Kendrick Lamar’s Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers Review: Unapologetically personal.
Our rating: 8.5/10
Kendrick takes a step back from the spotlight on his fifth album, focusing on his fears and values & insecurities. It’s audacious, bold, amazing, yet a little difficult to navigate.
Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, Kendrick Lamar’s final album for Top Dawg Entertainment, has finally arrived. The rapper’s first lp over five years sees him conquer “writer’s block” with a compilation that showcases his keen observant talents.
“1855 days…” and the phrase “I grieve different” appear inside the first 30 seconds of Lamar’s new album.
It’s a stirring sensation, knowing that the rap virtuoso, like his followers, was counting the days till he dropped his last album for TDE and recognizing that he had been hurting as much as we, the fans, were waiting for the poet Kendrick to release his work.
Kendrick Lamar has been missed by the rap community in the five years since his previous album, the Pulitzer Prize-winning ‘DAMN.‘ Kendrick Lamar has been praised for his vivid narrative since his debut in 2011, and he has become a model for everyone in the rap business in terms of how to create seminal music and conduct yourself while doing it. The intricate imaginations of the guy of enigma have pulled us in year after year – and on his latest double album, ‘Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers,’ he offers up two nine-track CDs of modern philosophy and some fun.
Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers pic.twitter.com/tLcJDyNxVe
— Kendrick Lamar (@kendricklamar) May 11, 2022
Kendrick returns to his heart, intellect, and soul through his lyrics on the sprawling double album Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers. This is an LP that resists quick gratification in our hyper-consumptive environment. It exists just to startle.
Big Steppers, the first cd, is narrated by Lamar’s long-term companion, beautician Whitney Alford, and Mr. Morale, the second disc, is narrated by spiritual guru Eckhart Tolle. Both narrators create a different framing for each side, yet it all seems like one unified one.
From the first track, United In Grief, Kendrick makes it apparent that this record is not like the celebratory DAMN (2017), in which he declared his grandeur above music itself. This really is a therapeutic record, a “therapy album.”
Kendrick Lamar appears to be a ghetto prophet just on the cover of his latest album. Just check the thorny crown he wears on the art, the numerous prophetic passages about transformation, or, most plainly, when he portrays himself on ‘Rich Spirit’ as “Christ with a shooter.” But on ‘Savior,’ which includes his little cousin Baby Keem, he tells the world that he’s not flawless enough to be perceived in this light: “The cat is out the bag – I am not your saviour / I find it just as difficult to love thy neighbours”. On this chaotic track, Kendrick deals with cancel culture, capitalism, and COVID: “Seen a Christian say the vaccine mark of the beast / Then he caught COVID and prayed to Pfizer for relief.”
Kendrick demonstrates his outstanding dramatic abilities here. In ‘Auntie Diaries,’ he recounts trying to cope with his auntie being transgender, reflecting the childish attitude he had toward everything in his younger days. ‘Auntie Diaries,’ with its questionable use of the F-word, is a controversial track – but an essential one from this album.
Besides these lines, there are tracks about ancestral trauma, both racial and sexual (like Mother I Sober) and stiflingly poisonous relationships (like We Cry Together, which really is reminiscent of Eminem’s Kim), that are dissonant and uncomfortable for a different reason – they are uncompromising. Uncompromising squirming in your chair.
And here comes the fun part of the album. ‘The Big Steppers,’ on the first disc, is unquestionably entertaining. Take, for example, ‘N95,’ the album’s greatest elevated single, which features a slew of quick one-liners and comedy that you may not anticipate wedged within stinging comments on consumerism and society: “Take all that designer bullsh*t off and what do you have? / Huh! You ugly as f**k / You out of pocket”
Even though Kendrick is a knowledgeable 34-year-old man, it was still good for him to let weak and get some great times between the philosophising – especially since, topped a barely audible, ’90s-style soundtrack on ‘Worldwide Steppers,’ he discloses how he had “writer’s block for 2 years; nothin’ moved me” and that he “asked God to speak through me – that’s what you hear now.”
Ultimately, ‘Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers’ has a moodier, more somber sound than Kendrick’s prior albums, but it also has some musical jewels. For example, in ‘Count Me Out,’ Lamar employs his subtle lyrical rap style over gloomy guitars. Occasionally he divides the gap between the two mood swings: ‘Die Hard’ may be a redeeming song about it never being too late to correct wrongs and achieve your ambitions, but the background clinks of cowbells remind one of clinking glasses in the summers.
Kendrick draws on Keem’s casual rhyming approach to provide some mischief on the Kodak Black-assisted ‘Silent Hill,’ too, as he recounts a lyrically simple narrative about how his life is currently. The refrain features Kendrick’s enthusiastic vocals, as he’s “pushin’ the snakes, I’m pushin’ the fakes / I’m pushin’ ’em all off me like, ‘Huh!”
Lamar’s poetic prowess allows him to create riveting verses about a variety of issues, including fake news, the projection of bogus lives through social media, and the demands of celebrity. But it’s his eagerness to accept chances that stands out the most.
The Big Steppers Tour https://t.co/LgMFiWPbWT pic.twitter.com/2txiUEwM5g
— Kendrick Lamar (@kendricklamar) May 13, 2022
Crown comes before that, with a piano seesawing among two notes and Lamar looking downcast as critical praise confounds him and his fanbase diminishes.
“I can’t please everybody,” he constantly says, as though it’s a motto to help him cope with his inevitable downfall. It’s foresight: and besides, each great artist gets their one-of-a-kind time in the spotlight, and no one lasts a lifetime. But, based on Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers, an album that leaves the listener feeling practically blown by the end, it’s not a slogan Kendrick Lamar needs right now.
And that’s how the album is perceived by us. Being a fan of Kendrick Lamar, I can’t demand more from the artist but there still be a group of people who will go ranting about the album.
So ending the review with the first question Is Kendrick Lamar’s New Album worth 5 Year wait. Let me keep it brief.
Kendrick reveals a huge wall of pleasant and unpleasant realities that he has kept hidden for nearly five years. The album’s eloquent, musically endowed nature makes the wait completely worthwhile.
