It’s hard to imagine Kendrick Lamar getting emotional since he rarely does so in any public setting. But in his latest conversation with SZA, he shared that a particular song he wrote years ago brought him to tears.
In Harper’s BAZAAR latest issue, Lamar already shared the new heights he’s reached this year and the true meaning of “Not Like Us,” but he also dived into the last time he was driven to emotion: When asked, “When was the last time you cried?” he said, “ I would say the last time I cried was probably on “Mr. Morale” [2022’s Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers] on the ‘Mother I Sober’ record. That shit was deep for me.”
Lamar delves into the effects of family trauma on the track. He specifically shares a story about how his mother incorrectly thought that he was sexually abused as a child because that’s what she dealt with growing up.
On the track he raps, “A conversation not bein’ addressed in Black families/The devastation, haunting generation and humanity/They raped our mothers, then they raped our sisters, then they made us watch/Then made us rape each other psychotic torture between our lives.”
“I know the secrets, every other rapper sexually abused/I see ‘em daily, burying their pain in chains and tattoos/So listen close before you start to pass judgment on he move/Learn how he cope, whenever his uncle had to walk him from school,” he also raps.
Ironically, this is the same track Drake referenced in his last diss track toward Lamar, “The Heart Part 6.” Although Lamar makes it clear in “Mother I Sober” that he was never sexually abused, Drake raps on the track, “That’s that one record where you saw you got molested/Aw f**k me I just made the whole connection.”
As we know now, that did not end well for Drake.