Kendrick Lamar - Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers ALBUM REVIEW

yes hi everyone anthony fantano here the internet's busiest music nerd and it's time for a review of this new kendrick lamar album mr morale and the big steppers this is a brand new lp a double lp in fact from mr kendrick lamar the one and only it is his sixth full-length project to date said also to be his last for top dog entertainment as i'm guessing after this point he is going to be focusing on whatever he's going to be doing with his recently formed pg lang company this latest project creatively and personally puts us in tune with this new chapter in kendrick's life given the progression of his discography up until this point i wouldn't expect any less especially given how dark and hopeless things felt on his last full-length lp dam a record that unfortunately i didn't really love upon first listen and i have only grown colder to it since thanks to its so-so songs and vocal performances not to mention many of these tracks didn't really dig deeply enough into the subject matters they were titled after plus consider the weird state of philosophical flux this album saw kendrick in harboring all this guilt and shame as well as this toxic weight on his shoulders due to his growing savior complex but yeah i get it 2017 wasn't exactly a great time not that 2022 is much better however this record does seemingly show kendrick in a better place having worked through a lot of personal trauma while also putting his own position in the world in a more functional and i guess level-headed perspective i've been catching a lot of the online discussion about the various intricacies to this record thus far especially in regards to the mirroring going on between the two discs of this record the way that certain interludes or tracks features and themes across the record line up in reverse between again the two discs which i think shows a lot of intention on kendrick's part creatively even more so than he showed on damn which is kind of interesting i feel like with this lp he's almost trying to consciously create the experience that so many fans were like reading into with that record out of thin air but providing a better version of that concocted experience and genuinely there are moments of this record that remind me of damn and past works and kendrick's discography too i think this record brings the theatrics as well as the metamorphosis through struggle that tpav does so well also has a very uplifting and final resolution which i liked so much about goodkidmad city and like with damn we don't so much have a clear linear narrative track to track as much as we have a lot of strong isolated focus on certain themes on any given song with all of these very conceptual segues and intros and outros that kind of tie everything together which i think are executed better here than they were on dam and i will get into that i also think the album's overarching message is pulled off a lot better too but let's begin with disc one track one the steppers side of the record if i had to characterize the first disc of this lp here i would say this is very much more the toxic side of the record the half of the album that shows kendrick still in a very dark and unresolved place as he says on the intro of the first track he's been going through a lot with refrains on the front end of the track urging him to tell the truth tell his truth find peace of mind and the song does this quite dramatically with all these subtle touches of sound effects and piano passages that sound like something out of a local musical theater production there is then at one point a very chunky beat switch that builds up into these powerful elegant strings some strange little synth sequences too it's a powerful progression over which kendrick tells us essentially the attention and success and material things that his fame allotted him didn't fix his pain didn't really ease his thoughts about his past didn't quiet his demons in fact many of these things he was able to acquire just kind of went unused or unseen and he tells us this story of his with relentless flows boundless passion as at this point in his career kendrick has grown so talented in terms of just being able to translate his experience into song to the point where he's taking this totally unrelatable [ __ ] to his very unique experience of being one of the most successful rappers on the planet and making it easy to understand for me and i imagine just about anybody else who is never going to live that lifestyle now he continues through the rest of this disc with more things weighing on his mental n95 thematically is a more general cut that features uh some very amped inclusions from kendrick's cousin baby keem so of course the eccentric energies they bring out of each other that we've heard on key tracks from like keem's recent record come out here too flow switches the yelpy inflections and yeah throughout this track we just have a laundry list of rejections fake wokeness clout chasing uh the perception that because i'm rich i'm rare it kind of goes on overall i would say this track is very much about kendrick struggling to maintain his authenticity and to be true to himself be honest with his feelings while he operates professionally in a world that requires him to be performative at least to some degree or at least be within very close proximity to fakeness or those who may be self-conscious like he mentions in the final line mentioning that worrying about a critic is not the protocol what did i do it's after this we have the first title track on the lp where kendrick really unpacks some of the heaviest themes on the first disc we start with references to some key figures that are included in the album uh kodak black whose inclusions have proven to be pretty controversial on social media and understandably so given his history of abuse but yeah this track also starts out with a shout out to oprah endorsed spiritualist and a german self-help author eckhart tolle who pops up on a few tracks on the second disc his most poignant inclusion on the record probably being right at the start of the savior interlude where he talks about basing your identity on bad things that have happened to you in the past and if i had to put this record in a nutshell really boil it down to a singular mission and there are multiple layers to this lp but if i had to focus on a singular thing this album is trying to do it's it's reject that idea we also hear a tap dancing sound effect at this point on the song which i think works very much as a metaphor for uh kendrick performing his pain performing his trauma for an audience in order to make money not just for himself but for the record industry a connection he makes pretty clear on the second disc of the record but i'm getting kind of ahead of myself at this point but again worldwide steppers is a very dense track emotionally where kendrick's quickly moving through a bunch of things that have happened to him recently be it dealing with writer's block becoming a father or having some dealings in infidelity and he goes over all of these things with a deadpan but sort of exasperated flow he also goes over his own personal feelings on racism and kind of i guess unpacking that through sexual experiences with white women feeling like [ __ ] them is some sort of uh intergenerational revenge he also describes people generally on this song as killers and zombies who are mindlessly trying to scratch some itch a sentiment that i think he echoes on the heart part five in terms of you know hurt people hurting people because on this cut he pretty much depicts himself as someone who was hurt and then is doling out his pain onto others kind of mindlessly there is an absolutely murderous beat on this track to match these really persistent and sort of mushy keyboard chords distant pianos calling out in the background too whole thing sounds like a horror movie soundtrack with a serial killer stalking their way down a dark alleyway following this there's die hard which i will admit instrumentally this is one of the blander cuts on the record in my opinion the pretty and elegant arrangements worked into this beat are just about the only thing preventing it from sounding like groovy wallpaper on top of that i didn't really find blast or amanda rifer to be super bold vocal inclusions on this track either still i do think kendrick's lyrical performance on this song is solid and i thought the sentiment walking away from this track was really great with kendrick having to take this journey to change in order to better himself uh questioning at least through the refrain is it too late for me to change or do anything about my demons and once again not allowing your rocky past to define your present and future thankfully things do pick up on the song father time which for one amazing keyboard loop on this track incredible some of the chord changes are beautiful and fantastic the heavy rhythms laced into the beat are good too and a really solid chorus from samf as well love hearing that man's voice especially on a kendrick record and yeah if it's not already apparent from the opening lines of the song this track is about daddy issues and there are a lot of details in terms of the father-son dynamic in his family that he goes over like being driven to hide his emotions or seeing his dad go right back to work pretty much immediately after his own mother had died just kind of saying like well you know the the world and bills are not going to wait for me and it sort of seems like kendrick in his own way has kind of put off self-care in order to just work and work and work and work and pursue what he's doing in music too but the layers on this track run even deeper than that i guess just know going into this one i think this track does bring one of his better vocal and lyrical performances and the song ties in really well with the overall narrative of the lp2 now the rich interlude is the first kodak black feature on the project which honestly i found to be kind of mesmerizing between all of its swirling piano chords as well as kodak's bars here bordering more on spoken word than they do rap and with this cut i think kodak pretty much becomes a poster child for the point that kendrick is trying to make here on this lp for personal progression and i think he knowingly puts his audience in a bit of an awkward spot by presenting kodak in this way knowing that some people may be pushed to at least give him the benefit of the doubt in some way maybe believe in his ability to change and his ability to come to grips with his past and his present in the way kendrick has on this record too kendrick even goes as far as to say on the song savior that he sees himself in kodak now do i think kendrick's idea here is perfectly reasoned absolutely not but it's certainly closer to making sense than like let's say for a recent comparison kanye's inclusions of marilyn manson in the recent donda album cycles like i don't have to squint and tilt my head and be overly charitable to see what kendrick is getting at here and and also recognize that he's like pretty much there and i get it now rich spirit is a very chill and cerebral track about being rich in spirit as opposed to material things or being obsessed with how much attention that you're getting as kendrick describes himself on this track as being rich but also having a broke phone uh that phone being basically the egotistical window into all the things that people are saying about you at any given time this track overall is very much about keeping balance it just kind of sounds and feels like pure serenity and it's definitely a calm before the storm of we cry together featuring the great taylor page who absolutely kills it on this track the song kicks off with a dramatic florence and the machine sample and then from there it's it's like all bets are off it just uh everything is just let loose i don't think i could say enough for uh how intense and off the rails this song is it's a pretty much a track about a toxic fight between a couple and you know those people are played by kendrick and taylor yeah i guess it's not about a toxic fight it's literally a toxic ass fight with like echoes of eminem's kim for example but obviously coming from different places coming to different conclusions but god the demeaning language the fighting the swearing the toxicity the gendered hatred it's so much it's my god and again this is all playing out in a very uh lightning in a bottle argument between lamar and paige on the song and it's just so intense it goes so fluidly that you forget that it rhymes especially with taylor page like yelling so loudly on the track she's losing her voice and her voice is cracking whereas like kendrick's performance is definitely intense here but much of the time he still sounds like he's very much in rapper mode but taylor is just oh she's just going off and everything they're throwing at each other lyrically is so ugly and so petty and so disgusting and honestly this track might be one of the greatest gifts that i think he could give to his audience if you ever find yourself in a situation even a little like this you should probably run i will say one thing about this track though uh even though the performance is fantastic and the sentiment of it is uh pretty clear it is tough to tell where exactly the lines blur with certain things and and i think that's intentional to a degree but still like what parts about men and women that are set on this track are genuine or are merely being set up as straw men to be taken down like there is a part where kendrick is making a point about fake feminists and i am kind of led to believe that he does kind of have a little bit of that in his heart especially with his commentary on you know fake awareness and fake wokeness and cancel culture and so on and so forth but then simultaneously as he goes further into that point he's talking about how women can't get along and in that moment he sounds like in his character anyway like a total idiot there is also the very salient point made by taylor page's character about r kelly and harvey weinstein that does ring a little hollow especially given that kendrick was confirmed to have threatened to pull his music off of spotify if spotify ended up going through with a policy they were toying with at the time to remove the music of abusers from popular playlists and algorithms so again i know personally listening to this track i do get a lot out of it it's an intense song it's a unique song for sure but it does make me wonder like where do personally the artist's intentions 100 lie here especially given the walk that he's walked in the talk that he's talked now even though i do love this cut i do think that uh disc one ends in a somewhat underwhelming place like die hard i think the song purple hearts smacks of blandness a bit vocally kendrick does sound kind of out of it and unfortunately i don't think he musters up all that much vocal chemistry with summer walker the biggest selling points of this track for me were the very luxurious beat and the kind of stunning feature from ghost face kill on the back end and once again i do like the sentiment here kind of transitioning from this toxic fight to a love song and kind of displaying purple hearts is like injuries that you kind of sustain in the war of love and hopefully love can make its way through these really toxic moments also i gotta say most romantic bar on this entire record does come by way of it ain't a love if you judge me for my past it ain't love if you never eat my ass so yeah i'm not super crazy about the ending of the first disc nor am i crazy about the start of the second as the song count me out i feel like i enjoy more in concept than i do in practice because the track does represent a tonal shift on the record with it being the start of the second disc and on the song he is wanting to right his wrongs he is reflecting on a lot of his guilt his shame his ego his pride realizing the money that he's made can only do so much to fix his problems he is forgiving himself too for things that have happened in the past meanwhile the beat undergoes this very linear dark gospel-inspired progression it's very the life of pablo to the point where it's somewhat derivative kendrick's vocal performance isn't exactly stunning on the track either it does feel a little lost in the beat here and there though i will say he does kind of finish off stronger than he started but the toughest pill to swallow on this entire lp is easily the song crown which is another piano backed cut and i think it would have worked a lot better had kendrick built up on it instrumentally or maybe turned it into an interlude or just made it shorter because stripping things back just simply to piano and voice kind of put him in a position where the only way to progress it was to layer on all of these like different vocal inflections and layers and deliveries that frankly as we reach the very end of the song get very grating and kind of obnoxious narratively though i will say the song does bring another revelation to the lp where kendrick is realizing that he cannot please everybody all of this added pressure of doing everything and being everything to everyone is not necessary he's really beginning to crack the shell of his savior complex on this one and i've been dying as a fan for him to reach this place for a little bit now he just happens to start stepping into this threshold with one of the most annoying songs he's ever done one of his weaker tunes too but moving on from here silent hill is a very dejected and hypnotic trap cut which brings an almost quieter version of the energy from the song n95 like n95 but night mode we have all of these things compiling on kendrick lyrically he's pushing them off kodak's inclusion lyrically on the track is fine i wouldn't say it's my favorite feature on the entire lp but it does fit the vibe of the track overall and lyrically he doesn't say anything too out of line with the overall theme of the cut like with the rich interlude the savior interlude is passed off to a guest as well this time baby keem who does an incredible job of lyrically delivering on these traumatic experiences from his past over these really powerful and elegant string sections then savior is a pivotal moment for kendrick not just on this record but his entire catalog where yeah he pretty much just uh rejects the obligations of his savior complex and he does a very good job of it he's very clear-cut about it the one thing that does irk me about it though is that he you know kind of throws it away puts it in the trash but does it without even like a little bit of an acknowledgement of how he personally played into that and you know sort of like willingly accepted it in a way i mean the man is literally wearing a crown of thorns on this goddamn album cover but still at least i guess he makes his intentions clear in the song and i think kendrick presents this track as a challenge to the audience as well essentially communicating to them that i'm happy i want to be happy will you be happy for me will you be happy if i'm happy too or will you be mad or will you reject me if i don't continue to become this very depressed and angry outlet for you to essentially kind of uh have validated your negative experiences with the world through but i will give this to the track though he doesn't seem bitter about this change and on top of it he exposes that he's not a savior by in a very honest way telling the audience his flaws like in a handful of lines explaining his own personal struggle coming to terms with covet until he caught it himself or just talking about his own difficulties being kind to thy neighbors having an aggressive attitude sometimes as well and uh the chemistry he has with his cousin on this track too is great the track also features a totally insane [ __ ] beat one of the best beats on any kendrick record where the rhythms and the vocal work and the sound effects all kind of have this sensation that they're spinning and swirling in a circle it's legitimately dizzying we also have the song auntie diaries which is in tribute to a trans uncle the track is very much about a lot of things but at least at first having to overcome the ignorance as a young child uh that just comes along with not really knowing and understanding these things fully inadvertently i'd say showcasing a necessity to societally be more open about these different sexual orientations and walks of life so that there isn't ignorance there that could potentially breed hatred or fear and kendrick shows this hatred and this fear through a younger self or people who he knew when he was young using homophobic slurs family members starting fights over this person in the family a hateful preacher as well who essentially represents the way that american western religious traditions are often at odds with the needs and rights of the lgbtq community and over the course of this song kendrick undergoes this change of heart coming to accept his uncle's new identity not just in a moral sense but in a way that humanizes him talks about the fun things they would do when he was younger uh getting a haircut getting into music as well just like these touching memories that he's kind of exposing the audience to there's a point narratively where he veers into the experience of another trans member of his family and essentially comes to the conclusion that these orientations and walks of life and identities are valid and that hateful words and slurs directed at people in these communities are wrong coming to this decision by way of the comparison of that viral video that white girl who was performing with him on stage and using the n-word and sort of saying well you know saying that was hurtful saying that isn't okay so why is saying this okay i would also like to point out that obviously this track is very much not framed for people who are in the lgbtq community it's more for people who are kind of ignorant or out of the know are still coming to terms with different sexual orientations who may not be as sensitive with like a narrative use of the f slur or a dead naming or saying things like my auntie is a man now obviously the intent of this track is to grow and understand and humanize but kendrick's approach in portraying his once more ignorant self on the track may not go over well with everyone understandably now the second title track on this lp features some pharrell production it certainly sounds like it with these massive huge hits of bass very crisp perks on top of it the whole vibe of the beat is groovy but also dark and urgent and kendrick in a very aggressive way is kind of going into this this idea of cycles of abuse and trauma touching down specifically on people like his own mother oprah r kelly and while it's a great track it's a great moment on the lp and essential moment on the second disc all this really ends up being a setup and merely just a taste for the very dark and very intense even deeper dive into these themes on the next track mother eye sober which again is about abuse but kendrick frames it more in a personal light not just through accusations going on in his own family but his mother's experience with it too while kendrick is kind of going through these experiences he has the weariest delivery that he i think has had on any track we also have the most somber pianos i think to appear on any kendrick song 2 the track instrumentally is just absolutely heart-wrenching and i think some of the most massive takeaways on the entire lp happen on this track with again generational trauma cycles of abuse kendrick framing this specifically in regards to the black experience essentially talking about how that goes back hundreds of years and having to essentially be the person to break that cycle in your own family saving your own kids from that experience kendrick goes into his own vices on this track as well talking about how you haven't really felt grief until you felt it sober and while his addictions may not be super drug oriented they were sex oriented and were leading him to again all this infidelity hurting his partner it's a touching and very emotionally intense moment and in terms of like the source of it where it comes from kendrick is absolutely on the money and uh beth gibbons of porta's head fame her inclusion on this track is uh quite necessary too as her voice provides these very short somber and beautiful little segues as we move from section to section in the track now the closing track unfortunately is a song that i am a little on the fence with instrumentally it is another cut that i don't really get that much out of the string sections in the second half are really all that i like about it instrumentally the rest of it kind of sounds like a beach level in a racing game and does not really carry the emotional gravity and urgency of the proclamations that kendrick is making on this song because narratively this track ends up being another very pivotal moment here where kendrick is essentially choosing himself and his family over this futile pursuit of changing the world and saving the world which again i get but personally uh in this moment i feel like i kind of want to say something and i know i've been saying something but i just want to speak for more of a personal place here and say as somebody who's been really messing with kendrick's music since section 80 and has been listening as closely to the man's words as i possibly can i would like to say this this idea that you should or that you could change the world that you could save the world it is is not an expectation that i had for you that a lot of people had for you in my opinion the fact that you make such great and fantastic music that is thought provoking is enough and this is just me talking as a white guy who often doesn't have a close personal connection to the experiences that you uh detail on your records but still even for me what you do means so [ __ ] much i do also want to say here the title of this track mirror uh does very much like you know highlight and point out the mirror effect going on between these two track lists but also i think the point of this mirroring goes deeper than than that than just some kind of like funny little you know trackless trick between the two discs because you know understand that kendrick undergoes a metamorphosis across this project and in a way in terms of insight and perspective and attitude you're getting two different people or two different versions of him on this project a little bit but keep in mind like these two different versions are the same person you know it's it's one version staring into a mirror and seeing the other one back in a way and what you're seeing in the mirror some things have changed some things are different some things are kind of the same but regardless even though you have made changes in your life especially for the positive that doesn't mean that you're a different person you're still that same person that reflection that image is still you and i would like to think that's at least one of the possibly many takeaways from uh doing you know the trackless mirror style in the way that kendrick does and i would like to say overall i uh loved this project and i thought it was a great experience and i uh i really enjoyed it i'm feeling a light eight on this one tran position have you given this record a listen did you love it did you hate it what would you rate it you're the best you're the best what should i review next hit the like if you like please subscribe and please don't cry hit the bell as well over here next to my head is another video that you can check out hit that up or the link to subscribe to the channel and uh yeah that's it anthony fantano kendrick lamar mr morale and the big steppers forever

Channel: theneedledrop

Views: 2,928,810

Keywords: album, review, music, reviews, indie, new, lyrics, listen, track, concert, live, update, the needle drop, anthony fantano, vlog, talk, discussion, music nerd, song, kendrick lamar, mr morale, big steppers, rap, hip hop, conscious, deep, meaning, oklama, tde, top dawg, pglang, n95, united in grief, auntie diaries, father time, kodak black, baby keem, we cry together, crown, mother i sober

Id: gHQE7tULx6c

Length: 26min 49sec (1609 seconds)

Published: Tue May 17 2022