Objectively speaking, this album is way too dense (which I love, my favorite Kendrick album was TPAB), so its far too early to call it a classic. You really need to sit with it over time to get it a fair review. You can not like the music, but calling this music trash like some people are doing is just categorically wrong, there's just way to much substance here and high production values to call this mid or trash. I think its fair to be disappointed if you were expecting something more commercial like DAMN versus another left field deep artistic album like TPAB, but calling this trash is crazy, this is clearly one of the best albums that released this year.
Some first impressions from me though after a couple spins, and this is purely my opinion now. Not a fan of some of the topics Kendrick was speaking on, and there are other topics where Kendrick comes off too preachy and self righteous, but songs like 'Mother I Sober' and 'We Cry Together' (really similar to 'Circles' by Game and Q-Tip off Doc 2) are masterpieces, and cmon he got Blxst, Yak, and Tony Starks on this album haha all of them killed it. I feel like Kendrick is relying too much on spoken word poetry and melodies instead of giving us raw verses full of bars on this album too, and I'm personally not a fan of that direction, even though its probably better for him as someone whos a true artist and not just a rapper. There's a lot of musical elements that hipster cacs and critics love all throughout this album like some of the cac hooks (which I'm sure was intentional to give this album more mainstream appeal provided how heavy the subject matter in some of these songs are), skits / interludes, beat switches, and all of the layered instrumentation in the production. But theres so much content here that even if you dont like some of it, you'll find songs that you do like, which is the good thing about long/double albums. I think most people who are disappointed by this album wanted an album full of 'N95's and 'Silent Hill's and I dont blame them cause Kendrick is fire when he gets in those bags haha.
I might sound like Im hating but Im definitely going to sit with this album a lot more to fully digest it, Kendrick is covering so many topics on this album to take it all in so early, but I dont see myself it ranking higher than Ransom's album personally when were talking albums that dropped this year. Nas is coming too. I'm just not a fan of the musical direction of this album, but I appreciate the substance / content.
He's been doing this for A LONG time. Milking trauma when he should be making music. This is slam poetry shyt. This isn't ... music. its an art project.
