DAMN.

Pitchfork 9.2/10 DAMN. is a widescreen masterpiece of rap, full of expensive beats, furious rhymes, and peerless storytelling about Kendrick’s destiny in America.

A.V. Club A As on its predecessors, Damn. is packed tight with thoughts, anxieties, and anecdotes, but this time Lamar doesn’t even try to shape them into a big picture ... Lamar trusts every idea to stand on its own. When you’re making art this substantial, vital, and virtuosic, there’s no need to wrap a tidy bow around it.

The Needle Drop 7/10 DAMN. is one of Kendrick's most intriguing releases yet, delivering a series of tracks that are chaotic, layered, and deeply conflicted.

NME 4/5 The triumphant Compton MC might have cut down the number of tracks on his fourth studio album ... but the ideas, thoughts and feelings it contains are massive, weighty things, from sexual tension to deep, dark depression.

The Line of Best Fit 9/10 Damn is an album of bangers, but also an album of ever imperfect portraits told with supreme skill: loving and loathing and doing the wrong thing as often as the right. But that’s real. And through unflinching depiction, reality is revolutionary too.

Evening Standard 5/5 The era-defining rapper follows up his last masterpiece with another deep listen.

Rolling Stone 4.5/5 If To Pimp a Butterfly was the best rap album in 2015, Damn. is the platonic ideal of the best rap album of 1995, a dazzling display of showy rhyme skills, consciousness-raising political screeds, self-examination and bass-crazy-kicking.

DIY 5/5 Kendrick Lamar rose to the top with his last album, and on ‘DAMN.’ he tries to rediscover himself while on this new perch, with spectacular results.

All Music 4.5/5 It contains some of Lamar's best writing and performances, revealing his evolving complexity and versatility as a soul-baring lyricist and dynamic rapper.

The Skinny 4/5 The themes are familiar from earlier efforts – but this is more obviously an effort, a struggle.

Under The Radar 8.0/10 This is a fearlessly bleak, yet subtly downcast album, and Lamar has thankfully attained the confidence and standing not to compromise that vision with party tracks, nor dilute it with swaths of guest stars. It's pure, direct, and bitterly spat. Just like the curse word that is its title.

Clash 9/10 ’DAMN.’ does at times feel contradictory and the ideas he’s transmitting at times don’t feel fully formed, but this is where its genius lies. Kendrick offers a true snapshot of the eternal debates that we host inside our heads, and there is immense bravery and artistry in his depiction.

Mojo 4/5 His confidence positively gleams across dexterous modern-day parables whose fierce reflections, anxieties and grievances jab but never jar and rarely miss their targets.

The Observer 5/5 Even before you fully absorb Damn’s beat science, its self-referencing textural depths, and its ever-evolving balance of personal and political, you can’t help but hear this record as a rocket in the space race with Drake.

Loud and Quiet 9/10 After four albums, Kendrick is still spitting like he has something to prove. The effect is devastatingly raw.

Slant 4.5/5 Clocking in at under an hour, the new album maintains its predecessor's varied sonic palette with a mishmash of stark trap flourishes and woozy, impressionistic melodies but also distills these sounds to an ear-wormy directness primed for your car speakers.

Pop Matters 9/10 Kendrick Lamar is at his most belligerent, confident, strident on DAMN.. But also his most tender, hurt, thoughtful. He switches tone within songs, and from song to song.

The Guardian 5/5 Luscious harmonies and hints of psychedelic soul – plus guest support from Bono and Rihanna – couch brilliant, sharp-edged storytelling from an artist at the top of his game

Spectrum Culture 85% At 55 minutes, DAMN. is incredibly knotty and impregnable in terms of being able to fully process everything at work here. Indeed, subsequent listens continue to reveal more and more of the lyrical subtext, allusions and introspective nature of his lyrics.

The Telegraph 5/5 DAMN revels in its own imperfections in ways that affirm Lamar’s place not just at the top of the hip hop heap right now but at the top of popular music. This is the work of a future all-time great in full command of his powers.

Uncut 8/10 DAMN. is a showcase for a rapper at his peak, blessed with a flow, nuance and unostentatious authority that currently feels unparalleled.

RapReviews.com 8.5/10 This is art. This is the sound of someone who lives and breathes hip hop. This is an elite rapper on a near unrivaled run, and none of us should take him for granted… That would be a damn shame.