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"Fear" (stylized as "FEAR.") is a song by American rapper Kendrick Lamar, from his fourth studio album Damn, released on April 14, 2017. The twelfth track on the album, the song was written by Lamar and Daniel Maman, aka The Alchemist, and produced by The Alchemist, with additional production by Bēkon. At seven minutes and forty-one seconds, it is the longest song on the album.
The song, structured in three parts, describes events in Lamar's life, specifically his worries and fears, at the ages of seven, seventeen, and twenty-seven.
The song has received critical acclaim from music critics, with multiple critics calling the track as Damn's centerpiece and also a huge standout.
The song begins with a voicemail from Lamar's cousin, Carl Duckworth, who, in the voicemail, speaks a verse from the Book of Deuteronomy, the fifth book of the Torah (a section of the Hebrew Bible). Specifically, he speaks Deuteronomy 28:28, which reads "The LORD will smite thee with madness, and with blindness and with astonishment of heart."
The first verse sees Lamar exploring the fear he experienced as a young child with a strict mother.
The second verse sees Lamar exploring his teen years expressing his fear of dying at a young age. This is enforced with the gang banging and police brutality of Compton, CA.
The third verse sees Lamar exploring the anxieties he showed on his third studio album To Pimp a Butterfly. These anxieties include his lack of self-confidence in himself and his abilities, as well as the fear of losing the life he had built for himself.
The song contains "backwards vocals", also known as backmasking, or "reverse vocals". The backmasked lyrics have been described as the lyrics to the song's refrain in reverse. They appear midway through the song and occur for twenty seconds to represent Lamar going back to his childhood.
The song contains a sample of Lamar's song "The Heart Part 4", a song that was released as a promotional single prior to the release of Damn. That song, in turn, contains a sample of "Poverty's Paradise", written by Dale Warren and performed by 24-Carat Black from the album Ghetto: Misfortune's Wealth. According to Genius.com, the second verse contains an interpolation of rapper Beanie Sigel's song "Die", from his first studio album The Truth.
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