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Kendrick Lamar · S6 E6
The Reverse Theory
Play DAMN. backwards. BLOOD becomes the ending. DUCKWORTH becomes the beginning. Coincidence or design?
December 2017. Kendrick releases the same album again with the tracklist reversed, and the entire story changes.
Kendrick Lamar, Career Path (short interview, from Kendrick's official channel). Kendrick reflects on the chain of decisions and accidents that built his career. Watch this knowing what DUCKWORTH. reveals: one wrong move at a KFC in the 1990s, and none of this would exist.
DUCKWORTH., Kendrick Lamar (2017)
Produced by 9th Wonder, the beat is built on a chopped soul sample that speeds up and slows down as the story intensifies. Kendrick tells the true story of Anthony Tiffith robbing the KFC where his father Ducky worked. Tiffith decided not to kill him. Listen for the ending: the music literally rewinds, the vocals reverse, and the track loops back to the opening of BLOOD., creating an infinite album.
Sources
Kendrick Lamar. "DAMN." Top Dawg Entertainment / Aftermath / Interscope, 2017.
9th Wonder, production credits
Two Albums in One
Played forward, DAMN. begins with death (BLOOD.'s gunshot) and ends with survival (DUCKWORTH.'s twist of fate). Played backward, it begins with gratitude for being alive and ends with the consequences of that life. The Collector's Edition didn't add a single new song. It just reversed the order, and the meaning of every track shifted.
Sources
Top Dawg Entertainment, DAMN. Collector's Edition release, December 2017
TAP TO REVEAL: What happens at the very end of DUCKWORTH.?
In DUCKWORTH., what job did Kendrick's father Ducky have when Top Dawg robbed his workplace?
untitled 03 | 05.28.2013., Kendrick Lamar (2016)
The earliest dated recording from the Untitled Unmastered sessions: May 28, 2013, two full years before TPAB dropped. If the reverse theory is about how sequence changes meaning, this track proves the point: Kendrick was writing the future before the present was finished.
untitled 03 | 05.28.2013., Kendrick Lamar (2016)
Read the lyrics while you listen. This is Kendrick two years before TPAB, already experimenting with the jazz-laced production and stream-of-consciousness delivery that would define the album. The rawness is the point: you're hearing ideas before they were finished.
The Reverse Theory
April 16, 2018. For the first time in history, a rapper wins the Pulitzer Prize for Music, and the committee doesn't even hesitate. Next: The Pulitzer Prize.
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