Written by: Oliver Heffron.
9/10
Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers concludes Kendrick Lamar's legendary five-album run with TDE in an unflinching, intimate self-portrait of the tormented man who has been holding hip-hop's crown for the last decade. The album descends to the depths of Kendrick's demons in a narrative that centralizes confrontation, accountability, and forgiveness as a path of liberation from generational trauma. Kendrick sheds the impenetrability of his rap-god persona for raw honesty and vulnerability. He trades in past albums' externalized, vocally-inflected characters for a raw, internal perspective in lyrics that resonate like an intense therapy session. The project incorporates musical aspects from across Kendrick's discography.
Five years since the universally acclaimed Damn. and with seemingly nothing left to prove musically, Kendrick surprised the world yet again by bringing to light the scars and humanity of the missing piece to Kendrick Lamar's legend: the man behind the microphone, battling for the salvation of his soul.
The epic double-album features musical aspects from Lamar's discography with a newfound theatricality. Moments like "Crown" and the initial movement of "United in Grief" strip back to solely the reverberations of piano keys (played by Duval Timothy) and Kendrick's voice as he commands the track like a stage actor holding an auditorium with a monologue. "N95" features a sliver of Kung-Fu Kenney as he obliterates a bass-heavy anthem with a mindful mantra of removing the masks to reflect on an inner ugliness. Kendrick basks in his local pedigree on “Rich Spirit,” a Vince Staples-Esque, reverbed, west coast beat with a hook alluding to his propensity to use other people’s stories for song narratives: "Stop playin' with me 'fore I turn you to a song."
The project retains the unique, cutting-edge sound of a Kendrick Lamar album with production and musical contributions from longtime Kendrick collaborators Sounwave, J.LBS, DJ Dahi, Bekon, The Alchemist, Thundercat, Baby Keem, and OKLAMA himself, creating a sound that incorporates aspects of psychedelic jazz, soul, and blues with an efficient dispersal of trap and west coast rap. The tracklist features masterful use of samples, such as the sonic reversal of a 1960s deep-cut "You're Not There" by Hoskins’NCrowd on "Father Time," the haunting pulse of "Worldwide Steppers" a slowed bass pluck from "Break Through" by the Funkees, to the hilarious incorporation of a Dallas Cowboys fan’s rant on the intro before the futuristic, dystopian bounce of "Mr. Morale" kicks in.
The other voices appearing across the project live up to their moments and add to the project’s narrative. Whitney Alford, Lamar's longtime partner and co-parent provides narration throughout the album, pushing Kendrick to "tell them the truth." Spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle's voice appears across the album, most impactfully on the intro of "Savior (Interlude)" in a theoretical rejection of deriving identity from being a victim. Baby Keem then proceeds to provide maybe his best verse to date, rising to his cousin's occasion with gut-wrenching images from his childhood. Sampha rises from his respective half-decade absence to deliver the perfect hook on "Father Time," an incredibly executed ode to "daddy issues," while Ghostface Killah rounds out the swelling "Purple Hearts" with a golden-era verse.
Coinciding with the project's central theme of looking inward to spark a reversal of fate, the album's second disc mirrors the first’s tracklist in reverse, creating a chiasmus between the two halves of the project. While Disc 1 exemplifies the inherited impulses, vices, and addictions that Kendrick utilizes to repress his trauma and gvuilt, Disc 2 unmasks the trauma and unresolved emotion behind those destructive tendencies, reversing the image to diagnose the underlying issues and give them a chance to change. “Mirror” reveals the choice Kendrick made to turn away from his public expectations and towards reconciliation with his family and a mindful self: “I choose me, I’m sorry.”
On the track "Die Hard," former Nuance cover artist Blxst delivers a smooth west coast hook with lyrics presenting a central sentiment of the project: "I hope I'm not too late to set my demons straight / I know I made you wait, but how much can you take?" Kendrick stretches his audience to the limits, weaving emotional moments and narratives difficult to digest. "We Cry Together" presents a horrifying depiction of domestic violence with a show-stealing feature from actress Taylour Paige. The two hurling gendered hated back-and-forth in an improvisational tone that still somehow rhymes. The track is reminiscent of "Kim," except Kendrick and Paige's performance culminates in a sexual embrace, complicating the song's meaning in a way that Eminem's murder-fantasies never did.
The controversial Kodak Black delivers a poetic soliloquy about violent masculinity on "Rich (Interlude)" over spiraling piano chords while also rapping beside Kendrick on the sleek trap-cut "Silent Hill," pushing some of Lamar's fans to the fence considering Kodak's rape allegations. "Worldwide Steppers" presents the intense imagery of generational guilt weighing down on Kendrick as he has sex with a series of white women, describing his lust as a vessel for addiction and revenge. The track's repeated refrain emphasizes universal guilt and hypocrisy, one of many moments on the album where Kendrick turns away from himself to rally against popular culture's rising puritan tendencies and social media-fueled presentations of the self without blemishes.
The furthest Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers push its audience is when it pulls closest to home. “Mother I Sober” most clearly depicts the effects of generational trauma as Kendrick recounts his family’s constant fear of sexual abuse within the family, starting at the age of five, before eventually revealing the suspicion stems from Kendrick’s mother’s own traumas with sexual abuse as a young child. The track recounts a hauntingly specific memory while connecting it to a larger, longer pattern of repression and abuse: “I know the secrets, every other rapper sexually abused / I see 'em daily buryin' they pain in chains and tattoos / So listen close before you start to pass judgment on how we move / Learn how we cope, whenever his uncle had to walk him from school.”
Photo Courtesy of Renell Medrano.
Photo Courtesy of Renell Medrano.
"Auntie Diaries" tells the story of Kendrick's transgender uncle persevering through persecution and ostracization from his family and faith, ultimately teaching his nephew to value humanity over religion or popular perception, not to mention how to rap. The story itself is a touching and essential missing piece to Lamar's origin story. The frame Kendrick uses is jarring, filtering the story through his younger self's ignorance and hurtful coping mechanisms, dead-naming his uncle from the title and first line of the song and using homophobic comparison to justify his transition, eventually uttering a homophobic slur three times before explaining, "We didn't know no better."
Understandably, this technique hurt many listeners who identify as LGBTQ+ and left them feeling like there was a less harmful way to tell this story. However, in a genre that traditionally excludes the topic of transgender people in general, "Auntie Diaries" signals an important moment for hip-hop to challenge its conventional ideas about sexuality.
Kendrick's voluntary admittance of indiscretion and subsequent self-forgiveness cuts the audience off from judgment. This parallels multiple overt challenges to Kendrick and his audience's connection, nowhere more saliently than on Baby Keem's hook on "Savior," which questions the audience: "Are you happy for me? / Really? Are you happy for me?"
Photo Courtesy of Renell Medrano.
In a cultural moment where public perception seems to dominate creativity, Kendrick chose to expose and forgive himself without seeking validation from his audience. The project communicates the idea that forgiveness and redemption can only come from an internal confrontation with one's guilt and trauma and not from a pursuit of external validation. With a crown of thorns atop his head and his family finally in the frame, Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers depicts Kendrick rejecting his role as the savior of hip-hop in exchange for the salvation of his family and consciousness from generational trauma and pain. It’s an unexpected but brilliant final piece to one of the greatest rap discographies of all time.