Kendrick Lamar - DAMN. [2LP]

Kendrick Lamar's DAMN. is due back on black double vinyl, a fresh pressing of the 2017 album that became the first non-classical, non-jazz work to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music.

Coming off the dense jazz-funk sprawl of To Pimp a Butterfly, Lamar tightened his focus here, swapping big-band ambition for punchier, more immediate production. The result is a record that wrestles with faith and fate, pride and humility, and the question of whether a person's path is chosen or written in advance.

Mike Will Made It supplies the rattling menace of Humble. and the whiplash switch-up of DNA., while Loyalty. pairs Lamar with Rihanna for a smooth, sly duet and XXX. pulls U2 into a track that lurches from fury to prayer. The album famously works played forward or in reverse, and Duckworth. closes the story with a true tale about the near-fatal first meeting between his father and the future head of his label.

It is a dense, restless and endlessly replayable album, one that rewards close listening on every return. When this repress lands, it gives a modern classic a proper home on the shelf, ready to be flipped from side to side the way it was always meant to be heard.