Kendrick has never rapped harder than he has on DAMN. The Thursday before it dropped, LeBron James shared a bit of the album via Instagram, billing the song “ELEMENT.” as a “playoff vibe.” Kendrick’s ability to craft an eight-bar-run-on sentence is propulsive without end. He’s as merciless as a sewing machine and his repetition is as enthralling as a Sunday sermon. Kendrick’s as aggressive as he is witty, rapping on the aforementioned track:

“Bitch, all my grandmas dead / So ain’t nobody praying for me, I’m on your head.”

In contrast to the atmospheric surroundings of To Pimp a Butterfly, Lamar’s voice does most of the heavy lifting, playing multiple roles and characters. “FEEL.” shifts from introspective to raging. “LUST.” exchanges falsetto soul for rapid-fire eeriness. “FEAR.” shares the perspective of a scolding parent, a young Kendrick and an adult Kendrick.

“I’ll prolly die anonymous,” the young Kendrick laments, while his older self acknowledges that, “at 27 years old my biggest fear was being judged.” Does he mean being judged by his community, or his rap peers? Considering his previous displays of faith, it could be God. “You have to understand this, man,” the voice of a relative intones, “we are a cursed people.”

This ominous biblical sense shadows each track. Lamar includes himself in these fallen ranks. Although entrenched in stardom, he’s grown wary of rap beefs and celebrity trappings. “I’m so sick of the PhotoShop, show me something natural,” he demands.

His faith blooms in “XXX.” — a track that features U2. It begins with the narrator attempting to dissuade a young gangbanger from repeating the mistakes of his predecessors. As the song progresses, it widens in scope. While Bono whispers, “pray for me” and gently sings an idealistic mantra of the American dream, Lamar delivers a time-shifting poetic epic about the innate violence in the very fabric of America’s sense of itself.

The violence of the streets is just an outgrowth of a greater wrong.

“Hail Mary, Jesus and Joseph / The great American flag is wrapped and dragged with explosives / Compulsive disorders, sons and daughters / Barricaded blocks and borders / Look what you taught us / It’s murder on my street, your street, back streets, Wall Street / Corporate offices, bank’s employees and bosses / with homicidal thoughts, Donald Trump’s in office…”

Kendrick released these bars almost prophetically, as they surfaced only hours before the US government dropped the world’s biggest non-nuclear bomb in Afghanistan — almost a militaristic signifier of our president’s love for bravado and superlatives. But Lamar also implicates himself, and all of us, in the violence, addressing America as “a mirror.” Although the unpopular 45th president made several appearances on DAMN., he isn’t really the focus of Lamar’s attention. As much as the inquisitive rapper comments on the cascading intensity of external affairs, the emphasis is on the internal, even if the context remains socio-political.

At the beginning of the album, a snippet of Kendrick’s cousin’s voicemail plays, who blames divine intervention for all our vices and suffering. DAMN. reflects on the wickedness and weakness of human nature, with the final track, “DUCKWORTH.” uniting the album-length duality.

At one point, in a distant past, his father and the man who would eventually sign K-Dot to a record contract crossed paths over some KFC biscuits and a near-fatal conflict. In a reversal of Oedipus-like prophecy, fate intervened to prevent Kendrick from being an orphan, and quite possibly, another gang casualty who failed to find the ticket out of his personal hell. A precious origin that’s delivered with such precision and vivid detail, it can’t possibly be true, but it’s a winding tale too strange to be fiction, and a plot twist too powerful not to believe in.

“Pay attention, that one decision changed both of they lives / One curse at a time / Reverse the manifest and good karma, and I’ll tell you why / You take two strangers, and put ’em in random predicaments; give ’em a soul / So they can make their own choices and live with it / Twenty years later, them same strangers you make ’em meet again / Inside recording studios where they reapin’ their benefits / Then you start remindin’ them about that chicken incident / Whoever thought the greatest rapper would be from coincidence?”

Life can be a funny motherfucker sometimes.

It’s a resolution that explores life’s obstacles and the world at large. To Kendrick, our lives unfold through karma and not through God’s wrath and injustice. The explicitly religious language attempts to explain complex socio-political problems, but they’re something we face collectively. Our actions have practical effects on the world: “What happens on earth, stays on earth.” It doesn’t matter what the source is.

Lamar continues to address these emotional and philosophical issues through an examination of his own contradictions, using himself as a template of human fickleness. It could be the fluidity of emotion on “LOVE.” and “LUST.” — although both are about sex. On “PRIDE.,” he examines the sins of his own pride over a thick, old soul beat:

“Hell-raising, wheel-chasing, new worldly possessions / Flesh-making, spirit-breaking, which one would you lessen? / The better part, the human heart, you love ’em or dissect ’em / Happiness or flashiness? How do you serve the question?”

He follows with the crashing ostentatiousness of “HUMBLE.,” in which he gloats about his superior rap skills over a dramatic and thumping piano beat. It’s a juxtaposition that complicates and enriches these songs. They also imply that we can face external injustices and internal demons by correcting them in our own lives, so the cumulative effect isn’t completely destructive to ourselves and our society. Tackle one curse at a time.

DAMN. is a powerful call to action. No one is praying for us, so we have to overcome our own sins and vices to improve the world. In the closing moment of the album, the tape rewinds, and we’re back at the beginning. “So, I was taking a walk the other day…”

The karma that Kendrick explores in “BLOOD.” is cyclical. Play the album forwards, and you’ll immerse yourself in a narrative centered on a quest for justice and a resolution in a cruel, and indifferent world. Play the album backward, and Lamar becomes less and less resolved and increasingly unsure of his life’s trajectory. The structure of the tracklist would suggest that these emotions and vices are inevitable. After immense contemplation, we can only hope for another chance to right our wrongs.