KENDRICK LAMAR "Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers" : An Album Review

I'm fucking MAD.

I'm MAD at how good this album is.

Kendrick...How.

How the fuck do you keep doing this?!?!?

One of the reasons I'm mad is it takes all the suspense out of my year and decade lists.  Shit, here's your number one now, dude.  Don't spend it all in one place.  I don't even have a choice.

He even did it with the decided handicap of having Kodak Black on the album five fucking times.  HOW?!?!?!?  How do you succeed this hard.  HOW?!

I'm also mad because I'm not sure how to write a review of this that doesn't sound like I'm giving it a blow job (even my favorite albums I try to come at from a different angle, or to just keep it brief, but everyone and their brother's mother's brother is gonna feel obligated to go long on this one, and if any album deserves it, it's this one because there's a LOT to talk about).  I'm also not sure how to cover everything on this album without writing a novel detailing every point there is.  If I leave one out, I feel like I haven't done my job because yeah, let me re-iterate, there's a LOT to talk about here.

And yet I don't know where to start.  A grueling, track-by-track breakdown?  Go to Genius for that.  I did.  I feel like I know less about the album now.  (So maybe don't.)

One thing's for sure: I don't normally listen to an album more than...two, three times in a year?  Even if I love it, I feel like I "just listened to it" if I heard it six months ago.  This shit I've heard three times in three days (twice on Friday; almost twice in a row).  I've listened to "N95" five times already because I watched the video, and on release night I checked out the first three tracks.  And now I've heard it four-ish times in five days, so yeah.  It's on my mind.

The title Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers seems to me a reference to keeping a happy face and tap dancing around the real questions you have to answer.  The kind of "No Bummers Allowed", "Criticism=Treason" mindset that Kendrick takes to task on a few songs directly.  That actually ties into why I think Kodak Black is all over this album.  He wanted to taint it.  He wanted to feature somebody problematic on purpose because humans are messy, humans are complex and dirty and cannot be sanitized and segmented without losing intangible pieces of our individuality.

But there is a balance to be had.  Because there are songs like "Auntie Diaries" and "Mother I Sober" (and to a certain extent "Father Time") where he fights back against abusive hierarchies, where he "chooses humanity over religion", where he calls out the real problems that people have to cover up because continuing to function is all a lot of us have.  You have to duct tape an aspirin to it and put on a poker face and act like it don't hurt or you're just gonna get it worse next time, keep falling behind and wind up dying of thirst in a hole you can never climb out of.  All for the amusement of the abuser, who may or may not even be paying attention to you as you die.  

Kendrick refers to media as the "new religion" on "Worldwide Steppers" (Baby Keem refers to "The 1st and the 15th: The Only Religion" on "Savior (Interlude)" as well; living check to check makes me feel the sting of that one).  The idea is choosing humanity over religion ("Auntie Diaries"), but also acknowledging it's not as easy as "Can't we all just get along?" or finding some middle ground that may not even exist.  We all have massive trauma (non-white, non-male, non-cis, non-hetero, non-Christian, non-wealthy people especially, individual or all-inclusive).  A lot of it we've done to each other; the people closest to us have the best chance to hurt us.  But also, the last six years have been a bitch on this bitch of an Earth.

Trump.  Facism.  Covid.  Ukrane.  January 6th.  Kavanaugh.  The impending overturn of Roe V Wade.  The Texas Power Grid.  Charlottesville.  George Floyd.  Almost going to war with Iran (hands up if you remember that).  The elimination of the middle class.  Billionaires exponentially stacking wealth.  The destruction of the environment.  More hurricanes.  More wildfires.  Heat waves.  Police brutality.  The parents of trans kids being arrested.  The constant threat of nuclear annihilation.  The fact that a mass shooting doesn't stay in the news for more than two days now because they happen so often.  Baby formula shortages.  Abortion bans.  Kids in cages.  Gerrymandering.  The impending doom of knowing Trump will get re-elected.  

Point is: We've been through a LOT.

So the undercurrent of this album being about needing to go the fuck to therapy is apt.  We're expected to just keep going to feed the machine forever.  Fuck your feelings, get money and buy some new ones.  That trauma takes its toll.

It's short-sighted too.  We could keep this machine running forever and have real generational wealth instead of stealing everything from the future by pushing too hard and only getting what you can out of today, but the billionaires can't hear you because their ears just popped from their cash piles pushing them into the stratosphere.  

Like the video for "N95" says: "This shit hard".  That's a double meaning: It's the macho braggadocio you expect from a song like this, but also being a human with feelings and emotions and having to navigate?  That shit hard.  Come to think of it, it's a treble entendre: Kendrick is expected to be this hip-hop savior, to the genre, to the listeners, to consciousness in art in general, to be perfect, to walk that tightrope forever.  You know you can't, that nobody can, but you don't want to disappoint your fans so you keep trying to do the impossible for as long as you can and then you can't, and that whole trip is its own kind of trauma.  Again: This shit hard.

"United In Grief" has one of the all time best beat switches in a rap song.  The fact that it takes off at 75mph before you're sure what's going on is representative of the world continuing to move on around you before you're ready to move on from grief.  (And you could tell exactly where everybody was in there listening on release night when "I GRIEVE DIFFERENT" started trending).

I guess we're talking about the songs after all.  I did think "Die Hard" and "Rich Spirit" were sort of speed bumps (especially "Rich Spirit").  The autotune on "Die Hard"'s chorus is maybe the low point on the album because it's not quite in key.  Maybe they were trying for something microtonal, but it doesn't sound good.

Something the beat on "Father Time" made me realize (the fourth time around) is the music on this album is pretty retro.  It doesn't have the artsy weirdness of DAMN., it doesn't have the G-Funk of To Pimp A Butterfly and it doesn't really have the street/gospel merger of good kid, M.A.A.D. city.  It's more soul music, a lot of piano, some dusty drums and some 808s of course, but it's...

It's kind of like they're taking the aesthetic of a dance recital, the primary sounds of the album are a piano and tap dancing (at least the Big Steppers part).  There are plenty of moments where verses are done over no percussion at all.  And a lot of times when there is percussion, it's muted; distant.  A lot of this album is meant to be intimate, yet hip hop is usually bombastic in nature, so these techniques serve to split that difference, to sew them up together for the same purpose.

Interesting coincidence I listened to Florence + The Machine's Dance Fever in-between the first two listens of Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers since she's sampled at the beginning of "We Cry Together".  Definitely takes the crown for best domestic dispute put to rhyme because it adds both perspectives as equals.  Also helps they brought in an actress (Taylour Paige) because it's more of a scene set to rhyme than a song, but there's still a hook (with the most profanity of any hook...ever?) that's integral to the argument, and somehow makes sense being repeated.

I really thought that was Action Bronson instead of Ghostface Killah first time I heard "Purple Hearts".  Bronson has more of a rasp to his voice, and this dude on the song had that rasp, but apparently it was really Ghostface.  

"Crown" is kind of a generic premise: You can't please everybody, they only remember what you've done for them lately, buy stuff to hide the pain.  But put in the context of Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers and Kendrick's struggles with trying to stay sane, trying to stay human, it feels a little more substantive.  He really does have to please everybody, and if he misses one, it's over for that one.

The hook on "Silent Hill" is the most fun moment on the album.  Then Kodak happens and...'eh, he doesn't embarrass himself, which is more than I was expecting.  

"Savior": It's not just Kendrick feeling the weight of being a savior, it's him calling out would-be allies in the woke-for-clout exchange, corporations trying to say they're on board to keep the cash flowing, and saying "Thanks but no thanks" to solidarity politics, saying "Yeah, that's nice you protested that one time; we have to do it everyday for our whole lives".  

"Auntie Diaries" is controversial for it's use of the F Word, but context is important.  The song is about two trans gendered members of Kendrick's family, his aunt and his cousin.  He details that yes, he and his friends made hurtful, stupid jokes about gay people, but as the song goes on, these jokes are thrown back at Kendrick.  He sees when the pastor makes an example of his cousin that this is bullshit, homophobia is bullshit, it's just another thing to set us against each other and keep us under control, I love my cousin and I don't care what anyone else thinks.  By the end of the song, he brings up an incident where he came to understand why the F Word is as bad as the N Word.  It's doing the same thing.  It's causing the same hurt.

And I think if he doesn't say the word, it dulls the impact a lot.  It doesn't show the journey from ignorance to understanding; from thinking it's a joke to internalizing that he is doing harm.  Does he deserve a pat on the back and a hearty congratulations?  Fuck no; none of us with privilege do.  We're learning to do what we should have done all along: treat people like they're actually people.  But we shouldn't shit on him for trying to use his journey as an example to make someone else listening to this understand what he now understands.

And we haven't even touched on the heaviest song on the album yet.

"Mother I Sober" is something you need to hear.  Really, there's no explaining it.  It's all on the surface.  It's raw.  It's blatant.  No metaphor.  Just listen to it.  You will get the thesis of this whole experience.  I can't do it justice.

One thing I will say: it definitely touches on (as does the whole album) the idea that you shouldn't talk about your trauma in mixed company.  And no, you shouldn't trauma dump, but we tend not to ever want to talk about it at all, even to our closest friends and family.  We don't want to be a hassle.  We shut up and stay hurt.  If we don't start feeling comfortable letting it out, we will implode from being devoured from within by our pain.

Also, the beat on "Mirror" fucks.

This album forever resets the bar for what being "real" means.  The bar for talking about vulnerability.  The bar for analyzing the black experience in America in some ways.  The bar for lyrical concept in general.

This is Kendrick's best album.  It's how authentic this album is presented, but it almost makes To Pimp A Butterfly feel quaint.  I did not think that was possible.