Lamar delivers liberating message
Kendrick Lamar is not the man — and definitely not the hero — we thought he was.
That’s the painful yet liberating message embedded in the confessions, promises, demands and recriminations of “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers,” the daring new album from the rapper, 34, who has shouldered more expectations over the last decade than any other hip-hop superstar.
The 18-track set — split into halves on streaming services like Spotify — arrives five years after Lamar’s previous studio album, “Damn,” which spun off hit radio singles, won a Pulitzer Prize and led to a gig assembling the Oscar-nominated soundtrack to the 2018 “Black Panther” movie.
But if his success pushed him into a voice-of-ageneration role he once seemed eager to fill — “Heavy is the head that chose to wear the crown,” he says at one point here, adding a crucial note of volition to the Shakespeare he’s paraphrasing — the forced introspection of the pandemic has reoriented the scope and focus of his work. What he found when searching within clearly left him with doubts about his suitability, not to mention his desire, to articulate grand communal ideas about family, religion, politics and Black identity.
“I’ve been going through something,” he declares over a jittery piano lick in the LP’S opener, “United in Grief.” Then he adds: “Be afraid.”
“Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers” is framed as a kind of extended therapy session, one Lamar has undertaken at the behest of a female presence voiced by his real-life romantic partner, Whitney
Alford, who appears on the album’s cover along with Lamar and their two young children.
The MC starts out pondering his addiction to sex but also examines his materialism and his fraught relationship with his father; “We Cry Together” dramatizes a brutal fight between him and a lover. “Auntie Diaries” traces the long arc of his experiences with two transgender relatives, including the callousness with which he used a homophobic slur as a child. And the epic “Mother I Sober,” which features a rare vocal performance by Beth Gibbons of Portishead, locates Lamar’s place — as a witness and a possible victim — in a family legacy of domestic sexual abuse.
“I wish I was somebody/anybody but myself,” Gibbons sings, so quietly as to sound like a thought in the back of Lamar’s head.
The varied production, by an expansive crew that includes longtime collaborators such as Sounwave and DJ Dahi, shifts along with Lamar, alternately bulking up with heavy drums and thick keys and stripping down to strings and piano. Ghostly vocals by singer Sam Dew are threaded throughout the album, and there are striking guest turns by Sampha, Lamar’s cousin Baby
Keem, and the unlikely pairing of Summer Walker and Ghostface Killah, who team with Lamar for “Purple Hearts,” a woozy R&B cut.
Lamar’s intricately plotted narratives set him apart from much of modern hip-hop, which prizes vibe over storytelling; here, as distinct from the sleekly commercial “Damn,” the music can feel just as out-there, with songs that lurch between beats and songs that have no beats at all.
All this self-laceration comes with an amount of indignation. Lamar raps repeatedly about cancel culture — he thinks it’s a real thing, and he’s not a fan — and in musing on his own moral failures he goes so far as to wonder whether R. Kelly, a convicted sex offender, has been unfairly treated. He also lends his platform to rapper Kodak Black, who has been accused of sexual assault; what’s more, Lamar seems to have sought out Kodak not in spite of the charges but because of them — because of the opportunity Kodak offers to engage thoughts of forgiveness.
If this calls to mind
Ye’s recruiting Marilyn Manson to appear on last year’s “Donda,” it should; the two acts — the two provocations — are functionally the same. What distinguishes them is the context: Where few would say Ye — the rapper formerly known as Kanye West — has much virtue to spread around these days, Lamar is regarded by many as a saint.
That’s a mistake, he argues over and over on “Mr. Morale,” never more succinctly than on “Savior,” which insists he’s not one. “I rubbed elbows with people that was for the people,” he raps, before deciding, “They all greedy.” He sounds disappointed but not surprised.