Where are you are feel free, your community is save, God has make it work.
Thursday, 25 May 2017
The current status of Obagi town/Population 80% on
Where are you are feel free, your community is save, God has make it work.
DAMN. is a widescreen masterpiece of rap, full of expensive beats, furious rhymes, and peerless storytelling about Kendrick’s destiny in America.
DAMN. is a widescreen masterpiece of rap, full of expensive beats, furious rhymes, and peerless storytelling about Kendrick’s destiny in America.
Life is one funny motherfucker, it’s true. “DUCKWORTH.,” the last song on Kendrick Lamar's fourth studio album DAMN., tells a winding story about Anthony from Compton and Ducky from Chicago, whose paths cross first over KFC biscuits, and again, 20 years later, when Ducky’s son records a song about the encounter for Anthony’s record label. It’s a precious origin story, the stuff of rock docs and hood DVDs, and it’s delivered with such precision, vivid detail, and masterful pacing that it can’t possibly be true. But it’s a tale too strange to be fiction, and too powerful not to believe in—just like its author. Kendrick Lamar has proven he’s a master storyteller, but he’s been saving his best plot twist this whole time, waiting until he was ready, or able, to pull it off.
Storytelling has been Lamar’s greatest skill and most primary mission, to put into (lots of) words what it's like to grow up as he did—to articulate, in human terms, the intimate specifics of daily self-defense from your surroundings. Somehow, he’s gotten better. The raps on his fourth studio album DAMN. jab mercilessly like a sewing machine. His boyish nasal instrument is distinct and inimitable as it slithers up and down in pitch on “PRIDE.” Even when Lamar sounds like Eminem, or Drake, or OutKast, he sounds like himself, and he arguably outpaces them all as a writer. On “FEAR.,” he relays daily threats from his mom (“I’ll beat your ass, keep talking back/I’ll beat your ass, who bought you that? You stole it”) and from his neighbors (“I’ll probably die because I ain’t know Demarcus was snitching/I’ll probably die at these house parties fucking with bitches”) over low-slung blues stirred by The Alchemist. Lamar’s recitation is so effortless you wonder where he breathes, or if he does at all.
Kendrick is a relic of the mid-aughts rap blog era, where bedroom WordPress pages would post .zips of albums by amateurs. After years of such releases, Kendrick dropped a self-titled EP in 2009 that featured Big Pooh from Little Brother and elicited such Nah Right comments as “I like the beats on this” and “who da fuk?” Accolades swelled with each project; by 2011, he was considering signing with Dr. Dre; by 2013, he was playing “SNL” and touring with Kanye West. He came of age with his fans, and by 2015’s To Pimp a Butterfly, he put to music their chest-clenched frustrations. Ever the curtain-puller, he released an album of untitled and unmastered drafts and grew his hair out. His short absence, even after lending Taylor Swift a verse, has been made to feel longer by his media shyness and a surging tide of new rappers shuttled out daily.
Throughout it all, he’s avoided the boxed-in fates of predecessors like Nas and peers like J. Cole through an electric originality and curiosity. He mastered rap not for mastery’s sake, but to use it as a form, undeterred by slow-eared fans who’ll only highlight his “simplest lines.” His best new trick is repetition; it offsets his density and drills his ideas, as enthralling as a Sunday sermon or pre-fight chirp session. There have been few threats committed to record as sincere as, “Let somebody touch my mama, touch my sister, touch my woman/Touch my daddy, touch my niece, touch my nephew, touch my brother”—you tick down the list along with him, slot in your own lifelong bonds with loved ones. Such internal processing plays out through the album’s Greek chorus, via the singer Bēkon, who speaks in riddles of balance throughout: “Is it wickedness, is it weakness;” “Love’s gonna get you killed, but pride’s gonna be the death of you;” “It was always me versus the world/Until I found it’s me versus me.”
DAMN. is best in these philosophical spaces. It lags slightly around the center, where the concept loosens: “LOYALTY.,” with Rihanna, has all the makings of a radio mainstay this summer, and is as low-stakes as the platform demands; it’s always fun to hear Rih rap, and her presence is its most interesting aspect. “LUST.” would sound better if it weren’t next to an ear-worm as tender as “LOVE.,” which slow-dances between Zacari falsettos and Lamar’s sheepish read of the girl who fills him up. Between the two tracks, it’s easy to tell which force is tugging at him harder.
The record’s few lulls succumb to what surrounds them. The springboard bounce of “HUMBLE.,” the war chant of “DNA.,” and hot steel of “XXX.” show Kendrick in his element, fast and lucid, like Eazy-E with college credits and Mike WiLL beats. The production is taut and clean, but schizophrenic, often splicing two or three loops into a track and swaying between tempos, closer in kin to good kid, m.A.A.d city’s siren-synths than Butterfly’s brass solos. If he was “black as the moon” on his last album, he’s an “Israelite” here, refusing to identify himself by the shade of his skin but fluent in the contents of his D.N.A. Butterfly floated along to soften its scathing stance—“We hate po-po” sounds better over a smooth saxophone—but with so many “wack artists” in play, what’s the reward for upliftment? Kendrick is so alone at his altitude that when he acknowledges Fox News, let alone Donald Trump, it feels like a favor to them both.
Still, the album exists for “DUCKWORTH.” It’s the final piece of the TDE puzzle, a homegrown label of Compton natives that happened to deliver the best rapper of his generation. If we’re to believe the song’s last gunshot—and its seamless loop back to track one—much of DAMN. is written from the perspective of a Kendrick Lamar who grew up without a father to guide him away from the sinful temptations outside his home. He bobs in and out of this perspective, but the repeated pledges to loyalty and martyrdom evoke the life and mind of a young gang member who carries his neighborhood flag because no one’s proved to him that he shouldn’t. These choices, Lamar suggests, aren’t pre-determined or innate, but in constant dialogue with and in reaction to their surrounding circumstances. They aren’t above or beneath anyone who can hear his voice. Success and failure choose their subjects at their whim; we’re as grateful as Kendrick for his fate.
Life is one funny motherfucker, it’s true. “DUCKWORTH.,” the last song on Kendrick Lamar's fourth studio album DAMN., tells a winding story about Anthony from Compton and Ducky from Chicago, whose paths cross first over KFC biscuits, and again, 20 years later, when Ducky’s son records a song about the encounter for Anthony’s record label. It’s a precious origin story, the stuff of rock docs and hood DVDs, and it’s delivered with such precision, vivid detail, and masterful pacing that it can’t possibly be true. But it’s a tale too strange to be fiction, and too powerful not to believe in—just like its author. Kendrick Lamar has proven he’s a master storyteller, but he’s been saving his best plot twist this whole time, waiting until he was ready, or able, to pull it off.
Storytelling has been Lamar’s greatest skill and most primary mission, to put into (lots of) words what it's like to grow up as he did—to articulate, in human terms, the intimate specifics of daily self-defense from your surroundings. Somehow, he’s gotten better. The raps on his fourth studio album DAMN. jab mercilessly like a sewing machine. His boyish nasal instrument is distinct and inimitable as it slithers up and down in pitch on “PRIDE.” Even when Lamar sounds like Eminem, or Drake, or OutKast, he sounds like himself, and he arguably outpaces them all as a writer. On “FEAR.,” he relays daily threats from his mom (“I’ll beat your ass, keep talking back/I’ll beat your ass, who bought you that? You stole it”) and from his neighbors (“I’ll probably die because I ain’t know Demarcus was snitching/I’ll probably die at these house parties fucking with bitches”) over low-slung blues stirred by The Alchemist. Lamar’s recitation is so effortless you wonder where he breathes, or if he does at all.
Kendrick is a relic of the mid-aughts rap blog era, where bedroom WordPress pages would post .zips of albums by amateurs. After years of such releases, Kendrick dropped a self-titled EP in 2009 that featured Big Pooh from Little Brother and elicited such Nah Right comments as “I like the beats on this” and “who da fuk?” Accolades swelled with each project; by 2011, he was considering signing with Dr. Dre; by 2013, he was playing “SNL” and touring with Kanye West. He came of age with his fans, and by 2015’s To Pimp a Butterfly, he put to music their chest-clenched frustrations. Ever the curtain-puller, he released an album of untitled and unmastered drafts and grew his hair out. His short absence, even after lending Taylor Swift a verse, has been made to feel longer by his media shyness and a surging tide of new rappers shuttled out daily.
Throughout it all, he’s avoided the boxed-in fates of predecessors like Nas and peers like J. Cole through an electric originality and curiosity. He mastered rap not for mastery’s sake, but to use it as a form, undeterred by slow-eared fans who’ll only highlight his “simplest lines.” His best new trick is repetition; it offsets his density and drills his ideas, as enthralling as a Sunday sermon or pre-fight chirp session. There have been few threats committed to record as sincere as, “Let somebody touch my mama, touch my sister, touch my woman/Touch my daddy, touch my niece, touch my nephew, touch my brother”—you tick down the list along with him, slot in your own lifelong bonds with loved ones. Such internal processing plays out through the album’s Greek chorus, via the singer Bēkon, who speaks in riddles of balance throughout: “Is it wickedness, is it weakness;” “Love’s gonna get you killed, but pride’s gonna be the death of you;” “It was always me versus the world/Until I found it’s me versus me.”
DAMN. is best in these philosophical spaces. It lags slightly around the center, where the concept loosens: “LOYALTY.,” with Rihanna, has all the makings of a radio mainstay this summer, and is as low-stakes as the platform demands; it’s always fun to hear Rih rap, and her presence is its most interesting aspect. “LUST.” would sound better if it weren’t next to an ear-worm as tender as “LOVE.,” which slow-dances between Zacari falsettos and Lamar’s sheepish read of the girl who fills him up. Between the two tracks, it’s easy to tell which force is tugging at him harder.
The record’s few lulls succumb to what surrounds them. The springboard bounce of “HUMBLE.,” the war chant of “DNA.,” and hot steel of “XXX.” show Kendrick in his element, fast and lucid, like Eazy-E with college credits and Mike WiLL beats. The production is taut and clean, but schizophrenic, often splicing two or three loops into a track and swaying between tempos, closer in kin to good kid, m.A.A.d city’s siren-synths than Butterfly’s brass solos. If he was “black as the moon” on his last album, he’s an “Israelite” here, refusing to identify himself by the shade of his skin but fluent in the contents of his D.N.A. Butterfly floated along to soften its scathing stance—“We hate po-po” sounds better over a smooth saxophone—but with so many “wack artists” in play, what’s the reward for upliftment? Kendrick is so alone at his altitude that when he acknowledges Fox News, let alone Donald Trump, it feels like a favor to them both.
Still, the album exists for “DUCKWORTH.” It’s the final piece of the TDE puzzle, a homegrown label of Compton natives that happened to deliver the best rapper of his generation. If we’re to believe the song’s last gunshot—and its seamless loop back to track one—much of DAMN. is written from the perspective of a Kendrick Lamar who grew up without a father to guide him away from the sinful temptations outside his home. He bobs in and out of this perspective, but the repeated pledges to loyalty and martyrdom evoke the life and mind of a young gang member who carries his neighborhood flag because no one’s proved to him that he shouldn’t. These choices, Lamar suggests, aren’t pre-determined or innate, but in constant dialogue with and in reaction to their surrounding circumstances. They aren’t above or beneath anyone who can hear his voice. Success and failure choose their subjects at their whim; we’re as grateful as Kendrick for his fate.
Raining in Obagi town today in Onelga , symbolize positive or negative.
Rain is nourishment for the earth and is known as the water
of life.
I'll list the positives and the negatives and a bit of
elaboration on both.
Positives:
Refreshment
The rain is refreshing after a drought or a period of scorching heat.
Life
Water is life. Rain brings an abundance of it bringing the dead and dry lands back to life. This is great in a story based around agriculture.
Anti monotony
Rain isn't exactly regular. It doesn't happen every day so that is another element.
Noah's Flood
There was vast rainfall in the biblical Noah's Flood so that can make a good paragraph on a story.
Negatives:
Restriction/Imprisonment
If you go out in the rain, you get sick. This is common sense. So rain limits you to indoors. Thus, symbolising restriction.
Gloomyness
Rain has a natural gloomy feeling to it. A feeling that dulls emotions.
Cold
It can represent ruthless, inconsiderate, uncaring iciness. So that can be a great comparison to a character in a story, especially if it is raining at that time.
Noise
Rain makes a lot of disturbing noise when it comes crashing down. This now makes things harder.
Refreshment
The rain is refreshing after a drought or a period of scorching heat.
Life
Water is life. Rain brings an abundance of it bringing the dead and dry lands back to life. This is great in a story based around agriculture.
Anti monotony
Rain isn't exactly regular. It doesn't happen every day so that is another element.
Noah's Flood
There was vast rainfall in the biblical Noah's Flood so that can make a good paragraph on a story.
Negatives:
Restriction/Imprisonment
If you go out in the rain, you get sick. This is common sense. So rain limits you to indoors. Thus, symbolising restriction.
Gloomyness
Rain has a natural gloomy feeling to it. A feeling that dulls emotions.
Cold
It can represent ruthless, inconsiderate, uncaring iciness. So that can be a great comparison to a character in a story, especially if it is raining at that time.
Noise
Rain makes a lot of disturbing noise when it comes crashing down. This now makes things harder.
Rain is the lifeblood of
every Living Being and thus, a unique symbol of Intelligent Design of our
Universe or Planet Earth. For example, it has not been found to rain in other
planets; proving that the Earth is not a random happenstance but a
deliberately, specially, and carefully thought out Big Garden for Living
Beings: Of course with Humanity bearing overall responsibility for its
sustainability.
Rain is a cooling, calming, and soothing
system that counteracts the effects of other forces of nature like Sunshine to
maintain an equilibrium or natural balance that sustains our Universe. Too
much, we drown; and too little, we hunger, dry, and fry. Rain is a symbol of
time, season, and a new beginning!!!!
The farmer, especially,
knows that too well. Rain is also a symbolic guide to what then becomes our
conscious, intelligent or rational choice and decision of where we live in the
Desert or the Arctic! He always wins! That is the reason that HE is ‘The
Intelligent Designer’. For example, without choice of abode and the power to
make that choice, what is the point of free-will and fairness in personal
responsibility for consequences of its exercise?!
Rain, like other forces of Nature, is a constant reminder that
we human beings are part of nature and thus can never be master of Nature- and
that is not to discourage us from trying!:
Rain makes no difference or distinction between the Queen or the
pauper. Rain beats them alike and soaking wet. Thus rain ‘the leveller’ offers
a great lesson that Social Justice must inform our public service planning and
delivery! Rainfall being a public service and thus utilitarian! The subtle message there for you is always carry an umbrella or raincoat around because the rain will not make an exception of you!
Rain can also be seen as a cleansing agent that purifies the atmosphere after some disaster.
It has cleaned
all the disaster in the Obagi community. So you can see how amazing rain
is for both the good and the evil.
As many who are witnessing the rain today, will surely grow from death to live!
Good luck in your new environment.
Wednesday, 24 May 2017
Loveeeeeee Songs: Rihanna’s 52 Singles, Ranked
The best and the rest from Queen RiRi
Grizzly Bear Discuss Painted Ruins, Their First Album in Five Years
The
indie-rock vets talk about streaming music’s stimulus overload, the
radio’s disappointing lack of cool, weird guitar music, and their new
record.
Chris Cornell, Searching for Solitude
Read this 1996 Details profile of the Soundgarden frontman, published online for the first time.
Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell Was More Than Just a Grunge Frontman
Remembering the late rocker and his undervalued versatility.
Sufjan Stevens: Spokesman for Sanity
With his collaborative new album Planetarium out
soon, the sage singer-songwriter talks about the attack on common
sense, dealing with personal dread, and retaining dignity in an
undignified era.
In Sight Out: Stephin Merritt
In
this interview, Pitchfork's Marc Hogan sits down with singer-songwriter
and multi-instrumentalist Stephin Merritt of the Magnetic Fields to
discuss his career, his latest album, and more.
Sponsored by
The Eclectic Soul Music of Nick Hakim
After
struggling through a tumultuous adolescence marked by rejection and
violence, this singer-songwriter started playing music, and his life
changed.
Nina Simone: Her Art and Life in 33 Songs
In
conversations with artists including Chan Marshall, Maxwell, and
Esperanza Spalding, and through examination of her most iconic songs, we
look at the life of a true spellbinder
Perfume Genius on Crying Along to TLC’s “Unpretty” and Not Singing Like Adele
Mike
Hadreas details his daily listening habits: rowing with Mr. Mister,
rehearsing with Bobby Darin, driving his Honda with Sia, and more.
DAMN. is a widescreen masterpiece of rap, full of expensive beats, furious rhymes, and peerless storytelling about Kendrick’s destiny in America.
DAMN. is a widescreen masterpiece of rap, full of expensive beats, furious rhymes, and peerless storytelling about Kendrick’s destiny in America.
Life is one funny motherfucker, it’s true. “DUCKWORTH.,” the last song on Kendrick Lamar's fourth studio album DAMN., tells a winding story about Anthony from Compton and Ducky from Chicago, whose paths cross first over KFC biscuits, and again, 20 years later, when Ducky’s son records a song about the encounter for Anthony’s record label. It’s a precious origin story, the stuff of rock docs and hood DVDs, and it’s delivered with such precision, vivid detail, and masterful pacing that it can’t possibly be true. But it’s a tale too strange to be fiction, and too powerful not to believe in—just like its author. Kendrick Lamar has proven he’s a master storyteller, but he’s been saving his best plot twist this whole time, waiting until he was ready, or able, to pull it off.
Storytelling has been Lamar’s greatest skill and most primary mission, to put into (lots of) words what it's like to grow up as he did—to articulate, in human terms, the intimate specifics of daily self-defense from your surroundings. Somehow, he’s gotten better. The raps on his fourth studio album DAMN. jab mercilessly like a sewing machine. His boyish nasal instrument is distinct and inimitable as it slithers up and down in pitch on “PRIDE.” Even when Lamar sounds like Eminem, or Drake, or OutKast, he sounds like himself, and he arguably outpaces them all as a writer. On “FEAR.,” he relays daily threats from his mom (“I’ll beat your ass, keep talking back/I’ll beat your ass, who bought you that? You stole it”) and from his neighbors (“I’ll probably die because I ain’t know Demarcus was snitching/I’ll probably die at these house parties fucking with bitches”) over low-slung blues stirred by The Alchemist. Lamar’s recitation is so effortless you wonder where he breathes, or if he does at all.
Kendrick is a relic of the mid-aughts rap blog era, where bedroom WordPress pages would post .zips of albums by amateurs. After years of such releases, Kendrick dropped a self-titled EP in 2009 that featured Big Pooh from Little Brother and elicited such Nah Right comments as “I like the beats on this” and “who da fuk?” Accolades swelled with each project; by 2011, he was considering signing with Dr. Dre; by 2013, he was playing “SNL” and touring with Kanye West. He came of age with his fans, and by 2015’s To Pimp a Butterfly, he put to music their chest-clenched frustrations. Ever the curtain-puller, he released an album of untitled and unmastered drafts and grew his hair out. His short absence, even after lending Taylor Swift a verse, has been made to feel longer by his media shyness and a surging tide of new rappers shuttled out daily.
Throughout it all, he’s avoided the boxed-in fates of predecessors like Nas and peers like J. Cole through an electric originality and curiosity. He mastered rap not for mastery’s sake, but to use it as a form, undeterred by slow-eared fans who’ll only highlight his “simplest lines.” His best new trick is repetition; it offsets his density and drills his ideas, as enthralling as a Sunday sermon or pre-fight chirp session. There have been few threats committed to record as sincere as, “Let somebody touch my mama, touch my sister, touch my woman/Touch my daddy, touch my niece, touch my nephew, touch my brother”—you tick down the list along with him, slot in your own lifelong bonds with loved ones. Such internal processing plays out through the album’s Greek chorus, via the singer Bēkon, who speaks in riddles of balance throughout: “Is it wickedness, is it weakness;” “Love’s gonna get you killed, but pride’s gonna be the death of you;” “It was always me versus the world/Until I found it’s me versus me.”
DAMN. is best in these philosophical spaces. It lags slightly around the center, where the concept loosens: “LOYALTY.,” with Rihanna, has all the makings of a radio mainstay this summer, and is as low-stakes as the platform demands; it’s always fun to hear Rih rap, and her presence is its most interesting aspect. “LUST.” would sound better if it weren’t next to an ear-worm as tender as “LOVE.,” which slow-dances between Zacari falsettos and Lamar’s sheepish read of the girl who fills him up. Between the two tracks, it’s easy to tell which force is tugging at him harder.
The record’s few lulls succumb to what surrounds them. The springboard bounce of “HUMBLE.,” the war chant of “DNA.,” and hot steel of “XXX.” show Kendrick in his element, fast and lucid, like Eazy-E with college credits and Mike WiLL beats. The production is taut and clean, but schizophrenic, often splicing two or three loops into a track and swaying between tempos, closer in kin to good kid, m.A.A.d city’s siren-synths than Butterfly’s brass solos. If he was “black as the moon” on his last album, he’s an “Israelite” here, refusing to identify himself by the shade of his skin but fluent in the contents of his D.N.A. Butterfly floated along to soften its scathing stance—“We hate po-po” sounds better over a smooth saxophone—but with so many “wack artists” in play, what’s the reward for upliftment? Kendrick is so alone at his altitude that when he acknowledges Fox News, let alone Donald Trump, it feels like a favor to them both.
Still, the album exists for “DUCKWORTH.” It’s the final piece of the TDE puzzle, a homegrown label of Compton natives that happened to deliver the best rapper of his generation. If we’re to believe the song’s last gunshot—and its seamless loop back to track one—much of DAMN. is written from the perspective of a Kendrick Lamar who grew up without a father to guide him away from the sinful temptations outside his home. He bobs in and out of this perspective, but the repeated pledges to loyalty and martyrdom evoke the life and mind of a young gang member who carries his neighborhood flag because no one’s proved to him that he shouldn’t. These choices, Lamar suggests, aren’t pre-determined or innate, but in constant dialogue with and in reaction to their surrounding circumstances. They aren’t above or beneath anyone who can hear his voice. Success and failure choose their subjects at their whim; we’re as grateful as Kendrick for his fate.
Life is one funny motherfucker, it’s true. “DUCKWORTH.,” the last song on Kendrick Lamar's fourth studio album DAMN., tells a winding story about Anthony from Compton and Ducky from Chicago, whose paths cross first over KFC biscuits, and again, 20 years later, when Ducky’s son records a song about the encounter for Anthony’s record label. It’s a precious origin story, the stuff of rock docs and hood DVDs, and it’s delivered with such precision, vivid detail, and masterful pacing that it can’t possibly be true. But it’s a tale too strange to be fiction, and too powerful not to believe in—just like its author. Kendrick Lamar has proven he’s a master storyteller, but he’s been saving his best plot twist this whole time, waiting until he was ready, or able, to pull it off.
Storytelling has been Lamar’s greatest skill and most primary mission, to put into (lots of) words what it's like to grow up as he did—to articulate, in human terms, the intimate specifics of daily self-defense from your surroundings. Somehow, he’s gotten better. The raps on his fourth studio album DAMN. jab mercilessly like a sewing machine. His boyish nasal instrument is distinct and inimitable as it slithers up and down in pitch on “PRIDE.” Even when Lamar sounds like Eminem, or Drake, or OutKast, he sounds like himself, and he arguably outpaces them all as a writer. On “FEAR.,” he relays daily threats from his mom (“I’ll beat your ass, keep talking back/I’ll beat your ass, who bought you that? You stole it”) and from his neighbors (“I’ll probably die because I ain’t know Demarcus was snitching/I’ll probably die at these house parties fucking with bitches”) over low-slung blues stirred by The Alchemist. Lamar’s recitation is so effortless you wonder where he breathes, or if he does at all.
Kendrick is a relic of the mid-aughts rap blog era, where bedroom WordPress pages would post .zips of albums by amateurs. After years of such releases, Kendrick dropped a self-titled EP in 2009 that featured Big Pooh from Little Brother and elicited such Nah Right comments as “I like the beats on this” and “who da fuk?” Accolades swelled with each project; by 2011, he was considering signing with Dr. Dre; by 2013, he was playing “SNL” and touring with Kanye West. He came of age with his fans, and by 2015’s To Pimp a Butterfly, he put to music their chest-clenched frustrations. Ever the curtain-puller, he released an album of untitled and unmastered drafts and grew his hair out. His short absence, even after lending Taylor Swift a verse, has been made to feel longer by his media shyness and a surging tide of new rappers shuttled out daily.
Throughout it all, he’s avoided the boxed-in fates of predecessors like Nas and peers like J. Cole through an electric originality and curiosity. He mastered rap not for mastery’s sake, but to use it as a form, undeterred by slow-eared fans who’ll only highlight his “simplest lines.” His best new trick is repetition; it offsets his density and drills his ideas, as enthralling as a Sunday sermon or pre-fight chirp session. There have been few threats committed to record as sincere as, “Let somebody touch my mama, touch my sister, touch my woman/Touch my daddy, touch my niece, touch my nephew, touch my brother”—you tick down the list along with him, slot in your own lifelong bonds with loved ones. Such internal processing plays out through the album’s Greek chorus, via the singer Bēkon, who speaks in riddles of balance throughout: “Is it wickedness, is it weakness;” “Love’s gonna get you killed, but pride’s gonna be the death of you;” “It was always me versus the world/Until I found it’s me versus me.”
DAMN. is best in these philosophical spaces. It lags slightly around the center, where the concept loosens: “LOYALTY.,” with Rihanna, has all the makings of a radio mainstay this summer, and is as low-stakes as the platform demands; it’s always fun to hear Rih rap, and her presence is its most interesting aspect. “LUST.” would sound better if it weren’t next to an ear-worm as tender as “LOVE.,” which slow-dances between Zacari falsettos and Lamar’s sheepish read of the girl who fills him up. Between the two tracks, it’s easy to tell which force is tugging at him harder.
The record’s few lulls succumb to what surrounds them. The springboard bounce of “HUMBLE.,” the war chant of “DNA.,” and hot steel of “XXX.” show Kendrick in his element, fast and lucid, like Eazy-E with college credits and Mike WiLL beats. The production is taut and clean, but schizophrenic, often splicing two or three loops into a track and swaying between tempos, closer in kin to good kid, m.A.A.d city’s siren-synths than Butterfly’s brass solos. If he was “black as the moon” on his last album, he’s an “Israelite” here, refusing to identify himself by the shade of his skin but fluent in the contents of his D.N.A. Butterfly floated along to soften its scathing stance—“We hate po-po” sounds better over a smooth saxophone—but with so many “wack artists” in play, what’s the reward for upliftment? Kendrick is so alone at his altitude that when he acknowledges Fox News, let alone Donald Trump, it feels like a favor to them both.
Still, the album exists for “DUCKWORTH.” It’s the final piece of the TDE puzzle, a homegrown label of Compton natives that happened to deliver the best rapper of his generation. If we’re to believe the song’s last gunshot—and its seamless loop back to track one—much of DAMN. is written from the perspective of a Kendrick Lamar who grew up without a father to guide him away from the sinful temptations outside his home. He bobs in and out of this perspective, but the repeated pledges to loyalty and martyrdom evoke the life and mind of a young gang member who carries his neighborhood flag because no one’s proved to him that he shouldn’t. These choices, Lamar suggests, aren’t pre-determined or innate, but in constant dialogue with and in reaction to their surrounding circumstances. They aren’t above or beneath anyone who can hear his voice. Success and failure choose their subjects at their whim; we’re as grateful as Kendrick for his fate.
Trump wasn’t always so linguistically challenged. What could explain the change?
President Donald Trump speaks at the Israel Museum, Tuesday, May 23, 2017, in Jerusalem. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
It was the kind of utterance that makes professional transcribers question their career choice:
“ … there is no collusion between certainly myself and my campaign, but I can always speak for myself — and the Russians, zero.”
When
President Trump offered that response to a question at a press
conference last week, it was the latest example of his tortured syntax,
mid-thought changes of subject, and apparent trouble formulating
complete sentences, let alone a coherent paragraph, in unscripted
speech.
He was not always so linguistically challenged.
STAT
reviewed decades of Trump’s on-air interviews and compared them to
Q&A sessions since his inauguration. The differences are striking
and unmistakable.
Research
has shown that changes in speaking style can result from cognitive
decline. STAT therefore asked experts in neurolinguistics and cognitive
assessment, as well as psychologists and psychiatrists, to compare
Trump’s speech from decades ago to that in 2017; they all agreed there
had been a deterioration, and some said it could reflect changes in the
health of Trump’s brain.
In
interviews Trump gave in the 1980s and 1990s (with Tom Brokaw, David
Letterman, Oprah Winfrey, Charlie Rose, and others), he spoke
articulately, used sophisticated vocabulary, inserted dependent clauses
into his sentences without losing his train of thought, and strung
together sentences into a polished paragraph, which — and this is no
mean feat — would have scanned just fine in print. This was so even when
reporters asked tough questions about, for instance, his divorce, his
brush with bankruptcy, and why he doesn’t build housing for
working-class Americans.
How did Manchester United make it to the Europa League final?
How did Manchester United make it to the Europa League final?
A place in the
Champions League next season, as well as European glory, is on the line
on Wednesday night in Stockholm when Manchester United and Ajax meet in
the Europa League final.
United’s route to Friends Arena has rarely been straightforward, but it finds itself 90 minutes away from a second major trophy of the season.
Here’s how Jose Mourinho’s team progressed to the final.
United’s route to Friends Arena has rarely been straightforward, but it finds itself 90 minutes away from a second major trophy of the season.
Here’s how Jose Mourinho’s team progressed to the final.
Feyenoord 1-0 Manchester United, De Kuip, Rotterdam, September 15, 2016
United’s European campaign began inauspiciously with a defeat in the Netherlands. Mourinho made eight changes from the team that had just lost the derby to Manchester City, but that did not shock his team into a response. Tonny Vilhena struck in the 79th minute to leave United bottom of Group A after one game.Manchester United 1-0 Zorya Luhansk, Old Trafford, Manchester, September 29, 2016
Back on track, just about. United welcomed the team from eastern Ukraine to Old Trafford and climbed to third in the group but it was a struggle. They had to wait until the 69th minute for the breakthrough, as Zlatan Ibrahimovic nodded in Wayne Rooney’s mis-hit shot.Manchester United 4-1 Fenerbahce, Old Trafford, October 20, 2016
The Paul Pogba show. United hauled itself into contention to win Group A thanks to two goals from its world-record signing. Pogba struck a penalty on 31 minutes then produced a gorgeous, sweeping finish into the top corner in first-half injury time. Anthony Martial, with another penalty, and Jesse Lingard also scored goals in a comprehensive victory.Fenerbahce 2-1 Manchester United, Sucru Saracoglu Stadium, November 3 2016
Trouble on the banks of the Bosphorus. Fenerbahce striker Moussa Sow took 65 seconds to score one of the goals of the season, a thunderous yet balletic overhead kick. Jeremain Lens added another in the second half with a free kick that left David De Gea unmoved. A fine Wayne Rooney strike late on was not enough as United slipped to third in Group A.Manchester United 4-0 Feyenoord, Old Trafford, November 24 2016
Comprehensive revenge from the defeat at De Kuip. Wayne Rooney became United’s all-time record European goalscorer as Jose Mourinho’s men ran out easy winners in England’s northwest to leave its fate in its hands in Group A.Zorya Luhansk 0-2 Manchester United, Chornomorets Stadium, Odessa, December 8 2016
Needing a draw or victory to make sure of progression to the knockout stages, United produced a gritty performance on an icy pitch that had worried Mourinho in the days leading up to the game. Second-half goals from Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Zlatan Ibrahimovic meant United would be playing European football after Christmas, though as group runner-up behind Fenerbahce.Manchester United 3-0 Saint-Etienne, Old Trafford, Round of 32, February 16 2017
The first half of the Pogba Derby—Paul against his older brother Florentin, who plays for Saint-Etienne—became a celebration of all things Zlatan Ibrahimovic. The Swedish striker made off with his first Manchester United hat trick, and in the process made the second leg in France a formality.Saint-Etienne 0-1 Manchester United, Stade Geoffroy Guichard, Round of 32 Second Leg, February 22 2017
A formality it was on the scoresheet, as Henrikh Mkhitaryan struck in the 16th minute to kill the tie. But United took blows from its trip to southern France. Mkhitaryan went off injured, while Eric Bailly was sent off for two bookable offenses.Rostov 1-1 Manchester United, Olymp-2 Stadium, Round of 16 First Leg, March 9 2017
Another important Mkhitaryan goal in Europe, as United escaped from Russia with a useful draw. There was a sense of deja-vu as Mourinho criticized the pitch before the game, though United failed to repeat its victory over Luhansk as Aleksandr Bukharov equalized eight minutes into the second half.Manchester United 1-0 Rostov, Old Trafford, Round of 16 Second Leg, March 16 2017
United dominated possession and chances against its limited Russian opposition but relied eventually on one Juan Mata goal, and several saves from Sergio Romero, to progress to a quarterfinal against Anderlecht.Anderlecht 1-1 Manchester United, Constant Vanden Stock Stadium, Quarterfinal First Leg, April 13 2017
Mkhitaryan scored on 36 minutes, but then missed another good chance. And the tie was left in the balance heading into the second leg at Old Trafford when Leander Dendoncker headed in with four minutes of normal time remaining.Manchester United 2-1 Anderlecht, Old Trafford, Quarterfinal Second Leg, April 20
A night of frayed nerves was settled by Marcus Rashford’s cool extra-time finish. United had led through a Mkhitaryan goal on ten minutes, but Sofiane Hanni equalized just after the half-hour to end the scoring in normal time. United peppered the Anderlecht goal with 22 shots before Rashford sent it through, though Ibrahimovic suffered a knee injury and was out for the rest of the season.Celta Vigo 0-1 Manchester United, Balaidos, Semifinal First Leg, May 4
Rashford the savior. United’s teenager stepped up to a free kick on 67 minutes and curled it past the reach of Celta keeper Sergio Alvarez to give his side a precious away goal heading into the second leg.Manchester United 1-1 Celta Vigo, Old Trafford, Semifinal Second Leg, May 11
When Marouane Fellaini scored on 18 minutes, United should have had a comfortable night. But it sat back and allowed Celta into the game, until Facundo Roncaglia equalized on 85 minutes. That was the prelude to a final, mad act as Eric Bailly and Roncaglia were both sent off. John Guidetti missed two fine chances to send Celta through but United survived.
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@ 2018, copyright leader ferguson
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