Kendrick Gets Us.
Mr Morale & The Big Steppers album analysis: the healing of Black trauma and soothing of Black consciousness (MM&TBS introduction).
Morale. The level of individual psychological well-being is based on such factors as a sense of purpose and confidence in the future.
Mr. Morale and The Big Steppers is one of Kendrick Lamar’s most complex albums. This album captures the psychological wellness of the Black community for the future. Our confidence and ability to heal ourselves and prepare better for the future. In my mind, throughout the album Lamar is a leader figure or "Mr. Morale” and he is educating the masses — or “The Big Steppers”— that look up to him to help for help and inspiration on how they live their lives.
In the album, he shares how he often struggles with the compliance of his listeners and healing himself when people are cheering him on for his flaws. Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers is centered around self-improvement, healing, and the breaking of generational trauma. He uses this album to capture and share his entire healing process and the way he struggles with being a “Savior” while being deeply flawed and needing to heal.
Throughout the entire album, Lamar drops nuggets of resources, circumstances, and emotional intelligence. For example, in the “Count Me Out” music video Lamar sits with a therapist, spiritual teacher and self-help author Eckhart Tolle’s voice is featured at the end of “Mr. Morale”, and the voice of his fiancé Whitney is featured multiple times throughout the album (amplifying the importance of women's guides/voices).
The themes are consistent throughout Lamar’s album: empathy, healing, and grief. He communicates through a combination of word play, monologues, unique beats, video visuals, and odd sound effects (such as The true power of this album is only magnified when on stage for a live concert. People able to attend the concert have said that it is a masterpiece: a play, concert, and opera all in one.
ACT 1
In United in Grief, he opens the song saying “I’ve been goin' through somethin’/One thousand, eight hundred and fifty-five days”: the duration between the time of DAMN. and Mr Morale’s release dates was 1855 days. He quickly starts to breaks down the way he’s been dealing with grief from the weight of fame and his trauma.
In N95 Lamar starts to take off his mask and reveal himself to himself by way of removing his moral superiority, luxury clothing and accessories, and flashy exterior. While encouraging us to do the same. He reveals that his interior is "Ugly as f***”. However, Lamar is still speaking in his “Mr Morale” voice. He’s still mainly referring to society issues such as the COVID pandemic by way of titling the song N95 referring to the N95 mask worn. He uses this as wordplay to talk about figurative masks that still need to be removed after the literal ones were.
Worldwide Steppers carries a lot of nuance that shows Lamar is still not quite ready to own up to his mistakes and heal. In the song, he’s struggling with morality and the dangers of the world. He’s struggling with accountability. Kendrick Lamar is poised as a “savior” for all of the big steppers but knows he has more immediate people to save and protect like himself and his family. This song centered around family but still too broad for Lamar to actually heal and address his personal flaws.
He starts to slowly take more deeper looks at himself. “Die Hard” is a peak into his relationship with his fiancé Whitney and the regrets he has in their relationship. Throughout the album he admits to cheating and a sexaddiction. He’s not giving up on the relationship in this song. He is asking for another chance to do what’s right and better himself for her and their family.
Now that he’s opened himself up to healing, in “Father Time” we hear advice from Whitney. “You really need some therapy.” She also suggest that he reaches out to Eckartt Tolle after Lamar admits he thinks he’s too real for therapy. He quickly reveals how such much of his life has been influenced by his past, daddy issues, and childhood trauma. He also reveals how he “never expressed” himself as a child and as a listener, we understand his aversion to therapy in the first few songs. However, Lamar shares how this harmed his relationships, gave him trust issues, and weakened his soul. To combat this Lamar shares how powerful it is to recognize the cycle of daddy issues and end it, highlighting that the men who go through these situations project onto their partners, and also hinting at the fact that women don’t need to deal with how their partner’s trauma manifests into toxicity and abuse.
“Rich (Interlude)” uses Kodak Black’s voice to examine what it really means to be rich. Black spotlights how he’s broken in spirit, yet rich in material. In a way Black is also a “Mr. Morale: a leader too flawed to be followed.
In “Rich Spirit”, Lamar learns from Black’s lesson: being rich in finances does not equal being rich in spirit and hebegins to apply this lesson to his mindset and actions. However, it’s easy to be on the path of healing and to relapse back into your old, toxic ways. That’s where the next song takes place.
“We Cry Together” is the climax of this first act. It’s a dialogue that takes place over a wobbly piano melody partly inspired by Poetic Justice. The fight touches on all aspects of a toxic relationship, but is clearly about more than just that. Whitney is heard at the beginning saying “this is what the world sounds like”. This toxic dialogue and relationship showhow to hurt people. In the song, both characters are traumatized and taking it out on another person through anger. It’s a reflection on how society morphs when people don’t heal and let go of their individual pain. The fight morphed and grows from being something personal to being a mirror of how society, entertainment, and inequity damages. At the end, it shows that both sides of the couple naturally incline to and crave unity. The issues are yet to be resolved, yet the couple have sex. This shows how the cycle continues and how people live their entire lives never breaking — and sometimes feeding into - the damaging cycles they’ve grown up with. The song ends with Whitney urging us - and Lamar — to “stop tap dancing around the conversation”.
“Purple Hearts” closes out Act 1 with a plea to shut up and let love happen. To cut the back and forth out of “We Cry Together” and get straight to the point when what everyone wants is love and unity. In this song Kendrick Lamar developsoptimism about love, unity, and healing. Meaning he’s finally ready to have his therapeutic breakthrough and truly start his healing process.
ACT 2
“Count Me Out” starts with a more personal chorus and Tolle calling Lamar by his name. It quickly starts to delve into Lamar’s personal struggles, regrets, and mistakes. He shares how he’s fallen from savior status. He takes his own advice and takes of the mask like he encouraged us to do in “N95”. Throughout the song he shows sympathy towards Whitney by referencing Miss Otis Regrets - a song where a woman kills her unfaithful lover — for his infidelity, admits his wrongs and takes accountability, and frees himself from the weight of his guilt.
“Crown” is where Kendrick grapples with the weight of the crown and how worthy he thinks of himself for it. What he realizes is that the love from his fans can go away at any second. Despite everything, one slip-up, a break from the rap game for years, or prioritizing himself over music could cause his fans to lose love for him. Yet he also explains the immense pressure that the love from his fans and his status has created for him. “I can’t please everybody/“ He emphasizes his point from PRIDE. “Love’s gonna get you killed” and that spreading himself and his love too thin across his fans and family could cause him to not provide it when it matters the most.
After realizing that he couldn't please everyone, he retreats to silence. In “Silent Hill” Lamar creates a place where he can protect his spirit and be free of the pressure of being there for everyone. He needs silence to get to the next step of his healing journey.
“Savior (Interlude)” is a monologue from Lamar’s cousin, Baby Keem. He hops straight into details about experiencing his mother’s substance abuse. His grandma shoting people, and how all of these experiences scarred him. Yet, how all of these experiences also inspired him to do it big. Then it progressed to after he went big he started to grieve similarly to Lamar.
“Savior” is the song where Lamar unashamedly says that he, and artists like him are not their fans' saviors. He also shares that his opinions and beliefs are not allowed to be controversial and he and other artists have their own beliefs and experiences that are unshared. He also shares more about his thoughts on cancel culture and the trust issues it can cause,the effect it can have on them and their family, and the desire it can cause to be seen as “right”.
The next song, “Auntie Diaries” emphasizes one of the journeys Lamar went on to form his own opinion. It opens with a highlight on the way the heart works and how it can’t always be intellectualized. It’s a powerful story on how Lamar came to accept his transgender relatives while at first not being able to understand it. And he uses his own experiences with people in his life and the N-word to understand his trans relatives and their experiences with their slurs.
“Mr. Morale” starts with Kendrick’s prediction of how the world would react to him admitting his flaws after pretending to be this savior. Lamar believes that his fans will feel as though he was “pretending” to be a savior or someone he’s not now that he has revealed his flaws.
“Mother, I Sober” is one of the most powerful and influential rap songs of all time. It is a song where Lamar comes face to face with addressing and overcoming his trauma. Specifically, the overlooked trauma of sexual abuse and a generational curse dating back to slavery in the United States. The song starts the journey to healing the community, and to do so he has to heal himself. The reality of his trauma is so shocking and tragic that the only way to keep sane is through escapism. The interrogations about his trauma have also scarred him and have been etched into his memory. He thought fame would fix it, but he’s realized that it won’t and he still needs that help and healing even though he is famous. Line after line, Lamar addresses his trauma, addiction, scars, and hurt. He proceeds to open the conversation up to the Black community and invite them to take a moment and heal their trauma as well. Throughout the song, Kendrick gains the strength to break the chains of his guilt, shame, and set free power, healing, and break the curses.
“Mirror”. This song shows the entire shift that Kendrick Lamar shows that Lamar has decided to completely start choosing himself. Letting go of the idea of being people’s savior, pleasing his fans at all times, and choosing himself and his family before his fans.
Though Lamar has admitted to feeling like sharing these struggles and flaws will cause him to fall from fame and status, to me this only proves that we’ve finally given our listening ear to someone worthy of it. Not only someone mature enough to address their flaws with accountability and heal themselves, but someone with the creative ability to share not only Black struggles and Black trauma, but the healing of it and the soothing of Black consciousness.
Thanks for reading.
Yulani.