Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers Review
Kendrick Lamar’s new album Mr. Morale & The Steppers is riveting. Prior to the release of the album, The Heart Part 5 heightened the anticipation for the album’s drop. The song samples Marvin Gaye’s I Want You and layers deep lyrics about Kendrick’s view on fame, culture, greed, healing, success, and sacrifice.
Mr. Morale & The Steppers largely is a commentary on fame, wealth, privilege, and greed while sharing Lamar’s deep and intimate accounts of healing from trauma: generational, cultural, and personal.
The album starts off with Untitled in Grief and which intimately reveals his growth within the last 5 years of his life, but also through his career.
In the first verse, which almost acts as an interlude, he states:
1,855 days was the exact amount days since his last release of his critically acclaimed album DAMN. When Kendrick states “be afraid” I think he is warning or prefacing us that he’s about to drop perspectives, wisdom, and opinions that may or not be awakening and even controversial for some.
The second song N95 seems to be a commentary on both the Covid-19 pandemic and materialism. We can see this through lyrics like:
"I got some true stories to tell
You're back outside, but they still lied”
and
“Take off the fake deep, take off the fake woke, take off the, "I'm broke," I care (Take it off)
Take off the gossip, take off the new logic that if I'm rich, I'm rare (Take it off)
Take off the Chanel, take off the Dolce, take off the Birkin bag
(Take it off)
Take all that designer bullshit off, and what do you have?”
On the very surface level of the lyrics, this repeated use of the phrase "take it off” possibly highlights taking off the physical masks. Or this idea of stripping away this narcissism and materialism used to build one’s self esteem. The song also comments on economic, political, and social issues and how the prophets are being abandoned. Overall I believe the song is largely a commentary on capitalism. Specifically how capitalism can be utilized by the individual for the ego and how it’s being utilized by big corporations and governments so that they can remain in power. Kendrick is asking us to take off these so called “masks.”
The third track, Worldwide Steppers is quite controversial and personal.
It’s a commentary on cancel culture and this idea of ego is illustrated once more. Kendrick raps:
This symbolizes this phenomenon of cancel culture and how we can be so quick to denounce and ridicule one another. Or how we choose to bring down others in order to feel superior.
In the first verse we get a deep look inside of Kendrick’s personal life. From revealing a second child with his fiancé of seven years to having two year writing block to presumed to be sex addiction, Kendrick raps:
"Playin' "Baby Shark" with my daughter
Watchin' for sharks outside at the same time
Life as a protective father, I'd kill for her
My son Enoch is the part two
When I expire, my children'll make higher valleys
In this present moment, I saw that through
Ask Whitney about my lust addiction
Text messagin' bitches got my thumbs hurt
Set precedent for a new sacrilegion
Writer's block for two years, nothin' moved me
Asked God to speak through me, that's what you hear now
The voice of yours truly
Die Hard featuring Blxst and Amanda Reifer highlight Kendricks intimacy and relationship issues. He raps:
“Been waiting on your call all day
Tell me you in my corner right now
When I fall short, I'm leaning on you to cry out
We all got enough to lie about
My truth too complicated to hide now
Can I open up? Is it safe or not?
I'm afraid a little, you relate or not?”
The song captures the journey of him coming to terms with his intimacy issues and him confessing how he wants to openly cherish and love in the relationship.
Father Time is a intimate recollection and confession of Kendrick’s “daddy issues” and how he embodied toxic masculinity and his efforts to break the habits and identity. Kendrick raps:
“I come from a generation of home invasions and I got daddy issues, that's on me
Everything them four walls had taught me, made habits bury deep
That man knew a lot, but not enough to keep me past them streets
My life is a plot, twisted from directions that I can't see”
What is so distinct about this album is that it dives deep into childhood wounds and traumas. With Kendrick’s introspections on not only social and cultural issues, but personal traumas and turmoils, it creates more of a space for others to be vulnerable and heal. Kendrick is very much leading the way for other men (who sometimes feel the need to constantly put on a tough exterior) to address these inner turmoils and heal.
This album largely reminds me of 444 by Jay-Z. They are both obviously very different in style, lyrics, etc, but in some areas of theme they overlap. This idea of healing, coming to terms one’s toxicity and wrongdoings, addressing the ego: of society and the self.
We Cry Together is a very intimate argument between a couple. The couple symbolism has been heavily debated. We know it is largely criticism and commentary on society because the song starts with Whitney, his fiance stating:
“Hold on to each other
This is what the world sounds like”
Some believe that this argument illustrates the state of hip hop with Kendrick, resenting Lamar for his absence. I believe it is also holding a mirror to the heterosexual toxic relationships and the egos fighting within them. At the end of the lengthy intense argument transitions into the couple expressing sexual interest towards each other. A possible another commentary on the ego. They threw degrading insults at each other aimlessly to build themselves up and solved nothing, and now use sex to feel the void of emptiness and their ego.
Whitney concludes with:
“Stop tap-dancing around the conversation”
Purple Hearts the final track of the first part of the album is very melodic and features Summer Walker and Ghostface Killah. Both excellent and perfectly fitting features on Kendrick’s part. Purple Hearts to me seems more melodic like Die Hard.
Crown highlights another theme within this album: Kendrick addressing himself as a hero and savior. In the album cover we see Kendrick with a thorn of crowns a visual allegory to Christ. In the N95 music video we see Kendrick floating over the ocean in a Christ like pose. I believe Kendrick is commenting on this idea that he has a lot of pressure to be a hero or the savior. Possibly because his large success and rise from Compton. Kendrick could be commenting on how he feels obligated to be the hero for rap and possibly the savior.
“Heavy is the head that chose to wear the crown
To whom is given much is required now”
In the Interlude Savior we can see this theme deepened further.
Baby Keem raps: “Nowadays, I'm a new prophet, ayy”
As well as in Worldwide Steppers, this idea of Kendrick alluding to himself as a prophet:
“Asked God to speak through me, that's what you hear now
The voice of yours truly”
Now in Savior Kendrick addresses that he is not our savior. I find this quite fascinating because to me Kendrick confesses to be a prophet and is someone who is spreading knowledge. Yet he denies he is our savior. To me the difference between prophet and savior is the ego, Kendrick strips away his ego by calling himself a prophet and denying he is our savior. He raps:
The song also is a commentary on capitalism and its ego:
But they hearts not in it, see, everything's for the paper
The struggle for the right side of history
Independent thought is like an eternal enemy
Capitalists posing as compassionates be offending me
Yeah, suck my dick with authenticity
Yeah, Tupac dead, gotta think for yourself
Yeah, heroes looking for the villains to help
I never been sophisticated, saving face
Being manipulative, such a required taste
I rubbed elbows with people that was for the people
They all greedy, I don't care for no public speaking
And they like to wonder where I've been
Protecting my soul in the valley of silence
Auntie Diaries to me is the most controversial on the album.
Genius describes “Kendrick juxtaposes the misuse of the N-word with his own community’s use of the F-word to denigrate queer people. He uses these parallels not only as a teaching moment for his listener”
This song is further explained by a Twitter user:
VIA James Colt (Chloe) twitter
The song Mr. Morale is a continued commentary on Kendrick’s evolving spirituality, connection to God, and his identity as a prophet. Lyrics like the following embody this spiritual growth and identity:
and
“Uzi, your father's in deep meditation
My spirit's awakened, my brain is asleep
I got a new temperature
Sharpenin' multiple swords in the faith I believe”
Finally the song Mother | Sober embodies all these themes within the album: the destruction of the ego through spirituality and how it intertwined with Kendrick’s identity as a prophet:
“One man standin' on two words, heal everybody
Transformation, then reciprocation, karma must return
Heal myself, secrets that I hide, buried in these words
Death threats, ego must die, but I let it purge”
I would highly recommend for anyone who hasn’t listened to this song to view the lyrics. Kendrick addresses some serious racial and generational trauma that must be talked about more. For example Kendrick raps:
“I pray our children don't inherit me and feelings I attract
A conversation not bein' addressed in Black families
The devastation, hauntin' generations and humanity
They raped our mothers, then they raped our sisters
Then they made us watch, then made us rape each other
Psychotic torture between our lives we ain't recovered”
To me the fact that Kendrick is addressing this, is a testament to the idea that he is our prophet. He is simply quite unprecedented for a rapper of this status talking about such traumas from a spiritual and religious perspective.
The last song of the album is Mirror. It encaptures relationship struggles as well as Kendrick struggle as a rapper who is held to possibly unrealistic standards. He concludes the song and album with:
“Sorry I didn't save the world, my friend
I was too busy buildin' mine again
[Chorus: Kendrick Lamar]
I choose me, I'm sorry
I choose me, I'm sorry (repeated x8)
To conclude I think the album at its fundamental core captures Lamar’s healing journey from fame, wealth, racism, trauma, and ego. Lamar reveals his struggles with intimacy, daddy issues, his relationship, and his pressures he feels by his fan base. He also comments on capitalism, cancel-culture, the lack of free thinking, the rise of the ego, and the current state of rap and hip-hop which is largely inflated by ego. This poses the question is the current state of hip hop a result of ego or possibly more of the fact that many rappers have yet to deal with their traumas: personal and generational. With the creation and publication of this album starts the conversation of stripping down the ego. Even though Kendrick resents this idea of being a hero, he quite possibly is one. He paves and blazes new paths for vulnerability, healing, and spiritual connection for others. To me this album is one of the thought-provoking moving albums I’ve heard. It is a masterpiece.
