I don't think the record is an alternative history of this Shadow Lamar, but I do think the rapper, 30, spends more time than most other musicians do considering the different directions his life could have taken. Possibly the Lamar who would've been damned by a different decision by Anthony, one that made his father a crime statistic. On the album's cover, Lamar is photographed unsympathetically, slumped and slouchy, eyes hooded, a defeated figure. One reading of the album is fairly nihilistic: That no matter what decisions people make, the outcome will be the same.īut I don't think that was the intention. Then plays the pop of gunfire and "So I was taking a walk the other day …. "While I grew up without a father and die in a gunfight." "Because if Anthony killed Ducky, Top Dawg could be servin' life," Lamar raps. And 20 years later, he ran into Kenny Duckworth again in a recording studio, where his son, Lamar, was recording for Tiffith's record label. In interviews, Lamar has said that the "Anthony" in the song is Anthony Tiffith, CEO of the Top Dawg Entertainment record label. Lamar points out the decision changed their lives. Kenny Duckworth knows he's marked, yet he treats Anthony kindly.
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"They had a son, hoping that he'd see college," raps Lamar, whose full name is Kendrick Lamar Duckworth. In the song, Lamar tells of Anthony, a Los Angeles crook about to knock off a Kentucky Fried Chicken where a young father named Kenny Duckworth worked, having recently moved with his wife from Chicago. "DUCKWORTH." has drawn particular scrutiny for being a hip-hop origin story. And that beginning and ending speak to an artist who doesn't see an album simply as a collection of 12 new songs. But the album spills with data that can be contemplated. I don't profess to have figured out everything "DAMN." is about. His breakthrough 2012 album, "good kid, m.A.A.d city," was subtitled "a short film by Kendrick Lamar." Lamar, time and again, has treated the album not just as a reusable commodity - one in which information reveals itself over repeated listens - but also as a means of experimental storytelling. Fourteen songs later, Lamar ends the song "DUCKWORTH." and the album with a gunshot, the sound of a tape rewinding and Lamar saying, "So I was taking a walk the other day …. "You've lost … your life," she tells him, and then there's the sound of a gunshot. "So I was taking a walk the other day," Lamar says, the first line of the record's first song, "BLOOD." He comes across a blind woman he tries to assist.