105.5 The Beat Rochester Artist of 2017 -Kendrick Lamar

Rap’s most powerful voice at the absolute top of his game, with nothing left to prove but his staying power. Where 2015’s To Pimp a Butterfly and 2016’s Untitled Unmastered exploded rap formally with disparate flows, kaleidoscopic Flying Lotus beats and Afro-delic Kamasi Washington jazz-funk jams, Damn. shows how dazzling the man can be simply spitting verses. On “Feel,” he unloads his head over a trippy Sounwave slow jam, going roughly 50 lines without break on one stretch, a virtuoso synaptic display echoed across the set. Lamar’s political conscience hasn’t flagged, but he’s more about self-examination here. On the fearless “Fear,” one of his deepest moments, he chronicles a lifetime of anxieties and cites his “fear of losin’ creativity.” It’s a sentiment easy to relate to – but based on the evidence, one imagines he’s got little to worry about. W.H.