A recurring motif anchors rapper Kendrick Lamar’s long-awaited fifth album – one that feels packed with meaning. The sound of tap dancing anchors this troubled and occasionally troubling double album, delayed by writer’s block and the pandemic. It is one that wrestles with the trauma of the Black experience as refracted through the lives of Lamar and his wider family: his partner and two children (who grace the cover cover), his mother, uncles, aunties and cousins.
The staccato rhythms of the tap interludes are writ larger, too. This electrifying, uneasy record stops, starts and turns, often within the confines of one track. The beats are restless; few comforting grooves are allowed to build for very long. Lead single N95 feels like a conventional hip-hop banger, but launches itself headlong into a hornet’s nest of touchy subjects: mask-wearing, hypocrisy and “designer bullshit”. Conceived as a side one and a side two, Mr Morale & the Big Steppers exudes musical and lyrical bravura; it makes room for intimate, orchestral tender spots such as Crown – a title that encompasses the Nazarene crown of thorns Lamar wears on the album art, the knitted crown of the dreadlocked Bob Marley, and the kind of crown that makes the wearer’s head “heavy”. At the opposite end of the spectrum is a squelchy summer jam, Purple Hearts, which tackles the hard work of love in the company of a Ghostface Killah feature.
