Enoch, your father's just detoxed

       

Continuing my trip down The Guardian's top 50 albums of 2022. 

#2 : Mr Morale & The Big Steppers - Kendrick Lamar

Mr Morale represented a sizeable risk for Kendrick Lamar: a personal excavation so messy that he toyed with not releasing it at all. But even in a crowded field of musicians reckoning with trauma, Mr Morale stands out for Lamar’s deeply attuned, perceptive and often unflattering storytelling, addressing his flaws and laying bare his contradictions. This blurriness created interesting questions in turn: what does Lamar owe his audience? And what happens when ingrained mechanisms to tough it out through life come face-to-face with those who suffer as collateral damage? At any rate, it was hard to argue with the album’s sumptuous production and a number of songs that count among Lamar’s finest.

I am, of course, aware of Mr Lamar and I've experienced three of his four previous albums on here and, every time, found them all a bit mystifying.  I don't hate them, but I don't like them either - I'm generally just left confused as to what I'm supposed to do with the myriad of sounds cascading upon my ears.  So it's fair to say I'm not exactly super excited to listen to this.

Hmmm (I suspect you're not surprised to hear me say that).  I think this is more accessible than his previous efforts - it has, like, words that you can understand, that go together and make sense (radical, I know).  However, whilst the words are strung together into sentences, the sentences didn't (at first listen, for me) present a coherent story.  It all feels very confessional and stream of consciousness - as though he had a lot on his mind that he felt the need to share, and share quickly.  There are pleasing enough noises backing it all up though which are not quite as distracting as some of his previous efforts.  However, it's 78 minutes long and I'm afraid that for me it all got a bit samey long before the end.  I can see that if you're a Kendrick fan you're probably going to like this and appreciate his effort to do something slightly different and, if you're not, then this might be the thing to convince you - but I'm afraid it didn't convince me.

This debuted at #2 in the UK charts back in May (was it really that long ago?) and was kept off the top by Florence & The Machine, but hasn't left the charts since on a 32 week run (whereas Florence only managed seven weeks).  Wikipedia has a massive entry for the album (295 milliPeppers) most of which is telling I'm wrong and it's a masterpiece, but some critics did think it was inconsistent.  It also tells me that Florence is sampled on one of the tracks and Beth GIbbons (from Portishead) also features - I can't say I expected either of them to pop up on this. 

There was also a bit of controversy around the inclusion of Kodak Black (who has a conviction for assault and battery) and criticism for the repeated use of the word "faggot" and deadnaming and misgendering in a song about some transgender relatives.  None of which stopped it being a massive global success, including #1 in the US and his fourth consecutive Album Of The Year Grammy nomination, making him the first artist to do so since - go on, guess.  Actually, I'll tell you because otherwise we'll be here all night - it was Billy Joel in the period '79-'83.

"Customers also listened to" Baby Keem, DJ Khaled, Drake and J Cole - definitely not my area of expertise.  I do however feel less mystified by this album - I can understand why people like it, which hasn't been the case for any of his previous albums (as far as I can remember).  However, unfortunately, I can't imagine me liking it (or ever visiting it again).

#3 - Not as strong as I remembered

#1 - Well, everyone else loves it