Kendrick Lamar does not want to be perceived
This is not a review of the album, because I don’t want to do that. This is not the one where I consider all songs in the totality of the album or wrestle with the very real question of whether or not it’s good. This is just some shit I’m thinking about.
Kendrick Lamar has always had an uncomfortable relationship with his celebrity status. In his five-year hiatus since 2017’s DAMN., Kendrick mostly withdrew from the public, instead taking on the mythos of a recluse with the Midas touch for rap music and a pen somewhere between 2Pac and James Baldwin. From good kid, m.A.A.d city and To Pimp a Butterfly to Overly Dedicated and the Kendrick Lamar EP, his discography was bulletproof. Kendrick was beyond reproach, with masses willing to extend every benefit of the doubt for his word and his art. The collective reverence for this man was basically unconditional, and this album was being earmarked as his next classic before it even came out. Hilarious, then, that this one feels like it aims to buck against that expectation so hard.
Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers feels like Kendrick’s opus against celebrity worship. He doesn’t want to be your savior, the paragon of excellence or perfectionism that our culture holds celebrities to be. Heavy is his head on “Crown,” when he raps about the expectations that his own fans place upon him and how he can’t please everyone — and he makes this as an overtly political statement. Even as his track “Alright” became a popular protest song for the Black Lives Matter marches of 2020, fans wondered where Kendrick was and what he would have to say about the movement. In the public imagination, he was the revolutionary that our generation yearns for so badly as to anoint one out of a rapper. In reality, he has only ever wanted to be a rapper.
Throughout Mr. Morale, Kendrick argues against ‘cancel culture’ and makes reference to ‘cancelled’ or otherwise controversial Black celebrities. (I don’t really want to grant the premise here, since most ‘cancelled’ celebrities remain just as rich and successful as they were. Cancel culture is really not what its critics think it is. But, we’ll work with it.) He deepfakes O.J. Simpson, Kanye West and Jussie Smollett on “The Heart Part 5.” He raps about R. Kelly — a lot. In perhaps its most egregious case, he enlists Kodak Black, the rapper accused of rape who pled guilty on a lesser charge, for interludes and other appearances throughout the album. Often, Mr. Morale sounds like a Joe Rogan podcast with a facelift.
These are minor and deliberate acts of self-sabotage from an artist that has always been regarded as a genius and knows it. You can call it catharsis or performance art or a bit, but Kendrick is daring you to dislike him. This is the one where he wants his fans to confront the contradictions of what they want Kendrick to be against who Kendrick himself wants to be. I don’t know if that fully justifies everything that bothers me on this album — and this album bothers me a lot, at different times — but he doesn’t want to be “perfect,” at least in terms of what that means under a celebrity-focused culture.
Contemporary liberal thought and analysis holds our celebrities to a standard of “political correctness,” while those same politics have done little to nothing to address the material conditions of poor and racialized communities in society. This disconnect has always been most visible in the popular reception of rap music, which, at a base level, is never going to give a fuck about political correctness. Political correctness isn’t a standard that listeners apply to the rap music of Drakeo the Ruler, or BabyTron, or DaBoii — who released a great album on the same day as Kendrick, by the way — or any other artist trying to make it from wherever they come from. Many of today’s strongest rap scenes are emerging from cities such as Flint or Stockton, which are both among the poorest and most violent cities in America as a result of public disinvestment and ghettoization. Sorry to those rappers but they can never make it because they make music about guns and sliding on their opps? (Never mind the fact that these rappers probably have more insight into the ways that our institutions are failed and conspire against them than most of the rest of us.)
Still, when it comes to certain rappers in the mainstream today, they get a more adoring reception when they make music that caters to the liberal perspective of what popular culture is supposed to be — even when that leads to objectively worse music. I’m thinking specifically about Childish Gambino’s “This Is America,” an exhausting and didactic track from a forever-corny rapper that is still to this day one of the worst tracks I’ve heard in my life. White people really liked that one. Kendrick, not by his own choice, has always gotten a similar pass from the general public because of how his lyrical gift is perceived as something resembling high art, taken with all of the weight and gravity that term commands. The man won a Pulitzer. He had the public waiting on his every word like with it would come salvation.
Expecting our celebrities to save us is one of the particular fallacies of whatever doomed stage of capitalism this is. The 2010s have been defined by celebrity in place of community, and activism as an individualistic pursuit. Celebrities are treated like some deeply cursed cross of Marvel heroes and Martin Luther King, Jr., with the onus on them to do the work that our society needs.
Kendrick has never tried to present himself as infallible (“Swimming Pools,” “u,” “Father Time” on this same album, etc etc) — that was something thrust upon him. The key that unlocks the rest of the album is “Mother I Sober,” which comes at the end after a lot of complicated shit and makes plain what the conclusions are. Kendrick, himself in therapy, is working through complicated shit of his own. Our most vulnerable communities have generations of trauma baked into them, and when Kendrick says he wants to heal everybody, he means everybody. To rehabilitate instead of ‘cancel,’ to free all abusers from their cycle of trauma. “I think about Robert Kelly / If he weren’t molested, I wonder if life’ll fail him.” A radical form of love, similar to those extolled by writers such as bell hooks and Mariame Kaba, is an anchor on this album. I read this as great generosity, something that goes greater than political correctness or a life lived under the simple moral guidance of not getting cancelled. “Like it when they pro-Black, but I’m more Kodak Black.” Personally, fuck Kodak Black — I’m still not as generous as the writers I read, and for what it’s worth, I feel the focus on abuser redemption stories often comes at the expense of healing for the survivors — but I can see it like this: Celebrity is conditional, something that exists when convenient, while genuine love and support necessarily can’t be. Celebrity elevates some over others, while love and support are horizontal and mutualistic concepts found in community. This, I believe with my whole heart: Community will save us. For a celebrity as burdened by that status as Kendrick is, perhaps there is some sense of relief to be found in embracing community.
In the history of Kendrick worship, I’ve always wondered how songs like “Backseat Freestyle” or “Michael Jordan” will be remembered. We don’t think about Kendrick as a rapper who raps about fucking bitches, but the ones where Kendrick raps about fucking bitches are among his greatest songs ever. There are many great songs in the annals of rap history about fucking bitches, most of which aren’t going to get their proper due because most artists aren’t Kendrick and won’t get the same pass for broaching the complicated moral terrain that is rapping about fucking bitches. Unfortunately, we expect too much of our rappers. We would expect less of our politicians.
Anyway. Sorry for the Kendrick thinkpiece. The album is mid.
