The Power Of Now
Long-awaited, introspective epic from 21st century hip-hop’s poet laureate.
Kendrick Lamar
★★★★
Mr Morale & The Big Steppers
AFTERMATH. CD/DL
HALF-A-DECADE on from his last album, Kendrick Lamar offers a simple explanation for his lengthy silence in the first lines of this, his fifth long-player: “I’ve been going through something.” Many things, in fact. Themes surfacing across Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers include the challenges of monogamy and parenthood, Covid, institutional racism and the weight of black celebrity, and his struggles to heal generational trauma within his family and halt long-established patterns of selfdestructive behaviour.
Heavy stuff. But then, Lamar is the first rapper to win a Pulitzer. He doesn’t deal in escapist fantasies or lurid entertainment, nor does he have a clothing brand or signature champagne to hawk. “I’m not in the music business/I’m in the human business”, he raps on Crown (the album’s roll call of guest voices includes Oprah-approved self-help author, Eckhart Tolle). He doesn’t preach or lecture; rather, he externalises his thought processes, making listeners feel his conflicts. His confessional rhymes touch upon complex issues with a rare depth; like De La Soul’s Posdnuos before him, Lamar’s not hard – he’s complicated.
Emotional, intimate, interior – almost uncomfortably so – Mr. Morale… shares a mood with 4:44, Jay-Z’s remarkable set of atonement following his extramarital indiscretions. Here, Lamar’s negotiating the distance between his own shortcomings and those of the world, finding truths in contradictions. As he’s tackling toxic manhood on Father Time, he’s acknowledging his enduring enmity towards Drake and admitting, “I’m not as mature as I think”. On Auntie Diaries, he chronicles his aunt’s gender transition alongside his own journey to acceptance and understanding, and then sends listeners along to confront their own intolerances.
Aiming to transcend cycles of damage, Lamar is a self-acknowledged work in progress, and eminently fallible. And Mr. Morales… falls prey to the same weaknesses of every double album, overlong, overwhelming and uneven. The bristling jazz, offbeat funk and ambitious detours of To Pimp A Butterfly and Untitled gone in favour of low-key, downbeat hiphop, the music subservient to the text.
But when the album works – which is often – it works magnificently. It peaks on Mother I Sober, built around a mournful piano figure and desolate vocals from Portishead’s Beth Gibbons. “I’m sensitive, I feel everything, I feel everybody,” Lamar begins, tracing the destructive ripples emanating from historic trauma, the “generational curses”. It’s powerful, anguished stuff, but as Lamar snaps from his litany of tragedy and commits to breaking the chain of pain, the sense of release and uplift is resonant.
Unkempt and lopsided, Mr. Morales… doesn’t scream “masterpiece!” like the inspired, sculpted works that preceded it, but you sense this is an album Lamar had to make. Raw and resonant, its substance, and solemn reach for transcendence, is commendable.