There is nothing more difficult than telling who we are well. But Kendrick Lamar knows how to do it very well. In recent years, the American rapper has transformed his autobiography into a work of art. The story of him, and that of the people close to him, has become a fundamental testimony for African American culture, and an exciting story even for those who are light years away from that world. In Good Kid, M.A.A.D City Lamar talked about the place where he grew up, Compton, a poor and problematic neighborhood near Los Angeles. In the next To pimp a butterfly, the record of the consecration, dealt with themes such as self-love, hatred, fame, depression, violence, racism and politics, imagining writing a poem to his long-time idol, rapper Tupac Shakur. In the next DAMN (for which he won the Pulitzer Prize in 2018) Lamar explored these themes again, with a few more concessions to pop and melody, even imagining his death.
Now the great American novel he created has been enriched with a new chapter. Mr. Morale & The big steppersthe first double of his career, is an album resulting from the social isolation before and after lockdownin which Lamar immersed himself to protect himself from popularity, and five years of silence (if you don’t count the work on the soundtrack of the Marvel film Black panther). In the meantime he has also become the father of two children. And this has led him to an even more intense, at times almost violent search for introspection.
Mr. Morale & The big steppers it develops as a series of psychoanalytic sessions. It already happens in the first song, United in grief, opened by an almost liturgical choir and a spoken introduction by Lamar, who like a great writer never misses an attack: “I’ve been goin ‘through somethin'”, I’ve been going through something, he says, while he counts the days ( 1,855) elapsed between one disc to another. From that moment on, we are drawn into his perspective as the dry notes of a piano and a Flying Lotus rhythm lead the way to flow multifaceted of Lamar, increasingly a jazz player on loan to hip hop. The rapper lists the achievements of his career, remembers friends who died on the streets of Compton, recalls the moment he entered therapy and feels guilty about his addiction to sex, which led him to repeatedly cheat on her. companion and mother of his children, Whitney (who is pictured with him and the children on the album cover). Already in this song appears one of the key words of the album: “pain”. Mr. Morale &
The big steppers after all, it is an album on personal and collective traumas. In N95 (the title refers to the model of the masks) the consequences of the pandemic are described and the cancel culture. Here the rapper seems to want to shake off the image of the committed musician who is a piece of America woke stuck on him. The message is: my commitment is daily, my testimony comes from my personal experience, I don’t need to be photographed at the parades.
In Worldwide steppers, one of the best songs on the record, which samples 1960s Nigerian funk-rock group The Funkees, Lamar confesses he had writer’s block, lists the white women he had sex with, and addresses his two children. The theme of fatherhood is also the protagonist of Father time, when Lamar also explores the difficult relationship with his father. In We cry together instead, together with the actress Taylour Page he stages a toxic relationship, pouring on us a nice load of verbal violence.
The arrangements of the disc, really high level, are probably the most experimental of his career, between old school rap, jazz, trap and electronics. They require some listening to orient themselves. A team of producers worked on the songs, including historical collaborators Sounwave and Dahi, the trio of authors Beach Noise, The Alchemist, Pharrell Williams and others. Guests include Portishead’s Beth Gibbons, Sampha, Wu-Tang Clan’s Ghostface Killah, Baby Keem and rapper Kodak Black, famous for being released from prison after receiving a pardon from Donald Trump. As always, Lamar is good at maintaining a continuity with the rap of the past (homages to Jay-Z, Outkast, Run Dmc, Lil Wayne and the usual Tupac appear in the disc), but still finding a personal and original style.
The second part of the album is even more somber and introspective. The pace slows down and the journey into Lamar’s mind becomes profound, the most frequent religious themes. Another of the best moments is Crownin which the rapper borders on spoken word (and in this he seems a bit influenced by the new generation of US rappers like Earl Sweatshirt and MIKE) and reflects on public opinion expectations (in the chorus he says “I can’t please everybody”, I can’t please everyone), while quoting Enrico IV of Shakespeare and the Gospel of Luke. In Auntie diaries he tells the story of two transgender people in a somewhat clumsy way, he criticizes himself, society and the way the church treats the lgbt + community, but his rapper jargon sounds too little delicate for the subject.
The pinnacle of Mr.Morale & The big steppers is Mother I sober, one of the most beautiful things ever to come out of Lamar’s pen. In nearly seven minutes, the rapper recounts the trauma of her mother, who was raped in Chicago as a young man, and transforms her suffering into that of an entire generation, while Beth Gibbons’ voice appears as a ghost in the chorus. In the finale, built on a crescendo, like a preacher, Lamar frees himself and others from suffering and guilt: he addresses his mother, his cousin, his friends who died in the shootings, his partner, his children, even those who committed sexual violence. The catharsis seems to have arrived, the traumas are on the mend.
Con Mr.Morale & The big steppers Kendrick Lamar confirms that he is the most important rapper of his generation. Nobody has the same musical talent, nobody writes lyrics like him. Nobody is able to carry on the legacy of 90s hip hop, but also to speak to the contemporary. Inside Lamar’s music there are all the souls of rap: autobiography, spirituality, politics, gangsterism. But there is above all one thing that so many other hip hop artists lack: vulnerability. He made a disc at times unsettling, with few compromises, but very powerful.
In his book Promise that you will sing about me, journalist Miles Marshall Lewis quotes a quote from writer Ta-Nehisi Coates that explains very well why Lamar is so different from others: “It’s vulnerability that sets him apart. Rappers always portray themselves as indestructible. Kendrick managed to do hip hop by shooting his dose of street bullshit, but at the same time admitting his precariousness. He made his voice much more complex and much more literary than normal “. A voice that speaks very well to America, but is now able to speak to everyone in the world.