Bleep

Kendrick Lamar's third album To Pimp A Butterfly was one of the most celebrated of the 2010s, along with five others that pit him as an artist of unparalleled talent and lyricism. It’s an impressive and intimidating legacy that’s impossible to top, but with his last album for Top Dawg Entertainment, and the first for his own label, pgLang, Kendrick is used to doing the impossible by now.

Backed by crisp orchestral instrumentation and visceral hip hop beats, Mr. Moral & The Big Steppers presents Kendrick Lamar at the most expressive and polished he’s ever been, and the most honest. Less steeped in the conceptual limbo of DAMN. and the prophetic epiphanies of TPAB, the album is grounded in reality, taking a burningly diaristic slant as Kendrick navigates life and relationships whilst turmoil and trauma swarm inside. His words spill out like a stream of consciousness flooding its banks, barging its way out of his mind to highlight his inner complexities and the messiness of recovery.

Yet Kendrick’s craft is a highly choreographed and curated one. His entourage of global talent joins him in his mission to unravel himself, to unpack his psyche across narratives fraught with grief and anguish, and to leave with understanding. From the dragon tongued rap battle of ‘We Cry Together’ to the hushed, cathartic monologues of ‘Mother I Sober’, Kendrick dives deeper into the labyrinths of his internal strifes than ever before, coming out with a healing salve provided by his therapeutic penmanship.

How can a Kendrick Lamar album even be summarised in one sentence? What can be said is this: Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers is Kendrick’s most ambitious artistic statement to date, and with it he has truly outdone himself.