Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They all have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts.
These enduring words from William Shakespeare liken life to a piece of theater, where each of us take on roles and perform according to the script of our environment, tradition, and societal expectations. We play the customer or the clerk, boss or employee, husband, wife, parent, child. Some roles are appointed, like your gender, your ethnicity, your class, your genetics, and family history.
Other roles are adopted. You identify yourself as an activist, an athlete, a Christian, a victim, a killer.
Like actors in a play, we switch seamlessly between our various masks and behave accordingly. And our proclivity to perform only intensifies in the age of social media, where we curate idealized personas for an ever-present audience. Both on and offline, we're constantly being watched, judged, and applauded for how well we stick to the script. And for many of us, seeking those applause influences our behavior. We mask our real thoughts and motivations in order to stay in character and avoid judgment.
This is the rich subtext of Shakespeare's metaphor, why it's endured for centuries. It questions the balance between authenticity and performance in the human experience. Is what we show the world a true reflection of who we are or a carefully curated act? Are we more than the accumulation of the roles we play? Who are we behind the masks we wear? When it's just you in the mirror, who is it that you see?
In the years between 2018 and 2022, these are the kinds of questions Kendrick Lamar seemed to be asking himself, but we didn't know it at the time. That's because during those years, Kendrick Lamar had quietly exited the public stage. From afar, Kendrick seemed deserving of a break. The previous decade of his life was the typical grind of an aspiring artist turned global superstar. A rigorous, non-stop schedule of music making, world tours, press runs and performances.
After 2017's Damn and 2018's Black Panther soundtrack, Kendrick slipped behind the curtain and began what became a years-long hiatus. His absence became increasingly pronounced in 2020, when the murder of George Floyd reignited civil unrest around racial injustice amidst the quarantine chaos of a global pandemic. Impassioned discourse, protests, and riots consumed the nation for months.
And yet throughout it all, Kendrick Lamar, the artist many viewed as a social justice leader, the artist whose song "Alright" became a Black Lives Matter anthem, he remained silent behind the curtain.
In August of 2021, Kendrick would finally break his silence in the form of a public letter posted to a mysterious new website, oklama.com. In it, he described his life as one of quiet contemplation, going months without a phone. And while the specifics were vague, Kendrick was clearly going through something. "Love, loss, and grief have disturbed my comfort zone, but the glimmers of God speak through my music and family. While the world around me evolves, I reflect on what matters the most.
The letter concluded by hinting at a new album, but gave no release date. And so, as nice as it was to hear from him, Kendrick's letter ultimately raised more questions than it gave answers. Like, what were his thoughts on the chaos of the global pandemic? Why didn't he say anything about the uprisings? What exactly has he been going through? And who is OK Lama?
It'd be another nine months until these questions were addressed, when Kendrick finally emerged from behind the curtain and took the stage in May of 2022, exactly 1,855 days since his last LP. Kendrick's next act was a performance about performance, a play about the roles we play and the masks we wear. It was titled "Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers." I've been going through something. Be afraid.
What is a bitch in a miniskirt? A man and his feelings were bitter. The world in a panic. The women is stranded. The men on the run. The profits abandoned. The law take advantage. The market is crashing. The industry wants to bite their tongues and rap lyrics. Scared to be crucified about a song, but they won't admit it. Politically correct. Cause are you keeping the pitch? I love my father for telling me to take off the clothes. Cause everything he didn't want was everything I was.
Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers is a double album presented as a piece of theater and tells the story of one man's attempt to take his mask off and expose the authentic and perfect truth of who he is. We follow the protagonist Kendrick Lamar on a therapy-guided journey of healing to save his relationship and break a generational curse for the sake of his children.
To complete this arduous task, Kendrick travels deep into himself in order to dissolve his ego and break free from the addictions that have masked his unconfronted trauma and grief. Running concurrently with Kendrick's internal interrogation is an external one as Kendrick looks deeply at the chaotic world around him and sees his own imperfections reflected on a global scale.
He sees people masking trauma and grief. He sees people performing roles for applause and approval. He sees Shakespeare's world as stage, with a population tap dancing around their problems, looking everywhere but within for solutions. "This is what the world sounds like." "I agree, different." "Anybody knows different."
Kendrick's individual journey being a reflection of humanity's journey is the defining feature of Mr. Morale and the Big Stepper's double disc, two-act structure. Disc one examines the world over nine tracks, while disc two examines the individual over nine tracks.
Place between the two discs is a mirror, with the nine tracks on either side being literal reflections of each other, a conceptual framework that illustrates the inseparable connection between the individual and the whole, the human and humanity, Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers.
And through our 18 episode song by song exploration this season, we'll discover how Kendrick's individual decision to take his mask off and look in the mirror is an invitation for all of us to do the same. As Kendrick ultimately proposes that healing the world begins with healing yourself. And so with that, and without further ado, let's dissect. ♪ Find some peace of mind in this lifetime ♪ - Tell them.
Tell them the truth. I hope you'll find some paradise. Tell them the truth. United in Grief was produced by Beach Noise, Duval Timothy, Jay Pounds, OK Lama, Soundwave, and Tim Maxey. The track's opening moments interpolate a song by Maxey called Paradise. It's a lie.
On United in Grief, Maxi's melody and lyrics are re-performed by singer-songwriter Sam Dew, whose voice is a recurring structural and thematic presence on Mr. Morale. Dew's acapella segments appear at the album's beginning, exact middle, and end, helping define the album's large-form two-act structure. We might consider Dew's role to be somewhere between a narrator and a Greek chorus.
We can imagine him taking the stage under a single spotlight, addressing the audience directly and establishing foundational themes in the story. Here at the album's start, Dew articulates one of Mr. Morales' central aims: to find some peace of mind, some paradise. Peace of mind is generally used to mean a state of one's mind that is calm and free of anxiety. Paradise, on the other hand, is typically used to describe an external setting, some idyllic place of tranquility and peace.
It's also a word used in the Bible, generally understood as being synonymous with heaven or in God's presence. At this moment in our experience of the album, how Kendrick himself defines these two concepts isn't entirely clear. However, it is worth noting up front that these two concepts together seem to reflect one of the central teachings of Eckhart Tolle. Eckhart Tolle is a New Age spiritual teacher whose voice will appear several times on Mr. Morale's second half, as Tolle plays the role of Kendrick's therapist.
In his book A New Earth, a book that will be cited by name later in the album, Tolle claims that the external state of the world is a manifestation of the internal states of our mind. Thus, if we want to change or transform the world, if we want to minimize mass suffering, we must transform our minds.
In the book, he dubs this transformation of the mind a new heaven and the resulting transformation of the world a new earth. Quote, collective human consciousness and life on our planet are intrinsically connected. A new heaven is the emergence of a transformed state of human consciousness and a new earth is its reflection in the physical realm. Unquote.
Now we're going to talk a lot more about these concepts later this season, but the main takeaway here is the interplay between the inner and outer worlds. The idea that external transformation is gained through internal transformation. In other words, the physical realm is a mirror of our mental realm, and so finding internal peace of mind individually is the only way to bring about external paradise in this lifetime. Tell them.
And during this opening section, we also hear the voice of Whitney Alford, Kendrick's longtime partner and mother of his two children, Uzi and Enoch, all of whom appear on the album's cover.
Like Tolle, we're going to talk much more about Whitney and her importance to the album later this season. But at this moment, as the second voice we hear on the album and the one prodding Kendrick to tell them the truth, we recognize that it's Whitney who is pushing Kendrick to discover, confront, and express his truth, both in their private life and Kendrick's public life and his art.
The juxtaposition between the sung narration and Whitney's prodding creates a discord, implying that whatever truth Kendrick has been hiding is preventing him from finding peace of mind. Whitney's prodding grows increasingly insistent, and her final four repetitions of tell him are
are backed by the escalating sounds of reverberating footsteps. We're going to hear these footsteps a lot throughout the album. They're a recurring sonic motif that I'm going to call the "stepper's motif" that contain a number of thematic layers. However, it's a little too early for that conversation right now. But in terms of this introduction, these echoing footsteps add to the theatrical environment, as if what we're hearing is a musical taking place on a theater stage.
And just when it appeared Whitney was going to reveal exactly what Kendrick's been hiding, her final words are abruptly cut off.
This creates a cliffhanger of sorts. We can't help but wonder what she was going to reveal, why she was cut short, why she's even on the album in the first place. And so less than 30 seconds into Mr. Morale, Kendrick has already established two critical elements of any well-told story. The protagonist's aim or goal, which is finding some peace of mind to create some paradise, and the obstacle that's preventing him from obtaining that goal, which is some truth Kendrick's been avoiding. Tell him. Tell him you're...
The first instrument we hear on Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers is the piano, played by Duvall Timothy. The piano part oscillates between two punchy staccato chords, a basic G major chord, followed by an A-flat major with a flat 5.
This second chord is much tenser than the first, as it contains what's called a tritone, a notoriously dissonant musical interval. There's also tension created from the movement between the chords, as the distance between them is what's called a half-step or a semitone. Here's the root note of each chord isolated. This is the same interval the Jaws film score famously used to create tension around an approaching shark.
Between the semitone and tritone, these stabbing staccato chords create a tense, probing musical environment, almost as if the piano has taken over Whitney's role of prodding Kendrick to confess his hidden truth. Indeed, as we'll come to see, the piano plays an important symbolic role on Mr. Morale, appearing on all but two tracks on the album. According to Kendrick's longtime producer Soundwave, quote, "...a lot of what you hear lyrically from Kendrick was all done from pianos."
It's just a feeling that you get when you hear pianos. That's why when you listen to the album, 98% of the song is going to have a piano in there. Literally, the piano plays a very important role in the sonics of this. It has its own meaning to this album. And strings too. I had the task of creating a world that this artist is living in. And this world, for me at least, was a person stripped down of everything, locked into a white room with just their thoughts and a piano."
This intimate confessional environment is felt straight away, as Kendrick enters the album with a vague confession: "I've been going through something." He follows by reciting the exact number of days between the release of Mr. Morale on May 13th, 2022 and his previous solo album Damn, released on April 14th, 2017.
It's a span of 5 years and 30 days, by far the longest gap between solo albums and Kendrick's discography. Thus, when paired with the repeating phrase "I've been going through something," Kendrick is implying that this "something" has prohibited him from releasing music. And the final phrase "Be Afraid" scored by the tense piano makes clear that this "something" will be revealed on this very album, that this "something" took him 5 years to sort out, and that we are now entering emotional territory that isn't for the faint of heart.
Kendrick raps an accelerating triplet, filling the space between the piano chords, but never rapping directly on top of them. He begins a sequence of questions and answers by asking, what is a bitch in a miniskirt? The
It's a pretty misogynistic, objectifying perspective of a woman. The reasons for which are revealed in Kendrick's answer to this question: "A man in his feelings was bitter nerve." It seems as though Kendrick is implying that men's objectification of women stems from an underlying resentment or bitterness, likely caused by some past hurt or unresolved trauma. Thus, the question "What is a bitch in a miniskirt?" is not a question about the woman. It is a question about the conception of the woman as processed through the mind of a damaged man.
More of this perspective is revealed in the next question and answer: What is a woman that really hurt? A demon, you're better off killing her. Contrasting the man's view of a woman as a hyper-sexualized object, the woman here is humanized. She is someone who hurts and feels. The resentful, damaged man's perspective of this humanized woman is that of a demon, someone possessed by an evil spirit.
This again becomes more about the man's view of the woman than the woman herself. A woman expressing her emotions is met with extreme resistance. Rather than open up and explore his own pain along with the woman, the man believes he's better off killing her, better off abandoning the woman so he can continue avoiding his own internalized hurt. Kendrick then continues, "What is a relative making repetitive narratives on how you did it first? That is a predator hit reverse."
On one hand, this seems to comment on gaslighting that can occur between family members, a generational cycle of continuously blaming each other for their problems. However, a closer look at the specific wording here reveals that Kendrick may be commenting on sexual predators, who often target relatives. Predators commonly manipulate their victims into believing that it was the victim that made advances on them, or as Kendrick phrases it, "making repetitive narratives on how you did it first."
This often causes the victim to harbor feelings of self-blame, guilt, and shame, and as a result, many victims do not reveal the abuse to others and internalize the trauma that they experienced. Sexual abuse will be revealed as an important theme later on the album, so like all of these questions, Kendrick is setting that theme up here at the album's start. He then continues, "...all of your president's evil thirst."
This seems to extend the predator motif, but twists the meaning to convey how those in positions of power prey on the people and their selfish lust for more, another theme that will be explored over the course of the album. What is a neighborhood reputable? That is a snitch on a pedestal. What is a house with a better view? A family broken in variables. What is a rapper with jewelry? A way that I show my maturity. What if I call on security? That mean I'm calling on God for purity.
Kendra continues his opening series of questions and answers, "What is a neighborhood reputable?" That is a snitch on a pedestal. Reputable here is an alterated pronunciation of reputable, someone who is held in high esteem, specifically in the streets.
However, Kendrick's counterintuitive answer posits that even neighborhood reputables can't be trusted, as they can very well be police informants. Snitch on a Pedestal then is likely a play on the phrase "stool pigeon," which is slang for those who infiltrate a criminal enterprise only to report their findings to a cop. Between women's objectification, sexual predators, evil presidents, and untrustworthy friends, Kendrick is painting a paranoid and pessimistic picture of the world around him, one filled with danger at every turn.
Next, Kendrick questions what is a house with a better view. At this point in the verse, we're primed for a pessimistic response, which we get as Kendrick follows with a family broken in variables. A house with a better view implies wealth. So Kendrick is claiming that while money might provide better material conditions, it does nothing for the emotional conditions of the family inhabiting the house.
Thus, the monetary value of a house says nothing of its actual worth, something he's apparently learned first hand. This materialism theme extends into the next lines: "What is a wrapper with jewelry? A way that I show my maturity." For the first time in this sequence of questions and answers, Kendrick uses the personal pronoun "I". He's the wrapper using material possessions to show how he's matured from poverty to wealth.
However, as we'll discover later in the song, this false feeling of material-based maturation has done nothing for Kendrick's emotional maturation. Finally, Kendrick ends this section asking "What if I call on security?" Given the previous questions about wealth, we're primed to think Kendrick here is referencing personal security, like a bodyguard or a private home security crew. However, like all the questions, the answer comes with a twist as he raps "That means I'm calling on God for purity."
It's clear Kendrick is using security in a much larger sense, asking for God's protection, specifically through purification of the spirit.
For those familiar with Kendrick's catalog, this call on a higher power will come as no surprise. His past three albums, Good Kid, Mad City, To Pimp a Butterfly, and Damn, all found their resolutions through a Biblical-based faith in God and adherence to his commandments. While Mr. Morale will depart from that Biblical-based resolution, his call on God here at the album's start makes clear he's asking for God's protection as he embarks on this emotional and psychological journey. Now,
Now, if we look holistically at this opening section, Kendrick has, in just 16 bars, presented most of the central themes that will be explored across the album. His flawed view and mistreatment of women, childhood molestation, distrust in political power and society, materialism as a means of coping with emotional trauma, and a broader call on God to watch over him as he navigates these issues in search of peace of mind.
United in Grief then continues with a new musical section, which is prefaced with what sounds like a car horn swelling in volume and panning from left to right, as if we're inside Kendrick's frantically racing mind.
Following the car horn swell, United in Grief's instrumental texture intensifies as we hear a number of reverse swelling sounds panning from side to side, creating a feeling of instability, as if the song's musical foundation were swaying and warping like some surreal earthquake. Juxtaposed against this sensation are two new piano chords, which are now sustained or held out, contrasting with the short staccato stabs of the previous section. We get a beautifully voiced D-flat major 7th chord,
followed by a brief pivot to a C major chord before returning back to the Db7. Notably, the distance between these two chords is a half step, the same distance we observed between the first two chords. This creates subtle motivic connection between the two parts, both of them two chords, both of them a half step apart. At the end of this section, the swelling car horn sound returns, and this time it's joined by what sounds like a man yelling "Ow!" as if in agony or pain.
Between the trippy reversed effects, the smothering piano chords, and this abstract screaming, this new section increases the intensity of the instrumental, which Kendrick matches with his own frantic delivery. That's right after the break.
Welcome back to Dissect. Before the break, we reached the second half of United and Grief's opening verse, where both the instrumental and Kendrick's delivery intensify.
With Kendrick's first line, we get one of the album's big admissions. I went and got me a therapist. I can debate all my theories and sharing it. Consolidate all my comparisons. Humble enough because time was imperative.
While the normalization of therapy has made great strides in recent years, Kendrick's admission here is important and shouldn't be overlooked, particularly as a black male from Compton. In one of the few interviews he gave after Mr. Morales' release, Kendrick spoke with Spotify's Carl Cherry about his experience with therapy and how his upbringing caused him to be resistant to the idea for years. We grew up with it. Our parents don't know about that. Our grandparents don't know about that. You live and you experience the shit that you go through and you deal with it right then and there or you don't never deal with it.
We learned to hold all our shit in. Shit, we keep 100 with you. That wasn't my forte when people mentioned it to me. You know, I'm still stuck. My pops didn't fucking need therapy for me to challenge myself to go to therapy. Shit, that's like a whole new step in a whole new generation. It's a growth.
Like a lot of things brought up in this song, we're going to talk a lot more about Kendrick's therapy experience throughout this season. But narratively, its mention here is critical as it establishes the album as a personal and emotional journey guided by therapy where each song can be viewed as a different therapy session, with each session progressing deeper and deeper into Kendrick's psyche until he achieves breakthrough. The mention of therapy also contextualizes the sequence of questions and answers, as it appears these are theories Kendrick is exploring with this therapist.
Or as he says, I can debate all my theories and sharing it, consolidate all my comparisons, humble enough because time was imperative.
This latter line expresses the urgency of finally reaching out for professional help, likely because his actions were putting his new family at risk, forcing him to humble himself and actually go to therapy, actually confront his demons in a real way. He continues, "started to feel like it's only one answer to everything. I don't know where it is. Popping a bottle of Claritin isn't my head or my arrogance.
Kendrick frantically describes the all-too-relatable feeling of believing there's some secret to life, some one-size-fits-all answer that will solve all his problems, answer all his questions, and confirm all his theories. It's as if this one answer is something he can simply find, like his car keys or remote control.
A similar analogy is made in reference to Claritin, a brand of allergy medicine. Kendrick seems to be using the name for its proximity to the word "clarity." That is, he's frantically searching for the one answer that will relieve his stuffy mind that's filled with anxiety, just as taking allergy medicine will relieve a stuffy nose. Kendrick's next question, "Is it my head or my arrogance?" suggests that either his ego or his overthinking is what's preventing him from finding the answer, or at least that's one of his theories.
Fittingly, this combination of ego and overthinking is something Eckhart Tolle posits as the cocktail that causes mass anxiety, discontent, and conflict. There is a lot of not only unnecessary thinking that generates unnecessary and in many cases non-existent problems, such as when you lie awake at night in bed and start worrying. It generates
a lot of unnecessary unhappiness. So people don't realize that a significant part of the unhappiness in their lives is actually generated by unnecessary, negative, often destructive,
mind activity, and they don't even know it. Kendrick's portrait of his chaotic thought process continues with shaking and moving like, what am I doing? I'm flipping my time through the Rolodex.
The wordplay here is clever. Rolodex makes a physical rotating card device used to store and organize contacts. Hence, Kendrick is spending his time flipping through his symbolic Rolodex. This almost certainly refers to him scrolling through his phone contacts to solicit different women for sex.
However, Rolodex also sounds similar to the luxury watch brand Rolex. And with Kendrick saying "flipping my time", it seems he's intentionally using the near homophone to double as another one of his vices, materialism, calling back to the previous line about jewelry.
And so with one line, Kendrick masterfully exhibits both of his vices, which is why he follows with the lines, indulging myself in my life and my music. The world that I'm in is a cul-de-sac. His life is a repetitive cycle of music, sex, and materialism. He's unable to move forward, unable to make personal progress. He's moving from one indulgence to the next, driving around in circles, going nowhere.
Following this bleak description of his personal world, Kendrick continues with the bleak description of the world at large, rapping, "...the world that we in is just menacing, the demons portrayed as religionists."
As far as I can tell, religionist is not a pre-existing word. It appears Kendrick combined religion and religious, perhaps to make the rhyme and syllable count fit his scheme. In any case, it seems Kendrick is critiquing the modern world for generally worshipping the very things that do us harm, be it the deification of celebrity, the glorification of material wealth, celebrating drug and alcohol abuse, hyper-sexualizing women, rewarding online conflict, or devoutly following politicians as if they were demigods.
All of these things will be expounded upon throughout the album. And like so much of this song, Kendrick is setting up that exploration here at the album start. Finally, Kendrick brings this section full circle, rapping, I wake in the morning, another appointment, I hope the psychologist listening. Both starting and ending this section by mentioning a therapist reinforces the idea that Kendrick is sharing these questions, theories, and feelings to his newly sought psychologist. It's during these lines that we hear the chaotic screams and swelling horn.
A perfect musical reflection of Kendrick's chaotic mind and emotional state. Indeed, while we are told about Kendrick's struggles in his lyrics, we feel them in the music and vocal delivery. Thus, if peace of mind is what our protagonist seeks, as audience members, we understand that he's far from that clearly stated desire. This intensifying frenetic energy then suddenly crystallizes with an unexpected but equally manic drum part. I'm waking up one in another appointment, I hope the psychologist listening.
If you listen to Mr. Morale frequently, it's likely you've grown accustomed to this transition into this drum break.
But we can't just overlook how wild and unpredictable this moment truly is. While the song had clearly been building towards some kind of crescendo or explosive moment, there's nothing that prepares us for this shift. There are two main reasons this drum loop is so striking. One, it's at a different tempo than the parts that precede it, disrupting our feeling of the song's pulse.
Second, the drum pattern itself is chopped in such a way that finding the new pulse and the new tempo is all but impossible for the average listener. And this is absolutely intentional. The contrast between the two parts and the abrasiveness of the drum part itself is meant to disjoint us. Musically, we don't know where we are or where we're going, and thus we feel ungrounded, confused, and uncomfortable. In other words, we are experiencing musically exactly what Kendrick is experiencing emotionally.
Over this new drum part, Kendrick recites the song's chorus, where he describes what seems to be years of luxurious spending, which includes a Mercedes G-Wagon, several mansions, half a million in jewelry, and paying $20 million in taxes at the age of 28, signifying that he would have grossed at least double that in one year. And he says this was all for rap.
Crucially, Kendrick here alters the much more common sentiment of "it was all from rap" meaning his music alone earned him all these material benefits, a common trope in hip hop. Saying "all for rap" seems to imply his excessive spending was an attempt to fulfill a stereotypical rap image.
The emptiness behind his spending is present in the line "bought a couple of mansions just for practice" as if this has simply become routine for him, as if it's habitual. And describing his chain as "magic" both describes its improbable shine and the feeling that it could abracadabra his problems away, that it could magically make them disappear.
But perhaps the most crucial line of the chorus is "Never had it in public, late reaction," which implies that Kendrick has been hiding his lavish spending, that while he's been indulging in materialism like the stereotypical rapper, he hasn't flaunted it like one. This is a crucial revelation that will inform so much of Mr. Morale's central theme, which is exposing the way we present ourselves to the world, the way we all wear a kind of theatrical mask and play a role that we've constructed for ourselves.
In Kendrick's adopted role as conscious hip-hop savior, he rarely flaunted his material wealth, as that would contradict his conscious constructed image. However, Kendrick here is admitting that he did indulge, and that he purposefully hid this indulgence in order to uphold this image, in order to avoid the judgment of others. As with everyone, Kendrick's reality behind the mask is much more complicated and contradictory. This idea then leads us into the song's stunning refrain.
where Kendrick connects his complications to a deeper underlying issue. ♪ None of my enemies hold me captive ♪ ♪ I grieve different ♪
Kendrick exclaims, "I grieve different," triggering the drums to suddenly cut out and the piano to re-enter by itself. It feels like yet another tempo change, as we initially register this piano playing at a slower pace than the drums. Harmonically, the chord is once again the Db major 7th chord we heard in the previous piano part, but now we hear a repeated C note playing in the upper register, which will sustain throughout the entire 3 chord progression.
This technique of repeating a single note while chords change around it is what's called a pedal tone and it's often used to create a moody, somber musical setting. One more recent example of a pedal tone is heard in Hans Zimmer's score for the film Interstellar, which contains a repeated E note pedal tone.
Uniting Grief's pedal tone creates a similar feeling, which is really the last thing we were expecting following those frenetic drums. And there's no way this piano part and those drums could possibly fit together, right? They're just too different, right?
Remarkably, the two seemingly disparate elements are merged together, expressing a kind of musical duality between the rich, somber piano and the choppy, manic drums. Now let's think about this musical setting with the revelation of Kendrick's repeated plea, I grieve different.
We're going to talk more about this refrain in a bit, but the immediate implication here is that Kendrick's private indulgence in materialism, his erratic behavior and frantically racing mind all stem from and are manifestations of an underlying loss and unresolved trauma. And this dichotomy is perfectly reflected in the song's musical setting. Kendrick's turbulent mental condition is expressed in the turbulent drums, while the underlying sorrow that's causing this condition is expressed in the pensive, pedal-tone piano.
Between the multiple unpredictable shifts in tempo and texture, to now establishing this dichotomous setting that will sustain for the remainder of the song, Kendrick and his production team are putting on a masterclass in music's unique power to elevate the emotional impact of the text. We are supposed to feel a little uncomfortable, a little unsettled, because that's how our protagonist is feeling at this point in the story. In this way, United in Grief's production is truly cinematic, feeling more like a film score than a traditional song.
I met her on the third night of Chicago North America tour, my eye glow Fee-fi-fo-fum, she was a model Dedicated to the songs I wrote in the Bible Eyes like green, penetrating the moonlight Hair done in a bun, energy in the room Like Big Bang for theory, God, hope you hear me
Kendrick begins the second verse rapping, Kendrick's talents in storytelling continue here, as the first four lines of the verse establish the who, where, and when of the story that will be told over the course of this verse.
We're on a tour stop in Chicago where Kendrick meets a fan who is a model, presumably backstage or on his tour bus. Kendrick saying "third night of Chicago" likely puts us in the year 2013, when Kendrick was supporting Kanye West's Yeezus tour, which played back-to-back nights at Chicago's United Center. Saying North America tour "my enclave" is interesting in that "enclave" is an independent territory that's completely surrounded by another, like a country within a country.
It appears that Kendrick is calling the tour his enclave, and that it's a world unto itself. Indeed, this was the near entirety of Kendrick's world in 2013, a year in which he performed over 200 concerts. The phrase Fee-fi-fo-fum was coined by the giant in the classic tale Jack and the Beanstalk, which Kendrick cleverly uses to describe the model as being stereotypically tall.
but it also seems to convey the enormity of this night that seems to have been pivotal in Kendrick's life. The model is described as being "dedicated to the songs Kendrick wrote in the Bible," which seems to mean she connected to his music and lyrics as if they were scripture. This being Kendrick's first tour after the release of Good Kid, Mad City, he's perhaps using this moment to illustrate him learning just how deeply some of his fans were receiving his music, just how much power his words truly have.
Next, Kendrick's lens zooms in, moving from the broad context of meeting a model on tour to a more intimate description. He raps, eyes light green, penetrate in the moonlight. Hair done in a bun, energy in the room like Big Bang for Theory.
Kendrick masterfully conveys the model's mystical and trancing quality. Comparing their chemistry to the Big Bang theory is a potent analogy with several potential meanings. First, it conveys the potent chemistry between them, with "bang" subtly alluding to sex. It also suggests that this interaction is the beginning of something much larger, the start of a chain reaction all of the Big Bang's expansion into the entire universe. And for Kendrick, that larger thing seems to be an addiction to sex.
Finally, the Big Bang theory is believed by some to be contradictory to what the Bible posits as the creation of the universe, which leads to Kendrick's following plea: "God, hoping you hear me, phone off the ringer, tell the world I'm busy."
Kendrick's plea to God and shutting off the outside world conveys both the escape he's finding in this intimate encounter and his internal understanding that there's something unhealthy about his motives, that they may oppose the biblical teachings Kendrick has attempted to follow. I agree.
Kendrick continues the story by humanizing the model as he raps, "Fair enough, green eyes said her mother didn't care enough, sympathized when her daddy in the chain gang. Her first brother got killed, he was 21." It appears that her connection to Kendrick's music allows her to open up to him, revealing her inattentive mother, imprisoned absent father, and murdered brother. These disclosures seem to have made Kendrick comfortable sharing his own, as he continues by naming three loved ones that he's lost,
I was nine when they put Lamont in the grave, heartbroken when Estelle didn't say goodbye. Chad left his body after we FaceTimed.
To my knowledge, Kendrick hasn't named a Lamont previously in his music, but it appears that he's referring to a young man named Lamont Finley, who was shot to death in 1997 when he was just 21 years old. In 1997, Kendrick would have been 9 years old, the age that he states in the song. And Lamont Finley's death occurred at the corner of Crenshaw Boulevard and 57th Street, which is just 10 miles from Kendrick's childhood home in Compton.
The line "Heartbroken when Estelle didn't say goodbye" almost certainly refers to Kendrick's late grandmother Estelle Oliver, whose passing seems to have been unexpected, hence the phrase "didn't say goodbye". Finally, the line "Chad left his body after we facetimed" refers to Chad Keaton, Kendrick's 23-year-old friend in Compton who was shot in July of 2013 while Kendrick was on the European leg of the Good Kid, Mad City tour.
The two talked via Skype while Chad was in the hospital, but he would die a month later while Kendrick was still overseas. Kendrick has rapped about Keaton's death a few times before, like his 2014 feature on YG's Really Be. Kendrick also mentions Chad on Topipa Butterfly's You, where he drunkenly berates himself for failing to visit him before he passed. You even FaceTimed instead of
You ain't tried.
Kendrick attended Chad Keaton's memorial service in August of 2013, but then immediately resumed touring the next day. And just a few months later, still in the throes of grief, Kendrick would be in Chicago on the Yeezus tour, where he trauma bonds with the green-eyed model backstage. The verse then reaches a narrative crescendo with its final line, "Green eyes said you'd be okay, first tour sexed the pain away, I grieve different."
It's an incredibly powerful moment as strings enter to accompany this second iteration of the refrain. A refrain that resonates more deeply after such a vivid, honest description of the emotional and psychological circumstances behind this sexual encounter.
This is presented as Kendrick's Big Bang moment, like the first time an addict tries a drug. It's the moment Kendrick experienced the comforting, intoxicating escape of sex as a respite from his grief.
Again, while most of us have now grown accustomed to Kendrick's admissions here on United in Grief, at the time of the album's release, they were pretty shocking, especially for those of us who follow Kendrick's work closely and knew about his engagement to Whitney.
While Kendrick has always been open about his struggles and his music, he's never been as descriptive and specific as he is here. On To Pimp a Butterfly, the temptations of sex and money were symbolically presented as the characters Lucy and Uncle Sam. On Damn, sex, money, and murder were central topics, but mostly addressed conceptually. Of course, I don't want to undermine the vulnerability of his past work, as it's some of the most vulnerable art we've had in recent memory.
But on United in Grief, Kendrick is quite literally putting us in the room with him and this woman. There's no room for ambiguity, no retelling his actions through metaphor or symbols. This vivid transparency is part of the true confessional aspect of this project, as we're privy to Kendrick alone in a room with his piano and his thoughts.
I smell TNT.
Kendrick begins the third verse, so what? Paralyzed, the county building controlled us. This likely refers to his impoverished childhood in Compton and his family's reliance on government assistance like food stamps and Section 8 housing.
On his previous album, Damn, Kendrick rapped about how the financial stress of living in poverty instilled in him a paralyzing fear at an early age. Here he is rapping from his mother's perspective on the song Fear.
A 2012's County Building Blues, a bonus track on Good Kid, Mad City's deluxe album. Kendrick rapped from a younger perspective, fantasizing about making and spending a million dollars in front of the county building. A symbolic statement of being freed from the shackles of government assistance and poverty that paralyzed and controlled his family.
Spin it all in front of the county building Blow it like a train, blow it like a train With this contextual understanding, Kendrick's next lines on United in Grief come as no surprise. I bought a Rolex watch I only wore it once. I bought infinity pools I never swam in.
Kendrick is buying stuff he doesn't use and thus doesn't even really want. There's a motivation deeper than material desire, as if he's trying to buy his way out of the trauma of his childhood, to escape his past by spending millions in front of the county building so to speak. But he's now realized through experience that this spending has not provided him the triumphant victory or freedom he imagined. Paradoxically, spending money has become its own form of paralysis.
He then continues "I watched Keem buy four cars in four months. You know the family dynamics on repeat. The insecurities locked down on PC." Kendrick references his younger cousin Hakeem Carter aka Baby Keem, who also grew up poor and recently found success in music. Kendrick observes in Keem the same intuition to spend excessively, implying that this intuition is not unique to him.
Rather, splurge spending is symptomatic of an underlying insecurity. As a society, we often equate self-worth with financial worth. In the cars, the Rolexes, the infinity pools, these become symbols of personal value, an attempt to prove to ourselves and the world that we are actually worth something as people.
Mentioning Baby Keem this early into the album also sets him up as a minor character in the narrative. Keem will not only be given his own track later on the album, but he'll also be used symbolically, particularly when paired alongside Kodak Black, another character on Mr. Morale.
Next Kendrick raps, I bought a .223 nobody peace treat. You won't doo-doo me, I smell tea and tea. Among Kendrick's many purchases is a .223 caliber rifle. This may be the rifle that's leaning against the wall on Mr. Morales' back cover, and the reference itself implies he's willing to kill anyone who might come after him and his possessions. It's interesting that the rifle and threats of violence are cited within a verse that otherwise addresses material possessions exclusively, perhaps implying his intuition to protect what he owns.
And the more you own, the more you become a target, which can lead to distrusting those around you, creating isolation and paranoia. Kendrick actually rapped about this dynamic back on 2017's Fear.
In this passage, Kendrick cites Rihanna's experience with a dishonest accountant. And just the mere thought of that happening to him sends him into a frenzy.
as he imagines killing someone and having sex with random women as a response to this anxiety. Next he raps: Dave here is Kendrick's high school friend, business partner, and creative collaborator, Dave Free. Like Kendrick and Keem, Dave splurged on a Porsche with his newfound money, which inspired Kendrick to do the same, simply because he could. Dave's Porsche is yet another thing Kendrick has rapped about in the past.
On the song Untitled 2, Kendrick cited Dave's newly acquired Porsche 911. According to the song's subtitle, it was recorded on June 23, 2014, about six months after Kendrick's encounter with the model GreenEyes on tour.
If this is the same Porsche referenced on United in Grief, it joins the multiple references to his life immediately following Good Kid, Mad City, the album that completely changed Kendrick's life and gave him access to the money and sex that he then began abusing. Thus, we get the verse's transparent final lines, Poverty was the case, but the money wiped the tears away.
Kendrick uses the potent image of physical bills being used as tissue to succinctly capture his attempt to spend the pain away, to eradicate his past with a temporary high of material acquisition. Now this third and final verse is followed by one last rendition of the song's refrain, with a few key changes. Musically, United in Grief reaches its crescendo, as thick, sonorous piano chords float amidst jarring, heavily affected strings that flood the sonic landscape.
Kendrick also adds one incredibly important lyric in between the standard refrain, Everybody grieves different. As we listen, notice how this line is slowly panned from the left to right speaker. It spans across the entire sonic spectrum, reflecting the universality of its message, the ways in which grief spans across the entire spectrum of humanity. I grieve different. Everybody grieves different. Everybody. I grieve different.
Huh!
Kendrick's repeated "Everybody Grieves Different" gives voice to the song title "United in Grief." Kendrick is very transparently connecting his own struggle with what he sees as a universal condition. Everyone suffers and everyone manifests that suffering differently. Kendrick became addicted to sex and indulged in materialism. However, for some it's abusing drugs or alcohol. Others become addicted to work. Some might abuse their partner. Others abuse themselves.
There's a myriad of ways trauma can manifest itself in our actions and habits, but Kendrick posits that while the specifics may vary, the underlying human condition is the same.
This unification brings the song full circle, back to its opening acapella, I hope you find some peace of mind in this lifetime, I hope you find some paradise. As we prepare to follow Kendrick on his journey toward internal peace of mind, we understand that his journey is a mirror of our own. Kendrick is a reflection of humanity. United by the human condition, the journey of one is the journey of all.
Finally, after all the chaos of United in Grief, with its many textural, tempo, and instrumental changes and moods, all the sonic elements fade into the ether until we're left alone with the piano, the instrument that began the song and album. The instrument Soundwave described as a central character. For me, this ending feels incredibly symbolic. After everything fades away, after all the outside noise of the world subsides,
It's just Kendrick alone with the piano, alone with his thoughts, his pain, his confusion. Alone, as we all are, with his grief. Conclusions
United in Grief functions as Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers' exposition, which is the introductory section of a story that sets up its characters, setting, themes, and basic conflicts that will drive the narrative forward. The song and album opens by establishing its central aim: to find internal peace of mind and create external paradise, both for Kendrick and the world at large.
It introduces the two main characters, Kendrick and Whitney. It establishes the main musical instrument, the piano, and the main sonic motif, the footsteps on a theater stage. And that's just within the first 30 seconds.
From there we hear about all the roadblocks that are preventing our protagonist Kendrick from finding peace of mind, mainly sex addiction and indulgence in materialism. However, as the chorus reveals, these are simply manifestations of unresolved grief and trauma. Importantly, Kendrick also reveals he sought a therapist to work through this trauma, as those manifestations were eating away at his psyche and destroying his relationship with the mother of his children, putting his family at risk of inheriting the same generational curses he did.
By the end of United in Grief, we understand exactly what Kendrick has been going through for 1,855 days. After years of indulgence and a whirlwind of superstardom and grief, Kendrick stepped away from the spotlight and took a five-year-long look in the mirror.
All of this effectively sets the stage, the literal stage, for Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers, a piece of musical theater about the theater of the world, and one man's decision to take off the performative mask and confront the ugliness beneath. Take off the foofoo, take off the clouches, take off the wifi, take
Having established Kendrick's personal world with United in Grief, Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers continues with Kendrick establishing the world outside. And spoiler alert, it's just as chaotic and confused as Kendrick's. Of course, we're talking about Mr. Morale's next track, N95. A song we'll break down note by note, line by line, next time on Dissected.
If you enjoyed today's episode, please tell a friend about the new season or share on social media. It really helps. Also, you can support the show by purchasing our new Season 13 merchandise, available now at dissectpodcast.com. All right. Thanks, everyone. Talk to you next week.