He suffers differently: Kendrick Lamar, “Mr. Morale & The Big Step-pers”
Kendrick Lamar
“Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers”
(Top Dawg / Aftermath Entertainment / Interscope Records.)
Whether it is fundamentally necessary for musicians to deal with their per-sonal responsibility in relation to the unwanted hero worship and savior fantasies of their fans in a way that extremely draws us in as listeners is something I would like to leave open. If you were mean, you would say: whining at a high level. But that would of course be unfair and counterpro-ductive. That’s clear.
But with Kendrick Lamar, this very thing—suffering under the pressure of expectations and social expectations—has been a recurring theme since his last three albums, and I like Kendrick Lamar. Very much, in fact. That’s why I accept his constant circling around himself, his doubts, and his constant desire to find the key to some kind of healing. Because, basi-cally, we as listeners also benefit from his despair. In terms of output, I mean.
Five years lie between the previous album “DAMN.” and “Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers.” And the Pulitzer Prize. This has made Lamar the dar-ling of intellectuals not only in the US, which is annoying insofar as an iconic album, an artistic work of enormous impact, should actually be enough to show who we are dealing with. There’s no need for medals. But never mind. Middle-class milieus have always needed proof of quality from institutions in order to accept that people are capable of creating some-thing artistic on their own, something that, without a degree or permission from the authorities, is better than themselves, their straight-as-an-arrow professional lives, and their secure banks. Then they are admired. In the event of failure, however, they are despised. There is nothing in between.
The cult of genius is not my thing. Just to be clear. But the complexity of Lamar’s lyrics, coupled with musical innovation and daring, has carried me through difficult phases time and again. The love of my friends and family too, no question, but that’s another matter that could be written about at length. It’s already been done, of course.
But speaking of family, this complicated construct, which we can only real-ly choose in the case of marriage and intermarriage, otherwise it is prede-termined, is starkly illuminated on this album.
This is sometimes very painful. The cover photo by the fantastic photogra-pher Renell Medrano shows Lamar in a somewhat nondescript, almost shabby bedroom setting. He wears the crown of thorns of the Savior, but has to protect himself with a gun hidden in the back of his waistband. He holds his daughter, while his partner Whitney Alford sits on the bed breast-feeding their second, newborn child. It’s an unsettling image, but one that is reflected in the album in its display of confinement and fragility.
“Heavy is the head that chose to wear the crown,” says the track “Crown,” loosely based on Shakespeare’s Henry IV. And there we are back in high culture again, except that this album is sometimes more explicit and brutal than German state theater. And more interesting.
If you overlook the fact that in 2022 the artist was obviously very inspired by the theories and spiritual ideas of the German-born coach and author Eckhart Tolle (excerpts from his lectures can be found in various tracks), whom I consider to be just as dodgy as almost all self-proclaimed spiritual advisors, you are bombarded with a lot of truth and fundamental principles. That’s great, it’s healing and effective.
The major piece “We cry together,” for example, a rap duet with actress Taylour Paige, affected me so strongly when I first heard it that I had to rip the headphones off my ears to catch my breath on the balcony. It’s a mu-sical chamber play, reminiscent of the work of playwright Sarah Kane, who sadly died far too young, but so intense and distilled that it’s almost unbearable. More intense. Perhaps even better. Cathartic.
And in “Auntie Diaries,” Lamar recounts the transformation of his uncle Demetrious into Mary-Ann and his own accompanying, faltering steps to-ward acceptance on the path of his loved one. The piece, like many of Kendrick Lamar’s, opens up like a flower toward the end. Strings, cre-scendo, expansiveness.
That’s it. The openness. The optimistic and unpretentious skepticism that doesn’t lock us and him into cages of self-certainty. That’s what it’s about, I think.
The album’s release was accompanied by a world tour. I would have liked to buy tickets, but I didn’t want to go without my (again) family, who are al-so Lamar fans. It would have cost me around 800 euros for one evening.
No thanks. I’d rather watch YouTube. Here you can watch various shows.
The simple stage design provided space for Lamar as a soloist, making room for a poet and performer in a class of his own. And for lighting, which ingeniously came largely from the cell phones held up and pointed at him. The audience’s desire to record was turned from something annoying into something shared, which is a great, philosophical idea.
And the dancers… Charm La’Donna, the choreographer, based the shows on the “Divine Nine Steps,” a type of dance that was and is practiced in black fraternities. Power instead of kitsch. Absolutely impressive.
18 tracks, one bonus track (“The Heart Part 5”).
I was and still am thrilled by “Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers.” Even now, despite the release of another great album in 2024, “GNX.”
