kendrick lamar - mr. morale & the big steppers (2022)

"purple hearts" is good. feels like a classic "chipmunk soul" beat. definitely caters to vintage ghostface / wu-tang aesthetic.

also it can be added to everyone's favorite new playlist: songs that mention anilingus.

and Elohim.

Ok “Die Hard” also has hit single potential.

yep if there's any mainstream hits from this album, it's that or "mirror."

“n95” will likely have the highest chart peak, considering that video just came out

bizarro world chart action.

re: cry together
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNpO4V57pWM

I feel like that song has a lot of antecedents in hip-hop but most reviews have acted like it's a skit

If this album had been the first three tracks, We Cry Together and the last four tracks it would have been so good. Maybe throw in one or two of the others from the middle. The big event tracks stand out so much from the others though imo

Both in terms of compelling lyrics and production

i straight up removed We Cry Together and Crown from my playlist

by far the worst thing on this album are the citations of that fraud Tolle

yeah those bits are pretty dumb

at least it wasn't Jordan Peterson

"We Cry Together" is the only misfire for me, everything else is interesting in some way. I couldn't recall many of the hooks yet, and I doubt I'll ultimately think this album as good as GKMC or Butterfly, but it has the same compelling quality those albums had. Need to listen more

we cry together is good imho

it, auntie diaries, mother i sober and mirror are the best things on here imo

purple hearts >>>

starting to come around on some of the ones i wasn't crazy about the first listen, like "savior" and "crown." "auntie diaries" and "worldwide steppers" are the only ones i'm still not feeling.

I love worldwide steppers now and auntie diaries might have been my favorite song first pass.

"It ain't love if you never eat my ass" that line still fucking keels me over when I hear it on Purple Hearts though lol

I’ve been listening to the album 4 or 5 song increments and “Crown” really jumped out at me when I listened this way. Easy to get lost amidst the bigger tracks but it’s become maybe my favorite thing here

That's how I've absorbed it too

We cry together is by far the worst thing on it, and for me will be skipped every time just like For Free was.

Tickets for the tour went on sale today. Barclays got cleaned out fast, wound up settling for the Long Island show, which was far easier to get into. Plenty of good seats available too.

Got some for Oakland. Missed out on the DAMN tour so looking forward to this

had to take a rest from this album. with some distance, i really do like it a lot more than DAMN. i love that his message to the audience is ultimately: "everyone needs to take a good, hard look at themselves." the magnified caricatures, the problematic kodak black feature, the blurred lines between is this a projection or his real feelings? — dense and summed up brilliantly in the intro on "we cry together": this is what the world sounds like. do you like what you hear?

and also the actual beats and music are fucking stellar. 4.5 mics. goat candidate status confirmed.

I know it's old news at this point, but holy shit at ticket prices.

DAMN. was an amazing tour. (I only wish I had caught the one in Chicago, just to see Chance the Rapper join him on-stage.) Considering what a shitty time it was to be in the U.S., it was probably the only concert that I saw that gave me real hope for the future. Not to hear like-minded people complain or commiserate - all things I do and all things I would have expected from a like-minded audience - but to be surrounded in an arena packed with mostly high school age and college age students going out of their minds and repeating virtually every word of Kendrick's songs. And to see one single guy all by himself on stage with that kind of command and having that effect on his audience, that was ridiculously impressive.

prepare for even more of that\m/

Hey Josh, I'm not sure if this is what you're dealing with in Chicago, but I noticed that in NY, some venues like Barclays switched to SeatGeek as their primary sales agent but kept Ticketmaster as a secondary one. That is, if you go to SeatGeek, tickets are MUCH lower than what's being displayed on Ticketmaster.

Also if you can travel away from the city (like say go to Long Island rather than Brooklyn here in NYC), they're not selling out at all - in fact, it's driven down their prices due to dynamic pricing. I got good seats for a good price at UBS Arena (which uses Ticketmaster as its primary sales agent) and prices have gone down even more since then.

and also the actual beats and music are fucking stellar. 4.5 mics. goat candidate status confirmed.

― Let's disco dance, Hammurabi! (Austin)

Agree, the beats and music on this one are probably the best he has worked with yet. The whole album sounds great on decent headphones / soundsystem.

rolling sevens i aint read for no coffin

This album is astonishing.

The track I've played most is "Rich Spirit." It's aqueous and beautiful.

3 tracks in, this glastonbury headline set is GOOD.

and crowd surprisingly not shit

3 tracks in a row from Good Kid... killing me here.

Could do with being louder tbh.

OK, I think they've sorted that.

I'm just glad people are raving over someone at Glasto who isn't Guy Garvey. Not heard the new KL album yet.

"Rich Spirit" is my favorite song in here and it's quickly becoming one of my favorite songs of him in general. Wouldn't be surprised if it ends up being my most listened song of 2022 come eoy on spotify.

I don't think I had noticed the production of his previous albums as much as this one. It might be one of my favorite produced hip hop records in years.

yep

"rich spirit" instant classic

― Let's disco dance, Hammurabi! (Austin), Thursday, May 12, 2022 10:35 PM

definitely my favorite song of the year. beat is the sci-fi synth funk of the promised land and verse 3 especially is very rhyme of the month/hiphop quotable-

Frat brother, real n/gga, that brother
We just upped the score, give me dap, brother
Spirit medium, I don't rap, brother
We headed there now, are you strapped brother?
Ayy, peacemaker, but I'm not naive, brother
Ayy, gotta watch your homies and police, brother
Ayy, clout chasing hell of a disease, brother
I'm fasting four days out the week, brother
I pray to God that you realize the entourage is dead
I pray to God that you not lackin' when you off the meds
I pray to God she know them Cabo trips don't last forever
Bet she argue with her momma, go and get them kids
I pray to God you actually pray when somebody dies
Thoughts and prayers, way better off timelines
False claimin' not cute, I'm mortified
The new Earth in hot pursuit, two-hundred lives

the little mannerism he takes on in the section i emphasized still makes me giggle. his charisma and ability to deadpan such convincing satire remain unmatched. sounds like paul mooney the rapper sometimes. love love love.

Once I took "We Cry Together" out of the track listing, this album is very very very good. "Father Time" and "Purple Hearts" probably my favorites but there's a lot of songs near that level, like "Rich Spirit"

literally just now realizing that the song is called "mother | sober" not "mother i sober"

hahaha I also thought it was mother i sober

real n/gga

flagged

Father Time is killing me tbh