Kendrick Lamar - DAMN.

In April 2018, the Pulitzer board handed its music prize to a rap album for the first time in the award's history, calling DAMN. a virtuosic song collection capturing the complexity of modern African-American life. Seventy-five years of winners had come from classical and jazz. Kendrick Lamar broke that in a single afternoon, and did it with a record that had already sold more than a million copies and spent four nonconsecutive weeks at number one.

The album works because it refuses to settle into one register. "HUMBLE." is a Mike WiLL Made-It beat stripped to piano and menace, Lamar's first number-one single and an inescapable presence for most of 2017. "DNA." coils tighter and then detonates halfway through. Against that, "LOYALTY." pairs him with Rihanna over something almost sensual, and "XXX." brings in Bono and U2 for a track about American violence that lurches from siren-wail panic to hymn. Sounwave, DJ Dahi, and Bēkon fill in a sound that stays radio-legible while never sitting still. It took home five Grammys, including Best Rap Album.

There's a structural trick here too. Lamar built the record to play in either direction, forward as a story of a man undone, backward as a story of a man saved, and issued a Collector's Edition with the tracklist reversed to prove it. On vinyl, with four sides in your hands, that's an invitation rather than a footnote.

This pressing presents the full album across a 180-gram 2LP set on Top Dawg, Aftermath, and Interscope.