with a style and sound that is easily accessible and more than an afterthought. That’s why he’s the best rapper in the world right now and why it doesn’t sound unusual to hear him say so.
Owen Riddle
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