Kendrick Lamar returns, 5 years later and a world away

For the five years since the release of his last album, fans and the music industry have eagerly — if not always patiently — awaited a new album from Kendrick Lamar, one of rap's great current visionaries and most celebrated artistic voices. As of this week, a new era in Lamar's career is upon us. On Sunday, he dropped a single and video titled "The Heart Part 5" and — without ever quite confirming all the details — seems poised to release a new album called Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers this Friday, May 13.

Built around an interpolation of Marvin Gaye's "I Want You," the track is the latest installment in his "Heart" series, which first began back in 2010. The nearly six-minute song is accompanied by a video consisting of a single shot of Lamar, using deepfake technology to morph him into Black male celebrities who have faced public scrutiny — from O.J. Simpson and Kanye West to Will Smith and Jussie Smollett.

"As I get older, I realize life is perspective," Lamar mutters in the first verse.

Last week, Lamar posted and deleted a cryptic photo of two CDs on Instagram, raising the question of whether this upcoming project will be a double album.

Lamar's last solo album, DAMN., earned him five Grammy awards and seven nominations overall after debuting at the top of the Billboard 200 chart in 2017. He later won the Pulitzer Prize for it, marking the first time the award was given to an artist outside of the jazz and classical genres. "Been writing my whole life, so to get this type of recognition, it's beautiful," Lamar said in his brief acceptance speech.

"From the birth of the Old Negro Spiritual, Black America has crafted hymns to get over the confounding hardships of this world," NPR's Rodney Carmichael wrote in his review of the groundbreaking album. "Lamar complements that tradition, but he also complicates it. DAMN. embodies a year in which hip-hop — and America at large — finds itself wrestling in public with its inner demons."

Rumors about Lamar releasing new music began to bubble up on social media in October of last year, when an unconfirmed song leak began to circulate online and eagle-eyed fans noticed the artist had briefly changed his profile photo on Spotify. In 2021 Lamar announced in an online letter that he was producing his final album for label Top Dawg Entertainment, where he has released all four of his albums, beginning with his critically acclaimed Section.80 in 2011.

"As I produce my final TDE album, I feel joy to have been a part of such a cultural imprint after 17 years. The Struggles. The Success. And most importantly, the Brotherhood," he wrote at the time.

Across his decade-long career, Lamar has remained a singular voice in hip-hop, his body of work a passionate and political exploration of faith and Black art. His audience, from loyal fans to award voting bodies, have treated Lamar as working in a genre all his own, whose releases command attention more than perhaps any other artist working in hip-hop.

In the four years since releasing DAMN., Lamar's musical output has been relatively quiet, aside from the occasional collaboration. "The Heart Part 5" is Lamar's newest material since his recent collaboration with cousin and artist Baby Keem, including the songs "Family Ties" and "Range Brothers," released in August and September of last year.

In 2018, Lamar curated and appeared on the soundtrack to Marvel Studios' Black Panther movie, later released as Black Panther: The Album. The album won a Grammy for the song "King's Dead," featuring James Blake, Jay Rock and Future, and the lead single "All the Stars" featuring SZA was nominated for an Academy Award. This past February, Lamar performed in the Super Bowl LVI halftime show alongside Dr. Dre, Mary J. Blige, Snoop Dogg, Eminem and 50 Cent.

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