Mr. Morale: An Exploration of Character

Throughout his career Kendrick has been known to uplift, serve, and communicate the needs of many people through his music. Since Overly Dedicated his genuine character, one who is consistently a voice of wisdom and guidance, has been beloved by many of his fans. While I never looked up to him in such a way (shit, looking up to celebrities is hard as a whole, more on that some other time though) I understood why people had such tremendous compassion for Kendrick and his music. He respected his older peers, experimented with modern sounds, always took on new and unique concepts, and presented himself as a knowledgeable and empathetic person. He took on themes of guilt, peer pressure, politics, black on black violence, and consistently delivered with a rational message. 

There is a problem with this timeline though, and Kendrick sizes it up to the core - his self presentation… the creation of his own character. And this time, his guilt about this character seeps out like oil from cracks in pavement. Instead of exposing the world, and manifesting a dialogue which places Kendrick against external powers for the majority of his project, Kendrick faces himself and reveals his own ignorance about normal people, celebrity culture, non-problem ‘problems’, and the overall disconnect from his own audience. It’s a neat conundrum that Kendrick places his own listeners in. Usually when we critique music, especially Kendrick’s, we judge the moral and knowledgeable weight of statements and apply that criteria to whether the music is “good” or “bad.” Whether unconsciously, or consciously, it was the usual judgment of introspection that we based our opinion of Kendrick on. The charm of Mr. Morale is that Kendrick flips how we judge him as he turns inward, and it for the most part works. 

Whether or not it’s the “best” album this year, Mr. Morale generated a unique dialogue from each side of the keystone in music, making it one of my favorite releases of the year.