Why God, Why God

Kendrick Lamar “Fear.”

The flashiest bits Kendrick Lamar’s new album Damn. are confrontational and menacing, but in context, that’s all a defensive front. As bold as he can get, Kendrick is introverted and introspective above all other things, and the majority of these songs are paranoid ruminations on a world where even a best case scenario like becoming one of the world’s most popular rappers feels like the losing end of a game that’s been rigged against you from the start. Lamar borrows the narrative structure of Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight in “Fear.” to reflect on his anxieties at three stages of his life – childhood, teenage, young adult. The teen sequence is the most bleak, with him running down a litany of ways he’ll probably die in the near future, every one of them very plausible and entirely senseless. Alchemist’s track is sparse and melancholy, and subtly moves between clipped minimalism and cinematic melodrama like RZA at his mid-‘90s peak. The music feels like a depressive loop, and emphasizes Kendrick’s words about feeling trapped and isolated. His vocal tone shifts with each age jump – defiant as a child, dejected as a teen, frustrated as a man – but the track implies a world that remains static as he keeps changing.

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