It's safe to say that Kendrick Lamar is a natural-born actor. He often employs different voices, tempos, and rhythm shifts to give his numerous characters and muses personality in his music. He is the first rapper to have received a Pulitzer Prize. His virtuoso tics have made him one of the genre's most acclaimed storytellers and stylists. Kendrick's fluid narrating and furious reports on Black life have given him a figure of supreme moral authority in hip-hop, a role he shuns on his fifth studio album. In Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, Kendrick spends the album joyfully immolating his prized reputation, veering between caustic insults and mournful confessions over slick funk and soul music that shimmers like shards of mirror. The two-disc set provides rap with its most aimless yet inquisitive exploration of Kendrick's most enigmatic protagonist: Kendrick himself.
Kendrick takes his sweet time getting to the best parts of the record, pausing for bizarre and funny hot takes about cancel culture, a neuron-melting non-issue that describes the actual lives of absolutely affluent and famous people on songs like "N95" and "Worldwide Steppers." After a prologue by Kodak Black—who appears throughout the album—he declares, "I am not for the faint of heart." It's not apparent if his inclusion is supposed to establish a musical connection or plead for forgiveness. Kendrick's verse, rapped in the tight pockets of a pounding vamp, steamrolls into mocking lyrics that recount vindictive encounters with white women, a la Ice Cube's "Cave Bitch" meets Eldridge Cleaver's "Soul on Ice."
A common theme throughout the album is Kendrick's obvious enjoyment of poking fun at the audience. The declared objective of his ranting becomes wobbly as the emptiness of his ridiculing becomes apparent ("Hello, crackers!" ("Savior"); "A celebrity do not mean honesty, you fool") ("Rich Spirit"). Does he intend to be dishonest or mischievous? Will he show his vulnerability or his teeth?
He later moves on to "Auntie Diaries," the story of two aunts and uncles whose experiences with gender influenced his responsibility to his family.
On the album's penultimate track, "Mother I Sober," Kendrick provides a lengthy response to Whitney. In a low, sobbing whisper, he tells of how he, his mother, and his relatives were all victims of domestic and family abuse. The plot turns not on gory specifics but on the stone silences that force everyone into their own heads, where they stuff their sorrow instead of dealing with it. Beth Gibbons of Portishead mutters the hook, "I wish I was somebody/Anybody but me," in a haunting tone that captures the emotional disconnection caused by the violence. Sam Dew sings, "I bare my soul, and now we're free," as a neat finish that raises more problems than answers. But at least the song has a purpose and a narrative arc, and Kendrick attempts to delve into his emotions and hangups, something that's absent elsewhere on the record.
By the time the record finishes, Kendrick's "me" is just as hazy as the effigy he's spent the album burning. He says: "Gods are created when there is nothing to worship."