album review: 'mr. morale & the big steppers' by kendrick lamar

Five years ago, when I reviewed DAMN. by Kendrick Lamar, I opened up the conversation by talking about the ‘review-proof’ album, where regardless of what I or any critic would say, everyone would have bought and heard the album and had an opinion established. And five years later, I can look back on all of that and realize that while it is a description that remains true for certain artists, you can go deeper to really peel apart the implications of all of this, the most obvious being that reviews function as a ‘consumer’s guide’ and are designed to impact purchases; I barely believed this at the time, but with the accessibility of streaming, where anyone can hear anything if they have the time, a review should function more as a defined, explained opinion than advice to serve the music industry’s marketing arm.

But let’s go deeper: why do certain mainstream tentpole acts feel ‘review-proof’, where that definition has shifted in the era of social media, where the diehard fans will call something a classic without even hearing it, where they’ll tear down your throat if you express critiques of even flaws the act might highlight themselves, if it might seem like you’re undermining their senpai’s platform? Now in music criticism this phenomenon is nowhere near as bad as, say, movies or video games, mostly because music taste feels so widely varied and decentralized, but you wouldn’t always know that looking at certain mainstream publications, that would love to entrench a caste of artists as worthy of the highest acclaim, undeserving of any reproach - and if the stans just so happen to give them clicks and traffic along the way, well that’s just a happy accident, right? And the ugly truth is that the industry feeds into this at every turn - they prime the pump and inflate cults of personality, where the artists who are ‘backed’ by the label machine receive their propaganda and hype cycle, and in an era where commercial success is often correlated with critical acclaim in the eyes of the public, more often than not it works - as much as certain individual critics want to push back against it, when I list off a series of rap acts I think are comparable to Kendrick every year he’s dropped and I get a request for their albums’ metacritic scores for some demand of consensus when most of them don’t have the marketing or attention to get widely covered... look, I want to say that’s the exception to the rule, but I know it’s not. And as much as I’d like to distance myself from it - I got rid of scores this year, I’ve been leaning into more comprehensive discussion with my long-form coverage, trying to facilitate conversation rather than feed into the validation that so many seek when looking for reviews - I can’t deny that by giving Kendrick Lamar a prioritized solo review, I’m feeding into that assigned importance.

And this is where I could talk about platforms and power structures, where power is concentrated, given, and received in the information economy. I could highlight how you don’t really ‘take’ power on social media so much as you’re given it and it can be taken from you, which is a lot more intangible in comparison with traditional institutions who aren’t used to this dynamic and really want you all to shut up… except it’s very tangible to those who don’t have a voice anywhere else, or who have to use it in order to survive. I could highlight how it’s all engineered on platforms to prey on emotions and convenience, where the default state is not the ‘free marketplace of ideas’ full of reasoned critique - that’s hard, abuse is easy, and those who know how to manipulate and market through this system can amplify all of it, including the architects of the platforms themselves who are often way over their heads with the centralized powers they’ve enabled, especially as it spills over to tangible and increasingly violent real world activity. It’s mainlining confirmation bias, where you believe what you want to believe or what you fear to believe, especially in times of crisis… so what happens if you’ve been granted power not just on these online platforms, but culture at large? And not just in entertainment where you may have made millions, but in connection to social causes addressing systemic inequality, where your art has galvanized a movement… and yet when things seemed to be at their bleakest, you seemed to be a ghost?

I bring all of this up because if you know Kendrick Lamar’s music, he’s been interrogating the systems of power for years now, sometimes framing himself in more of a leadership role hoisted upon him by transcendent artistic skill and a label eager to commodify it - we’ll come back to this - but often than not as someone trapped within that system. good kid, m.A.A.d city was a street level snapshot of a day in that life, To Pimp A Butterfly blew it up to a national, historic scale but also didn’t shy away from the crushing weight of leadership and perceived hypocrisy when it came to living within that culture as he tries to hold to his morals, constantly struggling to be a good person and crushed under the weight of trying to be a better person. And that would be tested to the limit on DAMN., arguably his commercial peak but also where it felt like where he was all too aware of it, where he was recoiling from it all, acutely aware of his own human limitations and the expectations of a world that would demand everything from him but never offer him a prayer. It makes sense he’d be drawn to the Black utopian curation of Black Panther, but also that he’d disappear from the limelight in the years to come, where despite his absence the expectations went through the roof. Some of it was the acknowledgement that this would be his last album with TDE, but I’d argue it goes deeper - as much as Kendrick seems to have abhorred the label while reaping its benefits and acclaim, he’s been a leadership figure not just in rap music, but hip-hop culture, power he’s been given, whether he’s wanted it or not, especially in the face of peers not holding up well under that pressure and the graphic violence that has erupted in recent years thanks to blurred boundaries of power and an economically unstable world further pushed to the brink thanks to two years of plague. After all, Kendrick had shown he could do so much with that power the world had given him, with all of those big ideas… so what did we get from Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers?

…I’m going to start this with a disclaimer: this review is going to run long, and I’m going to be very harsh in some of my critiques of this album, specifically in the themes and ideas it’s exploring. This does not mean I think the album is bad - Kendrick Lamar made a pretty… interesting album, but his execution is pretty damn solid in realizing his vision, and I’m going to give him credit for it. However, with the high standards Kendrick has earned comes the sort of in-depth and complicated analysis that does not allow this album to get unabashed praise for just getting there, and given just how confrontational this album is in its conversation, to do my due diligence, I have to at least come with the same energy. As it is, I’d argue this is close to the least commercial album Kendrick Lamar has ever made - absolutely on purpose and we’ll get to the implications of that - and it’s not meant to be “easy”, especially for the mainstream public who might not be accustomed to having to do this much work, which is why it’s getting some mixed reviews in certain quarters. I have no problem with Kendrick making this difficult - especially as just this year I can argue billy woods made a tougher album to untangle and Kendrick has been setting up this culmination of moral quandaries for years now - but just because the execution is impressive in its complexity doesn’t mean he always sticks the landing, and that makes Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers a fascinating but flawed release, and not one I’d put among his best. In fact more often than not I’d struggle to call this great.

But let’s start with the execution of this album, from Kendrick himself to the production, because on the one hand you could describe this album as less commercial, but that’s often a way to sidestep how an album doesn’t have strong hooks or structure, and while in the latter case there’s a lot of deliberate internal structure, this album does not have a single hook that matches Kendrick at his best, especially when it comes to the bangers that are festival staples. Now that’s not always been Kendrick’s wheelhouse, untitled, unmastered. didn’t have much in the way of hooks and that was still pretty great, to say nothing of To Pimp A Butterfly’s leftfield elements, but that album’s uncommercial side came with embracing jazz textures and its sheer immense density, and it still had workable singles. And let’s not compare a compilation of performance freestyles to a hotly anticipated double album where the production is relatively accessible and the songs themselves don’t feel all that sticky or potent, closer in the agreeable midtempo vibe to the tones on the Black Panther soundtrack that were never that impressive to me. Instead we get the tinkling ‘Die Hard’ with Blxst’s hook and Amanda Reifer’s post-chorus that has a gentle R&B bounce but not much else, or the more textured warble of ‘Purple Hearts’ with Summer Walker that might have the best Ghostface Killah verse I’ve heard in a long time, but outside of that it’s not that impressive… but what else do you even have for a crossover single, I get why they’re here! In fact what becomes more alarming is how a lot of the instrumentals are relatively spare: a few haunted fragments of melodies backing bass-heavy grooves that aren’t as lush or weird as Kendrick could be, and in more than a few cases the mastering is kind of swampy in the low-end, or for cuts like ‘Rich Spirit’ you can imagine exactly who might do more with that production, in that case Vince Staples. And getting to Kendrick himself, even when he gets more agitated and forceful it becomes very obvious just how much of Baby Keem’s inflections are rubbing off on him, which is definitely a mixed bag as Kendrick’s own inflections can sometimes test my patience. And then there’s ‘Silent Hill’, where as much as I’ll have a lot to say about Kodak Black’s presence on this album - and to his credit by his standards this is a decent verse that feels somewhat thematically cohesive - this trap beat from Boi-1da and Sounwave sounds cheap, leaden, and clumsily mixed, and any touches of strings don’t redeem it; even before Kodak’s verse, it’s probably the song I like the least here.

And that’s one reason I want to push back on this being ‘less commercial’ - the production might be low-key but it’s not challenging or boundary-pushing, and there are songs here that feel like label concessions with less complex lyricism and something of a pop hook, and unfortunately like the majority of guest verses Kendrick has put on pop songs, he tends to check out a bit, so they’re not as interesting from a content perspective. And I can’t say this album utilizes its length effectively - yes, there are highlights we will get to, but the very even-keeled, midtempo vibe of the album over the course of seventy minutes can start to feel listless, or that certain idea on some songs feel redundant. Yes, some of this comes with me being prepared for these themes off of DAMN. and not having as much patience for them when they’re repeated and expanded here, but this is a project that could have easily been trimmed down and streamlined and still gotten the same point across; I think I got the message with Kodak Black’s presence the first time, he didn’t need more features than anyone else here! And that raises questions around the guest appearances we have - it might be nice to hear Sampha on the hook ‘Father Time’, definitely an album highlight against the reversed samples and grimy boom bap percussion, Baby Keem actually goes off on ‘Savior (Interlude)’, and Ghostface dropping a verse on ‘Purple Hearts’ that feels right off of Fishscale was such a great moment, but why have Summer Walker on that song when you could have Jhene Aiko, whose roots with TDE go back over a decade, or SZA, who is on the label? Hell, where is the rest of TDE - how many bridges over the past few years have been burned that none of them are here, you’d think for your final album on the label you’d want some sort of sendoff! And I wouldn’t even bring that up - criticize the album you have, not the one you want - except for the fact that this production has a lot of negative space, intended to keep the audience meditative and alone with their thoughts, but where you could slot in verses and play to this context, and for as much as Kendrick wants to highlight the importance of family in the content, who isn’t included in that family is becoming obvious.

But let’s step back for a moment, because there are a lot of cool moments here, even if I don’t think they match Kendrick’s best. Across the album I like the inclusion of the tap dancing touches, always emphasizing the performative nature of all of this - and reminding me a little of Fetch The Bolt Cutters by Fiona Apple of all things, something I noticed repeatedly with the emphasis on more spare piano and percussion. ‘N95’s drums might sound kind of canned - same with ‘Mr. Morale’, it actively gets distracting, even if the vocal arrangement is nifty - but the oily synth swell sets up what could be a banger even if you get sick of Kendrick bending his voice, I like the hushed bounce on ‘Rich Spirit’ and ‘Auntie Diaries’ especially with that subtle crescendo, the choral backdrop that switches into the grimy trap of ‘Count Me Out’, and the tumbling keys of ‘Worldwide Steppers’, ‘Crown’ and ‘Savior’ both have a distinctive roiling knock that I dug, even as the first one nails its clicking transitions. And I can’t deny that the album ends with a really strong one-two punch, the aching piano and strings of ‘Mother I Sober’ backed with hushed vocals from Beth Gibbons of Portishead and the popping percussion and arranged crescendo that drives the closer ‘Mirror’… although Alchemist delivers one of his best arrangements in a while on ‘We Cry Together’ that might just be one of the best moments on the entire album, a theatrical back and forth with Taylour Paige depicting a relationship argument that’s personal enough to draw blood but also says plenty about gender dynamics that recalls less Eminem’s ‘Kim’ and more Dave’s ‘Both Sides Of A Smile’. And I can’t deny that despite my frustration with the percussion inconsistencies, the album is reasonably well paced and feels cohesive and meditative - it sounds therapeutic in a way that suggests enlightenment rather than a tortured mess, which in theory might lessen the dramatic tension but also gives you the impression that Kendrick is fully conscious of everywhere he’s going to take the audience every step of the way.

Or rather, where he’s not going to take you, and this is where we get to the content. And I want to start off by acknowledging some of the structural conceits: how it seems like the double disks loosely mirror each other, the first being Kendrick as one of the Big Steppers in a darker, more deflective lane where his vices are in plain view, where the second disc - Mr. Morale - is more confessional, more introspective, and ultimately a little more optimistic in its outlook; if the first disc is denial that he needs therapy at all, the second disc comes with a breakthrough. And therapy really is one of the central underpinnings here, featuring the presence of one German doctor Eckhart Tolle, who is a figure of some renown extolled by Oprah within the self-help scene - we’ll come back to this specifically later on. Now contrary to some stupid takes on social media, therapy is not a new conceit within rap music: off the top of my head, Pharoahe Monch, Sage Francis, and in recent years Dave with Psychodrama are all projects that are rooted in that confessional storytelling, but Kendrick is not just taking himself to therapy, but his audience and culture at large. This is an album that starts off explicitly confrontational, most immediately on ‘N95’ where after an intro where he realized the usual trappings of wealth in hip-hop didn’t satisfy him, he urges his audience to strip away their own forms of deflection, not just brands and flexing, but internet-poisoned irony or performative ideals; time to get to where it’s messy and complicated and any attempt at a moral high ground slips away. More than ever he seems to be trying to get to the ugly roots where there’s less of a performance and more a complicated reality that audiences don’t want to face, get to something ‘real’, and by doing so he exposes his own darker impulses: ‘Worldwide Steppers’ describes how he fucked white women a few times and felt a sense of historical retaliation, ‘Father Time’ is very open about daddy issues and that same deflection of emotion, stuck within systems of masculinity and capitalism that when Kendrick’s grandmother died his father went back to work rather than grieve, and while that system can build ‘strength’, it weakens something deeper within. And then there’s the screaming, highly gendered argument of ‘We Cry Together’, where as much as you can tell both characters are more embodiments of arch points that frequently go past good taste and feel all the more real for it, I do think there’s a little irony in how performative and theatrical that song is… but hey, Kendrick’s always been the first to call himself a hypocrite, right?

Well, we’ll get to back to that, but first, the arc of the second disc, where the therapy angle snaps into closer view and Kendrick is more confessional than confrontational, and the confessions are less to challenge and goad, more to expose. He highlights the cracks in his own ego, the gaps in his knowledge, the difficulties he finds in trying to live up to his own high moral standards, and how many of those who have real power that he’s met don’t even come close that morality, more just smooth talkers here to enrich themselves. More to the point he highlights generational trauma within the Black community, where he doesn’t just wonder aloud how some of those, to quote ‘The Heart Part 5’, hurt people hurt people, but also the roots in his own family, where on ‘Mother I Sober’, he questions not just sex addiction on his part, but also how his mother had been assaulted and how her constant worries and questions whether he had been targeted cast a shadow in his younger years, where being sober is how he’s forced himself to confront these past demons head on. But as Eckhart Tolle remarks on ‘Saviour (Interlude)’ - and I’m going to quote this directly, ‘If you derive your sense of identity from being a victim. Let's say, bad things were done to you when you were a child. And you develop a sense of self that is based on the bad things that happened to you’… well, it’s not healthy. It’s where Kendrick sees a lingering sickness among Black families and even the culture at large, and where lines like ‘I can’t please everybody’ highlights how any savior complex he might have is slipping away, where the album ends with the telling line, ‘I choose me, I’m sorry’, where for as much as he’s placed a mirror the audience, he can’t be the one to lead them to change, that in the performative conversation of art, he’s only a messenger, and to quote him directly, ‘run away from the culture to follow my heart’, and ‘Sorry I didn’t save the world, my friend / I was too busy buildin’ mine again’. And… that’s okay - this is an arc that Kendrick has been struggling with since To Pimp A Butterfly, where the arc of that album was for the Black community at large to try and find a core of self-love that mirrors his own, a good man gradually being crushed under the weight of not being better, and whether it was appropriate or not, he felt the weight of that cause on his shoulders and if he makes the choice to remove himself from a culture he doesn’t trust to protect his family and heart, so be it - who is anyone to judge? He’s giving himself grace, and this is where a lot of audiences have called this album ‘mature’…

And yet I don’t think I fully agree, because while this arc might seem to make sense self-contained, dig even a little deeper and the cracks open up. To start, I feel obliged to mention that I’ve been in therapy myself before, and more importantly I’ve done a bit of work examining the philosophy behind a lot of self-help, and oftentimes it’s structured with an individual focus; if it’s dealing with trauma or abuse, by necessity the scope is narrow to encompass you and your struggles; so is a lot of self-help dogma, and a lot of modern, Western religion. And on some level it makes sense: you can only know and control yourself in your entirety, you have to put in the work and the self-care, you have to be the one to rise up and live your own life… but the other side of this approach is that it doesn’t deal well with systemic issues. Some of this is, again, by necessity - a therapist on their own is not equipped to tackle systemic racism or poverty or the historical weight of familial trauma in aggregate - but the risk that comes with that internalized focus is that it can narrow your view… and for an artist like Kendrick Lamar who previously has always been acutely aware of those systems of power, that narrowing is very present on this album. It’s understandable - he’s been as isolated as we’ve been if not moreso, and even if there’s a consistent grain of truth that he often sought the top of the pyramid within hip-hop, a leadership role with a view towards something better, it’s often just as true that he’s felt unworthy of it and has been looking for a way to remove himself from that conversation, focus on the internal journey - but Kendrick has to know that not everyone has that option. Denzel Curry highlighted how his album this year Melt My Eyez See Your Future holds a lot of thematic parallels to this one - and he’s right - but where both men acknowledged how they might not be best equipped for leadership to fix historical systems of oppression, Denzel Curry still has to live within it, accept the darkness within himself, and keep walking, even if it might be the blind leading the blind. Kendrick Lamar can remove himself from the board, in a similar way that Billie Eilish and Lorde have wistfully contemplated, but that comes with a certain privilege to have made it within the system already, that’s not all just anchored in talent and success.

And this is where we get to the Kodak Black of it all, where it becomes very obvious that Kodak Black is not present on this album for impressive bars or content, but what he represents specifically within the culture, where Kendrick has seen Kodak’s vices and has felt a kinship in his darkest moments with them, which he admits openly on ‘Savior’. Now I could highlight there are rappers who have similar messy stories surrounding sexual transgressions that might have more to actually say about them and say it better than Kodak Black does - off the top of my head Freddie Gibbs seems like an inspired choice as a terrific rapper and who I’m sure would step up to the challenge and would embrace the emotional complexity, he’s done it before - but it’s hard to avoid that Kodak’s presence strikes a sour note when you have multiple songs that are about elevating and protecting women around him. And I’m of a few minds on how you can contextualize this contradiction: on the one hand, it can serve to highlight that lingering messy moral hypocrisy that Kendrick wants us all to confront across the entire album, mirroring our own having to live in reality, and on the other it could come with a belief - one heavily backed by the music industry - that Kodak Black has changed and repented, and you should forgive and accept his place in the culture, something that Kendrick also seemed to imply on ‘The Heart Part V’ with how he used the deep fakes in the video. In the first case, for as much as this album comments on cycles of abuse, it seems in poor taste to then platform someone who doesn’t seem to have broken from any of it - a struggle reflected in some of Kodak’s own content that conspicuously avoids the apologies that Kendrick himself provides for far lesser transgressions - but I think the larger point of forgiveness kind of runs askew against the reality of how the victim is rarely afforded the same platform, or that in execution it comes across like powerful men protecting their own, and many are all too willing to forgive and grant power simply because they like the art, not caring about the symbolic enablement it represents. But here’s another contradiction: Kendrick, if you want to abdicate the savior complex, set aside the crown, with what moral authority can you then proclaim that some are worthy of this platform, especially when it only serves the systems that you yourself speak again? The ‘Nobody’s perfect’ line begins to ring hollow alongside the album art with you wearing a crown of thorns, and your knowledge of what will to power means for the Black community, or when you realize giving up your place within that system deprives you of the moral imperative to drive the change you desire, which for as much as you claim to step away, you still exert presence, whether you like it or not.

But then you realize that for as introspective as this album can be, when it looks outside of itself, the observations and critiques feel very surface-level, where based on evidence of multiple projects and the intricacy of this double album, you’d think Kendrick would know better. For a man who has called out the disingenuous, performative fakes of the music industry to then seem to take the reconciliation of Kanye West and Drake at face value - two men who have built their careers on mirrors of manufactured authenticity and where I don’t believe for a second this is over, especially as the beef between Drake and Pusha T still lingers - is a baffling blind spot, as are his remarks about COVID on ‘Savior’. Then there’s the references to cancel culture - put aside how songs like ‘Rich Spirit’ highlight how Kendrick stays offline to remain centered and has mentioned how he goes without a phone for months at a time, how are you in the crossfires of any Twitter mobs? You have more power to say what you want on any platform, or are you still bitter over what happened with ‘HUMBLE.’ five years ago? Now from what I can tell, the excuses here will be that this is part of the first disk before Kendrick has found that enlightenment, that Kendrick is focusing more on feeling creatively stifled within his art and that’s a different conversation than the usual free speech warriors want to make it out to be, that ‘Auntie Diaries’ serves as a counterweight to some of that in how it explores slurs within its arc, or that when you’re held up as a moral paragon, it’s another layer to be torn back when you find yourself looking to explore the hypocrisy and impossible standards many creators in these spaces are held to; hell, I’ve seen this happen in online spaces where the left eat their own, I viscerally get that sentiment. But I also get how Kendrick likely just might believe this, darker impulses be damned - just because the the first disc mirrors the second doesn’t mean Kendrick isn’t in that mirror, and a lot of similar notes return on ‘Savior’ - and I also get how there’s a whole audience of folks who will jump on this point independent of context, and you’d think after FOX News smeared ‘Alright’ that Kendrick would be aware this could happen, especially given his own platform! And then there’s ‘Auntie Diaries’, where even the part of me that’s queer can kind of marvel at how Kendrick traced the line of realization about LGBTQ+ validation in a Black family, break away from the misguided views and slurs of youth and a church rife with its own hypocrisy, and gradually if clumsily find some view of acceptance, especially of trans people, similar to what Frank Turner did on ‘Miranda’ earlier this year - I would be ignorant to ignore just how daring that is within a mainstream rap album. But that same side of me knows that if he performs this live even with the best of intentions, there’ll be a whole lot of straight folks repeating those slurs without a thought, and Kendrick knows that too - one of his biggest influences is Eminem, it’s not like this hasn’t happened before.

And I know there’s going to be defenders of all of this, that by exposing these ‘transgressive’ moments that he’s helping his audience reach a greater point of enlightenment, if not find God, find a more accepting peace within themselves - after all, Kendrick went through that arc, and he found that peace, ironically they’re placing him right back on the pedestal he worked so hard to escape. And yet perhaps he did find some peace - one truth about therapy is that it’s an ongoing process, and we’re catching it midway through, with the intro of ‘Count Me Out’ highlighting a breakthrough in session 10, where if you count each disc Kendrick’s released in his art, the ‘Mr. Morale’ disc is indeed #10. And maybe that gain will prove to be enough - I don’t suspect we’ll get another album from Kendrick any time in the near future, and that’s fine too as he chooses to focus on his family and kids. But for as many points as this album wants to expose the system and then cede his position and power within it, convinced that it cannot be changed by him alone and that there’s corruption all the way down… I mean, it’s mostly likely true, the logic tracks as to why Kendrick would get to this point. But while I’ve always had a distaste for art that removes itself from the stakes of its own drama - Tyler The Creator did it on Cherry Bomb, Lorde did it on Solar Power, AJR did it multiple times and it makes their albums excruciating - with Kendrick I can’t help but feel it runs at cross-purpose to this album’s most revealing and powerful moments, running hard to the well of relatability, willfully ignoring how so many of his own circumstances in both art and otherwise have decoupled him from that parallel. For as much as Kendrick is looking to explore familial trauma, sexual abuse, systems and a culture that perpetuate it, and social movements that pay lipservice to exposing the problem but never put in the work to fix it, for the answer to feel individualized, with Kendrick stepping away from it all because he put in the work and now he can, disenchanted with collective action because of its messy reality, which in embracing shades of grey you’d think he’d be understanding… it feels hollow, and lacking in populism. And while that’s not surprising - the therapeutic self-help angle encourages that framing, as does the lonely religious arc Kendrick has traced since To Pimp A Butterfly, with the haunted disenchantment with fixing any of it lurking as early as untitled, unmastered. - even if I’m not the guy to put Kendrick on a pedestal, it’s a disappointment I could not escape with this project. And what crystalized it for me was a few passing lines on the final verse of ‘Mirror’, which some have interpreted as long-delayed subs at Noname’s comments about rappers in the wake of the protests against police brutality in 2020. His response is better than J. Cole’s, in that he highlights his own vices and failings that hold him back, that he can’t be that savior and chooses his own path, and I’ll even give credit to ‘Rich Spirit’ where he highlights how he keeps his generosity out of the spotlight… but that can wind up in the same place.

And I wish that I wasn’t surprised - because let’s be real, the groundwork for this entire album has been laid for years now. Beyond the fact that I feel like this is a natural continuation of the paranoia and internal focus of DAMN., there are explicit callbacks to good kid, m.A.A.d city with fictional characters from ‘Auntie Diaries’, and the exposure and crisis of hypocrisy led to some of the strongest moments of To Pimp A Butterfly, where Kendrick was so strongly tempted by his vices and newfound power; it might be one of the biggest reasons he’s choosing to set much of it aside, demolish his own moral authority, highlight his flaws and failings and present the man, not the myth, even if in truth he’s been doing it for years. And for those who placed Kendrick on a pedestal, this might be a tougher one to swallow, especially when decoding all the fine details that can be far from flattering. But intentionally narrowing the scope with the self-help framing, taking a shallower view to its systemic critique and not commenting on how his own choices will cascade into it, seemingly unwilling to delve into how he built some of his own mythology to get here, alongside choices in guest stars, production, and compositions that might make sense but feel uneven and flat in execution… it’s not an album I can like nor respect as much as I want to. But as someone who believes that outside of maybe good kid, m.A.A.d city that Kendrick Lamar has not had the best rap album any year he’s dropped, to me this is just revealing in ways that don’t surprise me and feel depressingly conventional…. but maybe that’s an asset. No, I don’t think it’s particularly challenging or transgressive from where I’m at, but I know to an audience for whom Kendrick Lamar is the deepest rap music they’ll listen to in a year, this will push them, and there’s value in that, especially around familial drama, mental health, and therapy, and especially in masculine circles - again, for as much as I have complicated issues with this project, it’s still good enough in ambition and execution to spur conversations around those issues.

So perhaps it’s more of a gateway - there’ll be those like me who wish more would choose to go all the way through and find something more stirring, hit that moral fibre, but if he’s chosen to take up occupancy alongside that gate, provide just enough of of a nudge… even if plenty still wind up sitting at his feet, if one keeps walking, it’ll be a big step, and that’ll be what counts.