Lamar is the rare popular musician to receive near-universal acclaim, not only artistically, but often as a sort of epitome of virtue. But there are all kinds of complexities and heterodoxies that are stifled by an uncomplicated embrace. “Mr. Morale” seems to be a correction for that – it’s an album that aims to divest, or if not completely, at least it makes peace with alienating some of its audience.
It’s also a reminder of how rare it is today to come across popular music with unstable politics, and a gut feeling for the assumption that progressive art and ideas always go hand in hand.
On two different songs, Lamar expresses some kind of sympathy for R. Kelly, who has been convicted of sex trafficking and extortion. And one of the voices heard throughout the album is that of Florida rapper Kodak Black, who has been charged with sexual assault in the past. (He later pleaded guilty to lighter charges.) Choosing to work with Kodak is both creative and political provocation — it suggests that Lamar believes in redemption (or maybe everyone is flawed, some more publicly than others), but also feels like an implicit rebuke to those who see no poetry, pain, or progress in the work of Kodak or his colleagues. (Indeed, it has enough of all that.)
These are a kind of boldness – in a way, they’re the most public decisions on this album, which often feels isolated, lyrically and musically. “Mr. Morale” is probably Lamar’s least tonally consistent work. Unlike ‘DAMN.’, where Lamar tried to smooth out the edges of his songs and released his most commercially compelling album, ‘Mr. Morale’ – on which Lamar is collaborating with its frequent collaborators Sounwave and DJ Dahi, Beach Noise, Duval Timothy and others – is slender and structurally erratic, full of mid-song beat switches, mournful piano and a few moments of dead air.
At his best, Lamar embodies the deep creative promise of the art form rapping – offering hope that there are ways to agglomerate syllables that have not yet been conceived, that word and cadence and meaning can still collide in unexpected ways. His voice is squeaky and malleable, and it’s often most compelling when not disconnected from simple rhythms. But there is a difference between effort and achievement. And when Lamar delivers below par – say on “Crown” – the air fills with anticipation: surely there is more around the corner?
That said, a gift of the Lamar aura is the way in which he frees the people around him to reach for transcendence. Ghostface Killah, a veteran so accepted as a lyrical hulk that he’s taken for granted, appears on “Purple Hearts” with an amazing, floating verse. Lamar’s cousin Baby Keem also stars on ‘Savior (Interlude)’, as does Kodak Black on ‘Silent Hill’.
That’s the enviable house Lamar has built over the past decade, one that demands more from everyone who comes. But “Mr. Morality” reveals that he is a titan who is a victim of idolatry. Lamar knows that in reality no one is a hero, and perhaps no one should be. He’s just a man. Allow him that.
Kendrick Lamar
“Mr. Morals and the Great Steppers”
(pgLang/Top Dawg Entertainment/Aftermath/Interscope)
