After years of waiting, wondering and praying for Kendrick Lamar to drop an album, fans finally got their wish. Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, his final album on Top Dawg Entertainment, is here.
An artist can rarely get social media screaming with excitement the moment midnight hit on the east coast. But Lamar had people up all night, laughing, crying and analyzing every passing bar that Lamar, or Oklama, rapped on his latest project.
The Compton rapper officially announced the album and release date a month ago with a link to his website oklama.com. Since then, the anticipation for the rapper’s first album in five years has been on 10.
In the weeks that followed, Lamar dropped “The Heart Part 5” along with a new music video and released the intimate cover art.
This latest work is a double album with 18 total tracks and clocks in at an hour and 13 minutes long. Lamar included a plethora of notable artists such as Baby Keem, Kodak Black, Summer Walker, Blxst, Ghostface Killah, Sampha and many others.
Now when it comes to the content of the album, his latest finds Lamar being deeply introspective (as he normally does) on cancel culture, family, Black relationships, sexuality, the pitfalls of fame and why he has been out of the public spotlight for the past five years after releasing his Pulitzer Prize-winning album Damn. in 2017.
While those are all topics he has hit on before in his previous work, Mr. Morale finds Kendrick being more daring musically than maybe he ever has been in his critically-acclaimed career.
While everyone will be quick to investigate and explore what the deeper meaning of this album is, I will just bask in Kendrick’s greatness and enjoy an album from an artist I have been listening to for the past 11 years. The think pieces and album reviews are for later.
While I still have dozens of more listens to go, based on my first listen, some of my favorite tracks on this album are “United In Grief,” “N95,” “Worldwide Steppers,” “Father Time,” “Crown,” “Savior” and “Mother I Sober.”
It’s here ladies and gentlemen, we’ve been waiting for five years for King Kendrick to drop an album and we’ve finally made it here. So sit back, relax and enjoy an album from one of the most talented and thoughtful MCs of our generation.