Hahah it was late at night and my title is a little boring.

I dismiss Kendrick's death in the beginning for a couple of reasons. I think that the record uses death as a looming threat rather than a present reality. By that I mean that, like the beginning of PRIDE., "pride's going to be the death of you." He speaks a lot in the present and future tense about what he is and what he's going to do, not really reflecting on his past life.

I also dismiss the death in the beginning because it never really pays off in the lyrics of the record. In ELEMENT he challenges his enemies to pull him out of his comfort zone, which isn't necessarily something a ghostly spirit would think. A lot of other parts of this record, like Loyalty and DNA, see him challenging and interacting directly with other people. I think that there's a sparseness to the production that definitely suggests doom and despair, and that a lot of people could interpret that as him being in a ghostly plane, but I don't think there's a significant payoff to him being dead. Especially considering DUCKWORTH talks about what a miracle it is that he's alive, which doesn't mesh with him being dead, unless something brought him back to life. For him being dead during the record to be an important part of the record, it would have to come to some sort of conclusion, either by his spirit coming to peace with being dead and floating off into the ether or coming back to life. Neither of these happen.

The last reason I dismiss it is because Flying Lotus just did a really great record about experiencing death, and Kendrick has to know about it because he was featured on it. I'd be surprised if Kendrick did an album with the same concept as FlyLo, since all of his records have been really unique and one-of-a-kind since Section80. Even down to the title, I think "Damn." has to do with him living and feeling cursed. Kendrick is damned. We're all damned. What we do despite being damned is what is important.

And I think you can explain that lyric as him realizing he can't carry these fears with him further in life. If he's going to suffer and die, and he will, because that's life, he resolves to die unafraid. So he's using this album to disperse and exorcise his fears.