Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers: Mental Health, Trauma, and Hip Hop

Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers, the new album from Kendrick Lamar is out, and is a work of transformation and healing.  Much of Kendrick’s work discusses the intergenerational trauma and collective oppression of black Americans in the United States, and his personal struggles with mental health and individual trauma.  Though he is recognized for his talent at making incredibly stunning music and works of art– his message of his music often goes unheard.  As both a therapist and a musician, I thought it important to shine the spotlight on some of the themes of his new album and how his music truly is poetry of life. 

The album is a double LP, that sits each half of the record against one another, creating a mirroring contrast both lyrically and musically between the tracks.  They provide a sort of a call and answer thematically between the two songs, such as with the tracks Purple Hearts and Mirror.  Both end each side and concept of their respective half of the album, while also contrasting each other in theme.  With Purple Hearts carrying a core theme of the album, of sacrificing oneself for others, and Mirror answering that with the resolution to choose oneself over unnecessary sacrifice.  These two tracks provide the transition and conclusion of a period of time in Kendrick’s life, while also opening up a new space into something new and transformative.  

The first half of the album emphasizes the mental health struggles Kendrick endures and carries as a musician and artist in the modern music scene, and the pull to be a savior of his community and family.  He is lifted up as an exemplar of rising above trauma in the black community, and becomes a paragon to which others are compared.  He shows the shame and disgust that he begins to feel with the life that his success brings in regards to material wealth on the opening track United in Grief.  Only to later strive for being rich in one’s spirit on Rich Spirit, and not allowing oneself to be sucked into the world of capitalist materialism.  Kendrick was crowned for his achievements, and is also used as a token by the music scene, although his mental health issues and trauma cannot be washed away or healed through materialism or the various other gains that it brings.  

Kendrick showcases the toll that all the wealth and success that his previous work has brought on him, and how it has impacted his relationships.  He discusses the impact of his issues with his father on Father Time, as we hear the cascading and spiraling piano chords build and twist downward around his lyrics.  The toll that intergenerational trauma took on his family, and the price that enacted from his mother and his cousin- suffering from abuse in the case of his mother, and dealing with hostility and transphobia in the case of his cousin.We see Kendrick himself hurt others, as he sings of infidelity and the verbal and emotional abuse against and with a partner on the track We Cry Together. 

One could see and paint Kenrdick in the light of a victim, but he refuses to be chained by this identity, as he moves towards growth and change in the second half of the album.  Through spoken word of Eckhart Tolle, and Kendrick’s dropping of his savior complex.  No longer wishing to build his identity around victimhood, he chooses to  use the pain of his experience to build a better life and future for himself and his family.  He openly explores his own prejudice on tracks like Auntie Diaries, and sees how his mother’s abuse affected her and his relationship.  Rather than being brought down by all of it, he seeks to begin working through it in therapy, and casts down the crown that he wears on the cover of the album.  Instead of bearing the weight of the world on his shoulders, Kendrick chooses to bear the weight of his own wounds, and take a new outlook on life in the final track Mirror.  

So much more could be said about hti album, from the messaging around the pandemic in tracks like N95, or the nightmarish expectations placed on artists by record labels and the music scene in the track Mr. Morale.  But, this is an album that everyone should enjoy for themselves.  Hopefully, this blog has piqued your interest, and has shown some connections between Kendrick’s music and themes and struggles in your own life.  Music is more than just notes and lyrics.  Music is life, and it speaks to us on a primal and emotional level.  You can feel the emotion and heart dripping off of this record, and I hope that you enjoy listening and making your own connections.