DAMN. Review

After the seventy nine minute jazz suite, this is a pivot back to the thing rap albums are supposed to do. The beats are hard and modern, the hooks are real hooks, and the songs are three minutes long. DNA is a flex over a beat that changes gear halfway through and dares you to keep up. HUMBLE. is a hit single built on a piano figure a child could play. LOYALTY. and LOVE. are pop songs he does not apologise for.

Underneath, the structure is doing quiet work: the album is a loop, the first track and the last are the same scene, and it plays backwards as coherently as forwards. He never once tells you that. FEAR. gives a verse each to his mother, his teenage self and his adult self, all frightened of entirely different things, and it is the best long song he has recorded. This is his most complete record even if it is not his most ambitious, and it holds up on the tenth play.