Kendrick Lamar is in the Dead F’ing Center Looking Around on ‘Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers’
It has been roughly three weeks since Kendrick Lamar came back from a five-year hiatus to deliver Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, a double album that turns the page from the TDE chapter of Kendrick’s career to the pgLang era. Throughout my numerous listens of the album from the greatest rapper of my lifetime, I continue to be reminded of Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Ab Soul’s Outro’ found on his 2011 project Section.80. Specifically, the lines, “See I spent twenty-three years on this earth searching for answers, 'til one day I realized I had to come up with my own, I'm not on the outside looking in, I'm not on the inside looking out, I'm in the dead f**king center, looking around.” These lines are amongst my favorite lines from the Compton rapper, and they ultimately work as a perfect description of the album he’d release 11 years later, Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers.
Throughout Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, Kendrick Lamar is in “the dead f**king center, looking around” on a multitude of topics including, cancel culture, toxic masculinity, toxic relationships, savior culture, and the politics of the black family. Furthermore, the use of Eckhart Tolle throughout the album adds to the atmosphere of Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers as an album that functions as a therapy session, examining society from every angle afforded to Kendrick. All these features lend themselves to the theory that Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers was designed for fans to be a fly on the wall during Kendrick Lamar’s experience with therapy sessions.
On Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers disc one, track five, ‘Father Time’ featuring Sampha, Kendrick Lamar raps about the dynamics between father and son. Throughout the song, Kendrick raps about his experience with the process that fathers instill their values within their sons, the lack of emotional vulnerability that can come with that, and how that can dictate the black male experience. Kendrick references the toxic pride and lack of emotion that can come from an upbringing with an emotionally unavailable father or without a father figure at all. This is all crystallized with lines like “Daddy issues, f**k everybody, go get your money, son, protect yourself, trust nobody, only your momma'n'em, this made relationships seem cloudy, never attached to none, so if you took some likings around me, I might reject the love” and “When Kanye got back with Drake, I was slightly confused, guess I'm not mature as I think, got some healin' to do.”
‘We Cry Together’ featuring Taylor Paige is the penultimate track on disc one of Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers. The track is an illustration of an argument in a toxic relationship that may also stretch to the discourse built around the toxic black men vs. black women debates that frequently occur. While this track may have the least amount of playback value of any Kendrick Lamar song I’ve ever heard, it possesses one of the best moments of execution throughout the album.
‘Savior’ featuring Baby Keem and Sam Dew is the fifth track on Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers’ disc two. On this track, Kendrick aims at celebrity culture and ultimately savior culture. The main takeaway from this track is celebrities don’t have the credibility for fans to consult them for answers to life’s problems. The lines, “Seen a Christian say the vaccine mark of the beast, then he caught COVID and prayed to Pfizer for relief, then I caught COVID and started to question Kyrie, will I stay organic or hurt in this bed for two weeks,” best illustrate Kendrick’s point. On the third verse, Kendrick Lamar makes the topic more personal by referencing the calls for him to speak during the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, most notably with the lines, “capitalists posing as compassionates be offending me” referencing the current allegations of scamming that have been swirling around the founder of the Black Lives Matter organization, Patrisse Cullors.
On disc two’s track six ‘Auntie Diaries’ and track eight ‘Mother I Sober’ featuring Beth Gibbons, Kendrick Lamar raps about his experiences with the politics of his family. On ‘Auntie Diaries’ Kendrick raps about his process of understanding his family members’ journey in transitioning between genders. Additionally, on ‘Mother I Sober’ Kendrick raps about his experience with his mother’s fear that he was being sexually abused by a family member and the pressure he felt when nobody would believe him when he would say he wasn’t being abused. Throughout both tracks, the listener experiences Kendrick Lamar’s process of understanding both situations as a young child and how he looks at each situation now that he has all the pieces put together.
On the outro track on disc two of Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, ‘Mirror,’ Kendrick Lamar sets himself free from all the pressures he’s previously faced throughout his life. At what appears to be the end of his therapy session, Kendrick decides to focus on his healing, with the first step being to put the past behind him.
Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers takes many angles, however, one that may go overlooked is Kendrick claiming his humanity by taking himself off the pedestal many people place him on. Many Kendrick fans look at the rapper as a type of moral authority in Hip-Hop because of his talent to examine society throughout his music. This all came to a boiling point during the protests of 2020 when the American public demanded to hear from Kendrick, a demand that was ultimately not met. Throughout the album, specifically on ‘Savior’ Kendrick references the situation while attempting to remind listeners that he is not trying to be anyone’s savior. The appeal of relieving himself of the pressures that comes with being looked upon as a savior may be a motivating factor behind Kendrick featuring Kodak Black throughout the album, using the F-word on ‘Auntie Diaries,’ and admitting to cheating on his partner. With these possibly calculated mistakes, Kendrick attempts to reclaim his humanity by displaying instances of imperfection. Kendrick’s attempt to reclaim his status as an imperfect being could also be the start of an artistic rebranding, ultimately freeing him from his current expectations and allowing him to take more artistic risks. The new risks Kendrick Lamar may plan to take could surface in his new artistic projects like the comedy he’s developing for Paramount.
The depths that Kendrick Lamar goes in discussing the topics he does throughout the album is impressive. There are very few rappers in the history of the genre who could reasonably tackle the complexities and depths of each of these subjects throughout the three to five minute period of a song like Kendrick does. Although Kendrick goes as deep as this medium allows, there are still many depths of the topics that are left unexplored. Because of this, Kendrick Lamar leaves the listener with very few answers and many questions for each of us to figure out for ourselves. Judging based on the conversation around the inclusion of Kodak Black throughout Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers and the conversations I’ve had with friends about the album, it appears Kendrick Lamar’s latest offering accomplishes just that. Making an album that possesses a level of introspection that leads listeners to introspect themselves is impressive. Perhaps album of the year impressive.
