S13E12 - Why is Baby Keem on Mr. Morale? Dissecting "Savior - Interlude"
33:34 Share

From the Ringer Podcast Network, this is Dissect, long-form musical analysis broken into short, digestible episodes. This is episode 12 of our season-long analysis of Kendrick Lamar's Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers. I'm your host, Cole Kushner.

This message is a paid partnership with Apple Card. One of the most useful things in my life lately has been my Apple Card. It's great for game nights, vacations, just life in general. And applying was so easy and quick. You can apply, see your credit limit offer, and then start using your card in minutes. Do it while you're watching a basketball game and you can start making purchases before halftime even rolls around. I also love how I can get up to 3% daily cash back on every single purchase. That's more money for game tickets.

I feel like I scored big time when I started using Apple Card. Apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone and start using it right away with Apple Pay. Subject to credit approval, Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City branch. Terms and more at applecard.com.

Last time on Dissect, we examined both Crown and Silent Hill, tracks 2 and 3 on Mr. Morau's second disc. It was there we found Kendrick expressing the overwhelming weight of responsibility he feels as a voice of his community. After recognizing his agency and setting boundaries for himself, we heard Kendrick retreat to a hill of silence.

continuing his album-long quest to decipher what's real in his life and eliminate the fakes who are just around to exploit him. At the end of Silent Hill, Kodak Black makes his third appearance on the album, rapping a verse that in many ways reflected his initial feature on Rich Interlude.

He talks about his struggles growing up poor and without a father, and expresses amazement at the success he's had given the odds stacked against him. Kodak's presence on Silent Hill also sets up one of the album's central reflection points, as Kodak is directly juxtaposed with the voice of Eckhart Tolle, the album's therapist who begins the next track, the subject of our episode today, Savior Interlude.

If you derive your sense of identity from being a victim, let's say bad things were done to you when you were a child, and you develop a sense of self that is based on the bad things that happened to you. Now before getting into Tolle's insight here, I want to acknowledge what we hear behind his voice during this introduction. Here it is isolated.

We hear two children saying blue, red over and over. If this sounds vaguely familiar to you, it's because these voices also appeared briefly during the intro of Father Time. As you listen, notice that the voices appear in the background exactly when Whitney says to reach out to Eckhart, and that the instrumental is elegant strings, the same kind of strings that will score Savior Interlude.

...

Clearly, these children's voices are an intentional reflection point between the two discs. The question is, why? Well, it's no coincidence that they first appeared when Whitney attempted to get Kendrick to go to therapy. This would seem to imply that the voices have something to do with Kendrick's past, perhaps the root of his trauma. But Kendrick rejects Whitney's request on Father Time. The children's voices are silenced. They are avoided and left unaddressed.

But now in Act 2, Kendrick has finally reached out to Eckhart. Thus the voices return during Tolle's first insight into Kendrick's life, and specifically about his childhood.

With this context, we could attempt to decipher the intended meaning behind the repeating blue-red spoken by the children. Fans of Kendrick know blue and red to be a pretty consistent motif throughout his discography, perhaps used most potently on the song "Good Kid" from Good Kid, Mad City, where Kendrick presents a dual meaning to blue and red in the song's two verses.

In verse 1, it describes the colors of the Crips and Bloods that contributed to the dangerous environment of his childhood in Compton. On verse 2, Kendrick uses red and blue to describe flashing police lights, representing another source of danger in his childhood environment.

Understanding this motivic use of blue and red to describe various sources of violence during his youth, it seems likely that the children ominously repeating blue-red symbolizes the trauma of his childhood.

the perpetual violence he experienced, witnessed, and feared throughout his upbringing in Compton. A

Of course, confronting childhood trauma is a common practice in therapy, so pairing the voices of children with the first words from the album's therapist Eckhart Tolle points to Kendrick finally starting to address his deep-seated issues. This is further supported by what Tolle says to Kendrick: "If you derive your sense of identity from being a victim, let's say bad things were done to you when you were a child, and you develop a sense of self that is based on the bad things that happened to you."

This excerpt begins to capture Tolle's teachings about the ego and its proclivity to identify or build a sense of self around concepts or ideas. He teaches that the ego searches for anything to validate its existence, which is not exclusive to just positive things like wealth or beauty. The ego will also use negative things when there aren't positive things to identify with. And it very often happens that the memory of having been abused is used by the ego

that is added to the ego's sense of self. So that means you not only remember what happened to you, the memory of what happened to you, which is a bundle of thoughts and emotions that go with it, the memory of what happened to you is more than just a memory.

There is self-identification with the memory. In other words, it's not perceived as just something that happened to you, but it becomes part of who you perceive to be. So I am a victim of that. It's not that this was done to me, but I am a victim of. So it's the transition from memory to self-identification.

After making the bad things that happened to you a part of your sense of self, Tolle goes on to explain how the ego then twists your victim identity into a form of moral superiority. Because that's always the ego's end goal: to validate your existence by being more important than the next person. And so the superiority is a moral one, I could say, because if unjust things were done to you, then by being a victim of unjust deeds,

perpetrated by other humans, you automatically become morally superior, not only to those humans who inflicted that on you, but also to other humans who are not victims or cannot claim, have not as much claim on victimhood as you have.

So you are morally superior to them. It's a delusion. Every egoic identity is a form of delusion. So ultimately it's a delusion that the stronger the ego is, the more deluded you become about who you are.

When viewed through Tolle's lens, we can see how the ego doesn't necessarily care about what it identifies with. It can twist anything into a form of superiority. That's its superpower. And just like identifying with being wealthy or privileged, Tolle goes on to explain how a victim identity is severely limiting and takes away personal agency to transcend your individual circumstances. "You're obviously morally superior to everybody who is less of a victim than you,

but you condemn yourself almost to powerlessness when you have any kind of victim identity. You really want to remain powerless because to say that you can transcend what was done to you, you can overcome the effects of it, you can go beyond it, you have the power to go beyond the abuse that was done to you, whichever human has that power, you can never discover that power if you are trapped in a victim identity.

Of course, this complete understanding of Tolle's view on the ego and victimhood is not provided in the introduction of Savior Interlude. However, Kendrick transcending his childhood trauma and the things that were done to him is ultimately what the entire album is working toward. And Tolle's teachings illuminate how doing this will require Kendrick to dissolve his ego, which he described as the Lord of all Lords back on Count Me Out.

Now, another key to fully understanding Tolle's first insight is to recognize its placement, as it strategically sits just after Kodak and Kendrick on Silent Hill and just before Baby Keem's first appearance on the album. Tolle's insight is the communal mirror shared by Kendrick, Kodak, and Keem. The insight applies to all three men, three men who are the album's representative big steppers, the representatives of their community in this morality play.

And as we talked about last episode, the reflective relationship between Kodak and Keem is reinforced by the album's strategic tracklist. When looking at the mirrored version of the two discs, where each song on disc 1 has a corresponding reflection on disc 2, "Save Your Interlude" is the direct reflection point of "Rich Interlude". Like "Rich Interlude" and its piano-only production, "Save Your Interlude" features a strings-only production. Both tracks have the same title structure, and both are the only two songs that do not feature Kendrick himself.

And so it's very clear that Kendrick wanted us to consider Kodak and Keem as a pair. Thematically, the two are presented as mirror images of each other, who are themselves reflections of Kendrick himself. And with Tolley's insight being the clue to what they might all share in common, Keem's opening lines start to make the reason for this pairing very clear.

♪♪

Keem opens his extended feature masterfully. You ever seen your mama strung out while you studied division? Your uncle ever stole from you day after Christmas? Seen both of those and them county jail visits. The first and the 15th, the only religion. It's hard to overstate just how well written this opening quatrain is, as Keem paints a succinct portrait of his childhood in just four bars.

Younger cousin of Kendrick Lamar, Hakeem Carter Jr. was born in Carson, California, a neighboring city to Compton, but was raised in Las Vegas. His dad was never in his life and his mother struggled with addiction. He told ID Magazine, quote, I grew up mainly with my grandma. It was just me and her. My family doesn't have a filter and you grow up quick. You know shit you're not supposed to know, seeing shit you're never supposed to see. I grew up with her and I was kind of her best friend.

I was a little kid, so all the stress that she had financially was laid on me, even if it was unintentional, unquote. With Keem's opening bar, we peek into a window of his childhood experience. He begins by pairing his mother's addiction with his learning division, which is typically done in third grade.

It's a striking juxtaposition presented as a genuine question. As we imagine Keem standing on the theater stage in this play, scored by cinematic strings, he's asking the audience, asking you directly, do you know what that's like? Like really think about those circumstances. Actually try to imagine processing that when you're 8 or 9 years old.

The dichotomy continues in the next question, as Keem asks if our uncle ever stole our Christmas presents when we were kids. Really imagine being a child in poverty on Christmas Day, finally opening presents you've been looking forward to all year, only to have them stolen from you by your own family member, presumably for drug money. It's a potent, tragic image of innocence lost. The magic of Christmas stolen from a child coupled with the disappointment and confusion that your own uncle, your blood relative, would steal from you.

Keem then implies that his family members were in and out of custody by citing his visits to the county jail to see them, and then cites his only religion was the 1st and the 15th, the days of the month in which government assistant checks are distributed. It not only conveys the poverty of his childhood, but also the lack of any spiritual guidance or faith that might help offset his circumstances.

While Keem's questions here at the start of his verse are rhetorical, there's two people we know for sure that could answer those questions with a resounding yes. Kendrick Lamar and Kodak Black. They know exactly what that's like. For Kendrick, the question hits close to home, literally, as Kendrick also had the experience of an older relative stealing from him for drug money.

Keem continues his verse with a mosaic of images from his childhood. Noodles in the microwave, Shark Tank tidal wave, grandma shooting N-words, blood on the highway. Each image lends an impression, almost like how memories work. Microwave noodles implies poverty, while Shark Tank seems like a reference to growing up in front of the television.

but also to real threats of violence. This gives way to an image of witnessing his grandmother shooting a gun. Blood on the Highway is a horror movie from 2008, so Keem seems to be continuing his blend of TV violence and real life violence that pervaded his complex childhood. Most kids only see violence in TV and movies, yet for Keem, Kodak, and Kendrick, it was part of their everyday reality.

Joey

♪♪ ♪♪

One of the more striking sequences of Keem's verse begins when he raps, I want to take everything that I ask for. Catch me a body, I'll put that on anybody but my mama. Directly after describing seeing his grandmother shoot someone, Keem expresses his intuition to take or steal what he wants.

and is willing to catch a body or take a life to do so. It directly reflects the bars we just heard from Kodak, who witnessed an armed robbery at 9 years old, and then mirrored that behavior when he was older. Keem then plays off catching a body by saying he'd put that on any body but his mother, then continues by saying, she's showing a pattern for certain, I think it's white panties and minimal condoms. It's more body wordplay, alluding to his mother's sexual body count.

It's not exactly clear what Keem's implying here. It could be he saw a lot of men coming in and out of the house or that she was involved in sex work. In any case, it's another less than ideal image of his childhood.

The tragic irony of so many men around yet not having a male role model. Then just like the verse's opening sequence of lines, Keem follows the mention of his mother with a mention of his uncle. Rapping, my uncle would tell me the shit in the movies could only be magic. This year I did 43 shows and took it all home to buy him a casket.

Keem calls back to the TV and movie motif here, relaying how a male figure in his life didn't tell him to follow his dreams, but rather the opposite, that the better life he sees in movies isn't obtainable for people like him. Like Kodak did on both Rich Interlude and Silent Hill, Keem juxtaposes this with his current success touring the country and making money from his music, conveying how he beat the odds and obtained some of that movie magic.

However, the tragic irony is that his uncle died when he was living out that dream, and that magic money paid for his funeral. While we can't know for certain, given Keem's young age, it would seem this uncle died an early death, and if it's the same uncle from the intro, substance abuse might have been the cause.

Outro Music

Keem mentions yet another family member as he raps, "'Cousin in the courts, heard he jumped off the porch, turn a brick to a Porsche, I'm good, love.'" This seems to refer not to his cousin Kendrick Lamar, but another successful cousin of his, former NBA player Nick Young, who is also cousins with Kendrick. With this in mind, we understand the extended entendre Keem executes here, blending basketball and selling drugs.

Cousin in the courts refers to cul-de-sacs and basketball courts. He jumped off the porch is slang for someone who decides to hustle in the streets, but also alludes to physical jumping, the athletic ability required in the NBA. Finally, turned a brick to a Porsche plays with money made from bricks of drugs, but also to bricks as in missed basketball shots, which almost certainly alludes to the famous Nick Young meme, where he prematurely celebrates a shot that he misses, that bricks. The

The mention of a Porsche gives way to some vehicle wordplay. As Keem raps, catch us, you know I'm gonna rack up. Catch us plays off the fast sports car, while rack up can mean anything from racking up points in the NBA, wins on a racetrack, and or racking up piles of money. This gives way to I need the advance and the equity to match up.

The multi-layered wordplay sustains here, as matchup is a term often used in competitive sports, be it the NBA or race cars. However, Keem is also saying he needs the advance money and equity or ownership of his music, not one or the other, but both. This direct nod to his music gets us to the next line, the engineer dead if the drive don't back up.

On the surface, Keem is threatening his studio engineer if they fail to back up the hard drive containing his music, the thing that supports him, the thing that allowed him to transcend his childhood circumstances. But engineer is also a play on a car's engine, while drive is again what a car does but also plays on a drive to the hoop in basketball. This exquisite mastery of words is so good it could only be sourced from the divine. Thus, Keem proclaims, "These words come of God, you can never out-rap us."

This line reflects the same proclamations Kendrick made on both Rich Spirit and Worldwide Steppers. We also heard Kodak reflect a similar sentiment back on Rich Interlude.

Understanding the circumstances they were born into and the odds stacked against them, Keem, Kendrick and Kodak can't help but feel their musical talents are direct gifts from God. How

However, these gifts and the money and the influence they carry also brings about moral and ethical challenges, a central theme of Mr. Morale. And as Keem continues, we hear him address one of the issues we've heard Kendrick struggle with all album long, a lust for women.

Catch a body, put the product in the totter Nigga 'bout to get some pussy, give me five Gun dirty, got the 30 in the purse, purse Tight bitch, put a perky in the sack I gotta pray for the basic I never seen my niggas bust down faces Them niggas not tasteless I only had one chance, I ain't even wasted

Keem details his experience with a woman, which we might assume he's with because he's wealthy and famous. He raps, Keem flips his previous use of catching a body, this time referring to picking up a woman and putting her in his car.

presumably to go have sex with her, adding to his body count. He brags to his friends about the encounter, looking for a high five or approval. It's yet another expression of astonishment, as we get the sense Keem can't believe the kind of women he's now able to pull with his money and fame. He continues with more clever wordplay. Gun dirty, got the 30 in the purse. Tight bitch put a perky in her salad.

The 30 here is the double entendre, referring to both the compact Glock 30 gun in her purse as well as the M30 or Percocet pill she puts in her salad. This makes the tight and tight bitch an entendre as well, referring to her tight body she maintains by eating salad but also denoting that she is uptight and thus takes a Percocet to mellow her out. This might be what Keem was referring to when he said "the city girl had a new hobby." This scene with the woman gives us an impression of the influences Keem is up against.

Like Kodak and Kendrick, drugs, sex, and violence are available to Keem now in abundance. He's still incredibly young and his upbringing didn't seem to offer much in the way of role models or spiritual guidance. How will he handle himself with so many vices at his disposal?

Been down on my luck when I fall I gotta get up, I gotta get back up and ball R.I.P. under my people, I'm proud of my people, I'm proud of my dogs My ex got a Beamer, she want me to see it, I still ain't gon' see it late, okay I low and it ratchet, I don't do her paddock, I still do the watches, the O-way She think I'm conceited, I'm thinkin' bout cheatin', I don't do the flowers or roleplay Now how can I fold, lookin' at 20 million, this money don't come with a probate

Keem breaks into a more melodic section of his extended feature singing "Been down on my luck, been down on my luck when I fall. I gotta get up, I gotta

I gotta get back up and ball. This is a direct reflection of Act 2's opener Count Me Out, a song that features the choral refrain, and I'm tripping and falling. It's an acknowledgement of life's ups and downs, and the importance of getting back on your feet when you inevitably fall. One of the reasons for Keem's low moments may be implied in the following lines, R.I.P. under my people, I'm proud of my people, I'm proud of my dogs. Like Kendrick and Kodak, Keem has experienced his fair share of loss, of grief.

making him even prouder of the wins of his community, those who survived their rough environment and thrived despite their circumstances. He then continues sharing how his ex-girlfriend got a BMW and wants him to see it, but he won't, likely because he recognizes she's trying to lure him back because he's famous or that he's genuinely not interested in a real relationship. Because as he says next, I love when they ratchet. I don't do her protect. I still do the watches the old way. She think I'm conceited. I'm thinking about cheating. I don't do the flowers or roleplay.

Here we get a sense of Keem's intuition to womanize, to cheat, just like Kendrick. There's wordplay in the word ratchet, referring to both a quote-unquote trashy woman, but also to the mechanical ratchet used in watch construction. This gives way to his line about not buying her a Patek, an expensive luxury watch that wouldn't suit a ratchet girl, but also nods to the fact that he isn't here to wine and dine women. He doesn't do the flowers or roleplay. He just wants sex.

He then continues, now how can I fold looking at $20 million? This money don't come with a probate. Keem sees a net worth of $20 million in his future, and that money is self-earned. It wasn't an inheritance. It didn't come through a probate court. While there is technically a literal meaning here, we also understand Keem is talking broadly about his life.

How his current success as a young man and the enormous opportunity to build on that success in his future was not something that was handed to him, and surely his childhood circumstances only made his path more difficult. This gives way to the line "Mama, I said I'd be okay." It's an endearing way to end this passage, calling back to the opening lines about his mother struggling with addiction. Despite his circumstantial inheritance being less than ideal, he assures his mother that he made it out okay.

I got this shit bragging in four days Four eyes, four eyes, two eyes Switch sides, nigga be fresh out Suicide doors, I suicide, suicide Lambo body, who gon' stop me? Baby, Keem is too wild Function at the temple Jesus pieces in the luau Mr. Morale

The instrumental transitions from strings to piano, closing the interlude on a more intimate note. Keem raps "I got this shit bracken in four days," a nod to just how rapid his rise to fame has been. Keem started making music in high school and by the time he was just 18, he had production credits for Beyonce, J-Rock, and Schoolboy Q.

At 18, he also released his first solo project "Die for My Bitch", which gained him considerable buzz before Kendrick's public cosign. While the specifics are different, this journey essentially mirrors Kodak Blacks, who was also just 18 when he found national success with music.

Kodak is just three years older than Keem, a similarity in age that adds to the mirrored aspect of their pairing. Importantly, Keem contrasts his overnight success with potent wordplay, rapping, switch sides, n-word be fresh out suicide doors, I suicide suicide.

The surface meaning is that Baby Keem has spent some of his newfound money on a car with suicide doors, which are hinged at the rear, not the front, hence switched sides. It's most likely referring to a Rolls Royce Coupe, one of the more popular modern luxury cars with suicide doors.

Uncoincidentally, this is a direct reflection point with Kodak's verse on Silent Hill, where he raps about a Rolls Royce that he describes as a suicide coup.

Like Kodak's suicide coup was a funeral, Keem plays with the idea of suicide doors proximity to actual suicide or death. He repeats "I suicide suicide" to describe the danger that comes with young adults like Keem and Kodak being handed so much money and influence at such a young age, especially considering their upbringing. Thus we get the lines "Lambo body, who gon' stop me, baby Keem is too wild."

Lambo or Lamborghini continues the car motif and he's asking, who's going to stop me from spending my money so recklessly? Who's going to stop me from driving these sports cars, these toys, so recklessly? At the same time, Keem could also be talking about a woman's body.

And in this sense, he's asking, who's going to stop me from sleeping with a bunch of women? Because as he said, he's too wild. This gives way to the final lines, which present two back-to-back dichotomies, function at the temple, Jesus' pieces in the luau. This creates a full circle moment. Recall Keem's feature began with back-to-back dichotomies, where he described how the innocence of his childhood was tainted by the sin of the adults around him.

Keem began the verse describing the disjunction of his childhood and now ends the verse describing the disjunction of his current day. A party or function at a temple or place of spiritual worship and a diamond Jesus piece or pendant worn at a luau.

another word for party or function. It's also likely that the peace doubles for a gun, similar to the 30 kept in the purse from earlier in the verse. This closing couplet is baby Keem's too wild lifestyle. He's prioritizing parties over spiritual guidance, Jesus' pieces or material possessions over Jesus himself. Alternatively, we can also interpret it as describing Keem's own dichotomous nature, someone who is both spiritual and ratchet, reflecting exactly the dual meaning of rich spirits.

Like both Kodak and Kendrick, Keem is experiencing the tension between being rich financially and spiritually. He's also experiencing the way his new lifestyle has the ability to devour his spirit if he's not careful, if he's unable to navigate it correctly. Indeed, over the course of Savior Interlude, we've heard Baby Keem's intuition to spend his money recklessly and exploit his fame to womanize.

the very vices Kendrick described falling victim to throughout Mr. Morale, vices that were also reflected in Kodak Black's features. At the same time, just like Kodak and Kendrick, Keem also shared the traumatic circumstances of his childhood, and as Tully suggested at the beginning of the track, this baggage is carried into adulthood,

and has made all three men predisposed to the same vulnerabilities. These vulnerabilities become magnified when suddenly they have money, power, and influence at an incredibly young age without any role models to help them. Kodak and Keem had no father figures, nor were they raised with any spiritual or religious guidance.

As Kodak said on Rich Interlude, "A bunch of lost souls in survival mode. It wasn't no way for us unless we found our own." Thus, Baby Keem's final words on Savior Interlude are essentially a plea, a cry for help, as he calls out into the void for Mr. Morale. Keem and Kodak are looking for moral and spiritual direction. They're looking for a father and the father. They are looking for a savior. "Kendrick made you think about it, but he is not your savior."

Cole made you feel empowered, but he is not your savior. Of course, this is Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers' next track, Savior. A song we'll examine note by note, line by line, next time on Dissect. If you enjoyed today's episode, please leave a comment, share with a friend, or post about Dissect on social media. It all really helps. You can also support the show by purchasing limited Season 13 merchandise at dissectpodcast.com. Alright, thanks everyone. Talk to you next week.

♪