Kendrick Lamar’s sprawling new album, “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers,” is “as inefficient as it is awe-inspiring,” jiggyraps writes: “a dynamic, if occasionally awkward, thesis on lineage and legacy.”
A few days before Kendrick Lamar premièred “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers,” his first album in five years, he released a song called “The Heart Part 5,” a diatribe about Black culture and the celebrity’s place in it. In the song’s music video, Lamar stands alone, using deepfake technology to morph into famous doppelgängers. “As I get a little older, I realize life is perspective / And my perspective may differ from yours,” he says in the intro.
The entire family appears on the cover of “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers,” with Alford holding one child and Lamar—a crown of thorns on his head and a handgun in his waistband—carrying another. His return initially seemed like that of a wise man emerging from an abbey to bring revelations to a broken world. The music itself is less lofty. “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers” is as inefficient as it is awe-inspiring: a dynamic, if occasionally awkward, thesis on lineage and legacy.
The production on “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers” is disorienting, sprawling, and ornamental, building outward from the wonky, hard-hitting sounds of Lamar’s musical universe. To form the core of his creative team, the multidisciplinary artist Duval Timothy and the singer-songwriter Sam Dew join the longtime TDE beatmaker Sounwave, the frequent Lamar associate DJ Dahi, and the “.” collaborator Bekon.
Lamar clearly has many thoughts about “political correctness,” most in step with the rest of the celebrity class—“Niggas killed freedom of speech, everyone sensitive / If your opinion fuck ’round and leak, might as well send your will,” he raps on “Worldwide Steppers”—but the most prominent one seems to be a note on function and culpability: that rappers can’t save us, that their job is strictly to instigate.
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