S13E6 - Why is Kodak Black on Mr. Morale? Dissecting "Rich - Interlude"
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From the Ringer Podcast Network, this is Dissect, long-form musical analysis broken into short digestible episodes. This is episode six of our season-long analysis of Kendrick Lamar's Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers. I'm your host, Cole Kushner.

Last time on Dissect, we examined Mr. Morales' fifth track, Father Time. It was there we heard Kendrick scrutinize his relationship with his father and the lessons about masculinity he was taught as a child. Kendrick showed an understanding about how his father's own circumstances created a survivalist mentality in a society that's historically viewed black men as a threat, creating a need to protect oneself through strength, stoicism, and universal distrust of others.

While Kendrick recognizes why his father instilled these attributes in him, he also understands that these are simply another mask he wears that conceals his true innermost self. And this egoic pressure to maintain an impenetrable exterior has complicated Kendrick's ability to be vulnerable.

which he stated is a critical component of personal growth and communal evolution. He told Harper's Bazaar, "There is certainly no growth without vulnerability. If I understood the power of vulnerability earlier, I could have had more depth and more reach to the guys that was around me in the neighborhood growing up." At the end of Father Time, Kendrick speaks directly to those in his neighborhood, reminding them of the transcendent potential in recognizing and overcoming their mistakes.

Ending Father Time with a direct address to individuals and his community creates a direct thematic pipeline into Mr. Morales' next track, the subject of our episode today, Rich Interlude.

While it's not uncommon for albums to include musical interludes, Rich Interlude stands out for a number of reasons.

For one, Kendrick himself doesn't even appear on the track at all. Rather, all vocals are performed by rapper Kodak Black. Also, the musical landscape is quite minimal compared to everything we've heard on the album to this point. It's essentially a duet, just Kodak and pianist Duvall Timothy. Understanding that Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers is presented as a theater piece, we should consider Rich Interlude more akin to an interlude in a play than an album.

In contemporary theater, interludes are used to transition between scenes or acts, functioning as a bridge to deepen the audience's understanding of the narrative, characters, or themes. They can provide a moment of reflection, a shift in mood, or introduce a new perspective. Clearly, Kendrick is doing the latter with Rich Interlude and Kodak Black.

We can imagine Kodak under a single spotlight, addressing the audience directly as the stage behind him discreetly changes sets. Kendrick giving such an intimate, overt platform to Kodak Black was clearly an intentional decision, one that he knew would cause some controversy. Of course, the big question is, why?

Why would Kendrick not only feature Kodak Black on the album, but make him a central character in this theatrical play? Well, trying to answer that question is the main objective of today's episode. And to do so, we're going to take a few brief contextual detours before analyzing the music and lyrics of Rich Interlude. In a few minutes, we'll unpack Kodak Black's backstory and the reasons why he's such a controversial figure.

But first we're going to discuss something I've been saving the entire season to this point, and that's revealing what specific type of play or piece of theatre Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers might be modelled after. Now theatre as a performing art has its roots in the ritual dramas of ancient Egypt.

where they would honor the gods by reenacting myths while wearing masks, sometimes with musical accompaniment. Legends of these ritual dramas helped inspire the development of ancient Greek theater beginning in the 6th century BCE. Like the Egyptians, Greek theater began as religious ceremonies meant to honor the gods, and also included masks. Eventually, these evolved into Greek tragedies,

which are plays based on Greek mythology that often dealt with morality, learning what's right from wrong. These early tragedies evolved to feature a musical chorus and three actors, who wore multiple masks to portray different characters, something we discussed on our N95 episode in regards to the history of the word hypocrite.

These early Greek tragedies formed the foundation of what is now considered theater, the long and rich evolution of which is too much to cover for our purposes today. So we're going to jump a few hundred years ahead to medieval theater in Europe around the 15th century. It was during this time that an incredibly popular type of play developed called the morality play. Morality plays were rooted in Christian values, but used the entertainment medium of theater to teach moral lessons to a population that was widely uneducated and illiterate.

The central theme addressed in morality plays was the fight between good and evil and the soul of every human being. To express this universal conflict, morality plays contained a distinct feature. The characters in the story were obvious personifications of specific vices like gluttony, envy, or lust, and specific virtues like charity, goodwill, or beauty.

These personifications were transparently named after what they represented, leaving no room for a misinterpretation. For instance, the character personifying goodness would be named good, the character personifying lust would be named lust, and so on. Most often, the main character of a morality play was the personification of all of mankind. Or if the play was intended for a specific community, he represented that community or demographic. For example, the most enduring morality play is aptly titled Everyman,

which is also the name of its main character. In the story, God decides that every man has become too obsessed with material possessions and is ignorantly leading a sinful life, forgetting the importance of goodwill and the potential threat of eternal hellfire. So God summons death to escort every man to him, and every man learns that all his good and evil deeds on earth will be tallied and accounted for in a spiritual trial.

On his way to God, every man tries to get a number of different characters to accompany him. Characters like fellowship, cousin, wisdom, beauty, and strength. However, all these characters ultimately abandon every man. The only one that stays with him to the end is good deeds.

Thus, the play overtly suggests that possessions and relationships are fleeting. The only thing that truly matters is the goodwill you contribute to the world. Because in the end, every man will be judged by God alone based on their individual actions and choices. It's the story of humanity told through the story of one individual human.

Every man is a reflection of every man, suggesting that there is a universal journey all individuals take in this lifetime. Now, understanding the basic framework of a morality play, let's return to Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers, which as we've discussed all season, is clearly presented as a piece of theater.

Like a morality play, Kendrick is communicating deep spiritual and philosophical ideas about the meaning of existence in a widely accessible, entertaining medium. There's also the most obvious connection in the album's title. Mr. Morale is a moniker that blatantly evokes the concept of morality.

It quite literally personifies Morality with the surname "Mister". This directly resembles the overt names of personified characters and Morality plays like Everyman. Moreover, Kendrick's other moniker on the album is "OK Lama", which we first heard introduced by Kodak Black during the introduction of Worldwide Steppers.

Recall that we interpreted "Ok Lama" as meaning "my people", inspired by the Choctaw translation of the Bible. This theory is supported by Ok Lama's quote at the beginning of the Heart Part 6 music video, which reads "I am all of us". Thus, it seems very clear that both Ok Lama and Mr. Morale are intended to represent or personify larger concepts beyond Kendrick Lamar. That the individual story of Ok Lama or Mr. Morale is meant to reflect the universal story of humanity.

the worldwide steppers. There is of course a specific emphasis on Kendrick's community of black people living in America, which we may view more broadly as representing oppressed minorities throughout the history of human civilization. And so if Kendrick is using characters in his play to represent larger concepts, then what about the supporting characters of Mr. Morales' morality play, Kodak Black, Eckhart Tolle, Whitney, and Baby Keem, who will also have his own interlude later on the album? Well, today we're going to focus on Kodak Black.

And to understand what he represents, we have to know his story.

Born Dyson Octave in 1997, Kodak Black is a child of Haitian immigrants and grew up in Pompano Beach, Florida, a mid-sized city just outside of Miami. Kodak and his mother lived in the Golden Acre Section 8 housing projects in the most impoverished area of the city. When asked about his relationship with his father, a 17-year-old Kodak described himself as a bastard child, saying, quote,

My father is not even in my life. My father's side of my family, they don't even acknowledge me." Kodak started rapping in elementary school when he'd frequent a trap house that also contained recording equipment. "I was rapping, I was coming home every day after school, in a trap house just rapping. I wasn't selling no drugs, I was just in elementary school. I was just coming to rap."

This song from 2009 is the earliest published song featuring Kodak Black, recorded when he was just 12 years old. Back then he went by the name J Black and was part of a local group called the Brutal Youngins. While originally just visiting the trap house strictly to record music while still in elementary school, he eventually began participating in the same crimes the older kids around him were doing. Quote, how they kept themselves up?

I wanted to keep up too. Whatever they motto was, that became my motto. I looked up to them. Whatever I see them do, I did too." Thus began Kodak's long-running trouble with the law. He was expelled from elementary school for fighting in the fifth grade, and in middle school he was put into a youth detention center three times in one year.

While in high school, Kodak began releasing songs like "Ambition" as a solo artist, where he raps about his determination to transcend his circumstances by making it big as an artist. In 2013, at the age of 16, he released his debut mixtape "Project Baby,"

The tape brought him regional notoriety thanks to songs like "Signs" where Kodak talks about witnessing an armed robbery at the age of nine.

So I got up and went out on my grind Cause I used to cry cause ain't no fool in the house Seeing all the older niggas, man they used to shine Used to have the pretty girls and I just hoped that they was mine Hypnotized, I was just nine Black boy rocked the niggas right in front of my eyes Racked and killed time, the years flew by Till I got old enough to run up on you with a nine

Project Baby was the beginning of Kodak's rapid rise to stardom. The following year, in 2014, he released another mixtape, Heart of the Projects, which included the breakout hit Skrt and No Flockin'.

After the success of Heart of the Projects and a Drake cosign, a freshly 18-year-old Kodak Black signed to Atlantic Records in October of 2015. The very same month he was charged with his first major criminal charges: robbery, battery, two counts of false imprisonment of a child under 13, three counts of false imprisonment of an adult, driving with a suspended license, and possession of marijuana.

This would begin a parallel journey for Kodak, amassing hit records and criminal charges at an equal pace. Shortly after being released on bail, Kodak dropped his third mixtape, Institution. Two months later, in February of 2016, he performed a show in Florence County, South Carolina, where he attended an after-party at the Comfort Inn and Suites. It was here that Kodak was accused of raping a high school girl in a hotel room, where he allegedly forced the victim onto the bed,

and later the floor, bit her neck and breast, all while she repeatedly told him no and to stop. The victim reported the attack the next day to a school nurse, and her injuries were documented by a sexual assault kit. The alleged assault was not publicly reported until August, six months after the incident. In that time, Kodak was arrested for drug and weapons possession, then released on bail, only to be arrested again for outstanding warrants.

While in jail, Kodak was included in XXL's 2016 Freshman Class, an honor bestowed on hip-hop's hottest rising artists. He also dropped another mixtape, Lil Big Pak, his first to hit the Billboard Hip Hop charts.

After three months in jail, Kodak's release was halted by open warrants for drug possession, for which he was sentenced to 120 days in prison. Upon his release in November of 2016, Kodak was extradited to South Carolina to finally face the sexual battery charge.

and was released on bail a few days later. This set up 2017 to be Kodak's breakout year in the mainstream. In March, he released his debut studio album, Painting Pictures, featuring the single Tunnel Vision. The song was a top 10 hit, and the album debuted at number three on the Billboard 200 chart. ♪ I pull at the door like it's U.N. ♪

Along with his raps and rap sheet, Kodak was also becoming known for his unpredictable behavior during interviews and on social media. In January of 2017, his interview with The Breakfast Club went viral as Kodak donned a face-concealing ski mask and mumbled barely audible phrases. Is the fame and money happening for you too fast? Because it comes a point in time like your money might grow more than you are because you still got a foot in the street, I'm sure.

That's a nice one right there too. That's why I be hollering at God and stuff too. Does he holler back? Yeah, he do.

It might have been hard to understand, but when asked about how he's dealing with the sudden fame and fortune, Kodak responded by saying he talks to God.

Then when asked if he had any mentors to help him, he could only provide a hypothetical answer in Master P, the southern hip-hop business mogul, someone he's never actually spoken to. Kodak's legal issues continued into 2018, when he was arrested on seven felony charges stemming from an Instagram Live showing him passing drugs and a gun around his young child.

He was sentenced to a year in prison and released in August of 2018. During this same year, Kodak had his biggest year in music to date. Led by the hit single ZZ, his second studio album Dying to Live debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 chart. But despite reaching new heights musically, the 21-year-old Kodak's success was very much tainted by the sexual assault allegations.

At the end of 2018, after Kodak was released from prison, he appeared on Hot 97, where the visibly conflicted host Ebro brought up the case. You know, we take sexual assault here serious. And we can't, you know, get into details, but we hope, you know, to have you back so we can have a deeper conversation about that because, you know, this is a serious topic and we're hearing these stories a lot. You seem upset that I brought it up. I feel like...

Sometimes when niggas like me going through shit, like y'all be entertained by bullshit. You know what I'm talking about? So it was like, change the subject or I'm finna walk out. Change which subject? Just whatever. No, they tried to change the subject. They was talking about the moon landing. That's bullshit too. So talk about something else. Well, I was saying, I think... We don't have to talk about nothing else. We could be done right here. All right, I'm gone. Say less. That's a bummer.

Kodak wouldn't go to trial for the sexual assault case until 2021. Before then, Kodak had been serving his longest prison stint for making false statements on firearm purchase paperwork. President Trump commuted his 46-month sentence in January of 2021, and by April of the same year, Kodak was back in court to finally face the first-degree sexual assault charges.

He faced up to 30 years if convicted. However, he accepted a plea deal. In exchange for the rape charges being dropped, Kodak pled guilty to a lesser charge of first-degree assault and battery. He was sentenced to 18 months of probation, a $125 fine, and mandatory counseling. The deal also stipulated that he take full accountability for his actions and publicly apologize, which he did in court saying quote, "I apologize.

However, after the court case closed, Kodak's attorney issued a statement saying, Having consistently denied these five-year-old allegations, Kodak entered this plea in order to resolve the matter."

Kodak would also publicly deny the rape allegations several times after the plea deal, and he seemed to brag about the fact that he didn't have to pay her any money. This is the excessive baggage the 24-year-old Kodak Black carried with him as he took the stage on Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers.

Understandably, a considerable number of people took issue with Kendrick's decision to platform him in this way. Some felt it disregarded the victim and excused Kodak from true accountability, which only perpetuates a cycle of abuse against women. Some felt it undermined, complicated, or even contradicted Kendrick's overall message on the album. Some felt it was simply morally wrong to support an accused rapist in any way.

Of course, these are all valid feelings, and I'm not here to convince anyone out of feeling uncomfortable about Kodak's presence on the album. However, what I am here to do, what Dissect attempts to do in general, is to understand and illuminate why this creative decision was made, what it might mean, and how it contributes to the overall narrative, themes, and message of the project.

How you end up personally feeling about it all, that's of course up to you. And so with that said, we'll continue our exploration of Rich Interlude by listening to what Kodak has to say on the track, then try to understand what his presence on the album is meant to represent in the morality play of Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers. That's right after the break.

I learned entrapping in the business, smart people making horrible decisions, you know? Rich niggas get my dick sucked after the show, but I ain't gonna lie, we were poor. A bunch of lost souls in survival mode, they want to wait for us unless we find our own.

Kodak Black begins Richard's allude rapping, I learn entrapment in the business. It's not entirely clear to me whether he says I learn entrappin' or entrapment. Trappin' would refer to selling drugs, while entrapment is a legal defense that refers to a government official, such as a police officer, who uses threats, fraud, or harassment to coerce someone to commit a crime they wouldn't ordinarily commit.

"Entrapment is most involved in drug dealing cases, so it's entirely possible Kodak is intentionally playing with both terms here, describing how he learned to sell drugs and the business of the streets, and how he learned terms like entrapment through his many legal trials." The following line adds additional depth however, as he says "smart people making horrible decisions."

This widens the scope of entrapment from a single incident or individual to describe the general circumstances of people raised in impoverished environments like Kodak Black and Kendrick Lamar. Anyone with basic knowledge of American history understands how the centuries of enslavement, segregation, racism, discrimination, and bias against Black people created places like the Golden Acres housing projects.

Kodak posits being born and raised in these environments is itself a form of entrapment created by America, forcing otherwise smart individuals to make bad choices to survive. Choices they wouldn't otherwise be forced to make had they been born with a different skin color and/or in better economic conditions.

The line also tangentially relates to Worldwide Steppers, where Kendrick argued that everyone is a killer, a big stepper. It's just some of us kill more quietly or slowly than others. The song raised ideas about human nature, how we're all born with the potential to do both good and evil, and how one's environment or life conditions or upbringing can influence the choices that we make. Kodak's suggestion that good or smart people can knowingly do bad things continues this train of thought.

implying that our actions don't always align with our potential and that behavior is more complicated than it sometimes appears. The dichotomy of smart people doing stupid things gives way to the next line, "Rich n-word gettin' my dick sucked after the show. I ain't gonna lie, we were poor." Here the dichotomy is rich and poor. While Kodak is technically wealthy and exploits his wealth and fame for sexual favors, he admits he still feels poor in spirit. The framing of the lines implies a connection.

It's because he feels poor or unworthy that he seeks validation and wealth in women. That dynamic should sound familiar, because it's exactly what Kendrick described in United in Grief and Worldwide Steppers, where he admitted to indulging in materialism and women to validate his ego and escape his trauma and grief. Kodak then continues, a bunch of lost souls in survival mode. It wasn't no way for us unless we found our own.

The meaning is rather transparent here, as Kodak paints a picture of directionless individuals forced to adapt to their environment, forced to do what they must to survive. Lost Souls here feels especially potent. Within the context of Mr. Morale as a whole, the phrase continues the album's subtle emphasis on the human condition and its questions about the fundamental influences behind our actions.

Are we all pure souls at birth, born into bodies and circumstances that we adapt to, for better or for worse? Is our behavior simply the result of environmental conditioning, or is it some other influence? Once we're old enough to take responsibility for our decisions, can we truly control our actions, or is our conditioning too strong? And if it's the latter, if our environmental conditioning forces smart people to make horrible decisions, how exactly does one transcend that conditioning? Can a lost soul ever be redeemed?

Runnin' in stores, kickin' in doors, nigga, give me my glory. Nigga, play with me, he ain't gonna live to tell the story. This the type of shit we glorify. Everybody game, game. Most of the people that you grew up with, man, chain game. When the box get pink, nigga, shit where you sleep. Nigga, shit where you eat.

Kodak continues his spoken word piece describing violent robberies, rapping, running in stores, kicking in doors, give me my glory. This latter line, give me my glory, feels significant. It's not money or possessions that's being taken. It's glory. It's power. It's respect and recognition by one's peers. It is, in essence, validation. In the environment of survival Kodak's describing, being successful at crime is a means to this end.

It's proving oneself worthy and able to provide. When reduced to its essence like this, we see that the motivation behind these crimes is no different than any other act of ambition. It's just that these men have adapted to their specific environment, where crime is seen as a central means of upward mobility.

However, Kodak is quick to point out the tragic irony of this dynamic, as he says, "You know, the type of shit we glorify: everybody gang gang. Most of the people that you grew up with are now in the chain gang." Kodak acknowledges how street gangs are a direct pipeline to chain gangs or prison time. Specifically saying, chain gangs evokes the history of this practice, which is itself emblematic of the history of the American prison system and its exploitation of black people. After the Civil War, the 13th Amendment abolished slavery.

except as a punishment for a crime. Thus began a system of exploitative prison labor that targeted black people in order to replace the labor shortage created by the abolition of slavery. A collection of laws called Black Codes criminalized everyday activities for African Americans, leading to their mass incarceration and enabling states to lease mostly black prisoners to plantation owners and corporations, perpetuating slave-like conditions.

Chain gangs eventually replaced this convict leasing system in the South during the 1890s and early 1900s. Prisoners were shackled together and forced to work on road projects under grueling conditions, including armed guards and whips. Because chain gangs worked in public, they became morbid spectacles of chattel slavery and torture, eventually gaining worldwide attention for their brutal working conditions.

After over 30 years of practice, chain gangs were abolished nationally by the 1950s, almost 100 years after the end of the Civil War. However, it wasn't long before America concocted a new plan to target black people. America's infamous war on drugs enacted stricter drug laws that led to the tripling of incarceration rates, which coincidentally occurred at the same time the country adopted its for-profit, privatized prison system.

a now multi-billion dollar industry. The war on drugs disproportionately affected black men, as they were convicted for drug offenses 13 times more often than other races, even though they only comprised 13% of regular drug users. While obviously we're just scratching the surface of the American prison system here, its transparently racist legacy is undoubtedly present in Kodak's reference to all his childhood friends being in chain gangs, evoking the notion that black men in America will either be dead or in jail by the age of 25.

thus kodak continues the verse expressing astonishment about beating the odds and finding material success with music who ever knew that i'd become a kodak rap with the good but i'm still from the gas through the hood dropping all places to the film like thanksgiving got the baby sniper standing on that merc business yeah slime fiat they ready for whatever i always knew that everything would get better and the show got greater later

Kodak continues his spoken word piece, whoever knew I'd become a fucking Kodak. Clever wordplay with his moniker here, as Kodak refers to both his ascension to rap stardom as Kodak Black and to Kodak photographs, meaning he's a poster child for street success, a true rags to riches story.

However, he immediately makes clear that financial success does not immune him from the streets as he writes: "Rat money good, but I'm still pumping gas through the hood. Dropping off plates to the fam like Thanksgiving." More wordplay here as "pumping gas" and "dropping off plates" is slang for selling drugs. At the same time, he's also referencing his charitable contributions.

like in 2021 when he donated 5,000 turkeys to South Florida families in need for Thanksgiving. He then continues detailing street activities by nodding to the shooters he keeps to protect him, saying they are ready for whatever. Kodak being unable to transcend a street mentality after finding material success

exemplifies something Kendrick Lamar has been attempting to illuminate since finding his own success with music. It was a central theme in To Pimp a Butterfly, where Kendrick documented his struggle with fully overcoming the mental conditioning of growing up in Compton, even after becoming a millionaire.

Kendrick's struggle with transcending an institutionalized mindset continued into Damn, where he battles with being seen as a spiritual leader while harboring fantasies of murdering another black man out of vengeance, contributing to the retaliatory cycles of violence that plague his community.

Throughout their careers, both Kendrick and Kodak express how sudden wealth and fame does not dissolve decades of mental conditioning and environmental adaptation.

Kodak's criminal rap sheet after his success is proof, as is Kendrick's battle with sex addiction, relationship issues, and other vices he's exposed on this very album. Indeed, the majority of Kendrick's discography has contended with exactly how one transcends the trauma of their childhood.

With the idea being that if he could figure this out for himself, he could share that information with his community, helping to put the lost souls in survival mode like Kodak on a pathway towards healing. All the gain came from the elders like, "Hit me down." Me and my brothers went, "Hit me down." Now I'm giving gain back to the old heads. And the respect come first. Yeah, you know, can't be better than the OGs. You gotta get it somewhere. Gotta come from something. Gotta come from nothing.

when you see him it's coming there's more than a blessing what you doing with country what you doing with a legend so what they call you kodak continues by describing an exchange of knowledge amongst community members where elders pass down survival tactics and wisdom gained through lived experience kodak acutely compares this dynamic to hammy down clothing to evoke the impoverished conditions in which they were raised

One such piece of wisdom is respecting one's elders, and Kodak goes on to describe why this is considered law, rapping: "Can't be better than the OGs. You gotta get it somewhere. Gotta come from something." It's a potent sequence of lines, as it implies the limited resources for children in his community. The OGs, or the more experienced people around him in the streets, are his only source for education, for how to conduct oneself and survive.

As he says, you gotta get it from somewhere. In other words, children are going to look for guidance wherever it's available. And as we heard in Father Time, the lessons of stoic masculinity might prepare you for survival in a harsh environment, but they also create deep-seated emotional and psychological issues that are difficult to unlearn, complicating relationships and assimilation into more affluent segments of society. Kodak then expresses more astonishment about his success, framing it as a miracle of sorts.

He raps, "God don't come from nothing. We ain't seen this coming. It's more than a blessing. What are you doing with Kendrick? What are you doing with the legend?"

so what they call you. Kodak calls out the improbable pairing of him and Kendrick, perhaps expressing his own surprise at getting that call, as well as predicting the public's reaction to it. It's another unlikely event in the anomalous life of Kodak Black, who can't view his own success as anything other than a gift from God.

Kodak closes his verse by emphasizing the fatherless, poverty-stricken environment of his community. He cites having to either steal or go hungry, then references a few assistance programs like the Red Cross Food Banks and the WIC, a program that supports low-income women, infants, and children who are at nutritional risk.

Kodak's final line then contrasts these conditions with its current circumstances, saying, now look at this shit, we own property. Owning property is generally viewed as one of the best investments to accumulate sustained financial success. It's also an asset that can be passed down to future generations, creating generational wealth.

However, black people in America were strategically denied access to this opportunity for decades through the practice of redlining. Beginning in the 1930s, banks and government entities denied mortgages and financial services to residents of predominantly black neighborhoods, effectively segregating communities. These black neighborhoods were marked in red on maps and labeled as high-risk investments, regardless of the resident's individual credit standing.

While redlining was banned in 1968, its legacy persists, contributing to racial wealth gaps and racial disparities in homeownership. For example, a 2021 survey showed that while the national average for homeownership among white Americans is 72%, the average among black Americans is just 44%.

These types of racial inequalities built into the very fabric of America are why Kodak Black expresses astonishment at beating the odds stacked against him and his community. However, as he implies in other areas of the verse, financial freedom did not provide mental freedom.

You can't just hand a person the ingredients of a Michelin star dinner and expect them to suddenly become a Michelin star chef. Like Kendrick, Kodak was suddenly teleported from the projects to the public stage. Like Kendrick, Kodak struggles with acclimating to his new life and dissolving the hyper-masculine survival tactics he learned as a child. Like Kendrick, Kodak was once a good kid in a mad city.

a pure soul turned lost soul who learned to mirror the environment that raised him. And that environment, places like Florida's Golden Acre Projects or Compton's Nickerson Garden Projects, it represents centuries of white supremacy and structural biases that have defined America since its inception. Not only is Kodak Black a reflection of Kendrick Lamar, Kodak Black is a reflection of America itself.

Presenting an individual as a mirror of the country that raised them is something Kendrick has done before rather blatantly. At the end of the song XXX, Kendrick calls himself a reflection of America by potently rhyming "America" with "a mirror does." You set us up, then roll the dice, then bet us up. You overnight the big rifles, then tell Fox to be scared of us. Game members will tear us, etc., etc. America's reflections of me, that's what Ameri-does.

This idea of an individual representing an aspect of the whole finally brings us back to the question that began this episode. Why is Kodak black on Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers? What is he meant to represent in this theatrical morality play? Well, like we've been noting throughout this episode, Kodak and Kendrick have a lot in common. However, Kodak at this point in his life is a more potent representation of the environments that raised them both.

Despite how transparently Kendrick has portrayed himself and his community throughout his discography, his public image as the Pulitzer Prize-winning generational artist is now too polished to represent the more raw elements of his community like Kodak can. I actually think it's precisely because of Kodak's tarnished reputation that he's used symbolically on the album.

And Kendrick isn't the first to view Kodak in this way. When Kodak broke through as a teenager in 2016, Lawrence Burney wrote about Kodak Black being a necessary counterweight to artists like Kendrick Lamar and how together they create a more complete picture of the black experience in America. Quote, "For the same way we need tracks like Kendrick's joyous "Alright" and Beyonce's emotionally commanding "Freedom" to boost our morale,

We also need Kodak Black, and Future, and Chief Keef, and anyone else whose music we love to bounce to but simultaneously write off as detriments to our collective progression because they rap about popping pills, womanizing, and shooting guns. While these topics can make listeners squeamish, they are a reality of the struggle that many black people experience in this country.

It's unfair to expect every person who's raised in environments where such things are normalized to rise above them in one miraculous swoop. Each aforementioned artist's music has value because of what it lends to the narrative of our plights and triumphs. There's a long history of trauma that has led to the experiences of rappers like Kodak, and there will be no true victory or liberation until we value our whole story."

In this same piece, Bernie connects this history of trauma to a book by Joy DeGruy titled Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome, America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing. Quote, DeGruy uses six years of field study in places where people of African descent were colonized to liken the effects of systemic oppression to those of post-traumatic stress disorder.

She lists symptoms that include a feeling of foreshortened future, diminished interest or participation in significant activities, outbursts of anger, difficulty staying and falling asleep, and feelings of detachment from others. DeGruy points out that these symptoms were never collectively addressed by the U.S. government, and as a result, the fallout from that trauma is ongoing, unquote.

At the conclusion of Mr. Morale, Kendrick will explicitly speak to these very themes, drawing a direct connection to himself and the Kodak Blacks of the world.

And so on some level, within the thematic framework of the album, we have to view Kodak Black as a symbol of America and the failures of American history, which created the circumstances Kodak inherited at birth, circumstances that Kendrick will ultimately describe as a generational curse. Thus, between Kodak, Kendrick, and Eckhart Tolle, we are presented a spectrum of human experiences,

with Kodak seeming to represent someone still heavily influenced by the curse, Kendrick sharing his therapy-guided journey breaking free from the curse, and Eckhart Tolle representing a north star of spiritual enlightenment and transcendence, someone whose teachings can help guide people on their spiritual path of healing. Indeed, a foundational aspect of Tolle's work is helping people transcend what he calls the egoic state of unconsciousness.

a concept we discussed back on Worldwide Steppers. As a refresher, Tolle posits that most human beings act unconsciously in service of their ego, which endlessly seeks validation and manifests in behavior that is controlled by the mental conditioning of their environment. Unconscious human beings, unconscious human beings in the grip of their own conditioning, their own ego, they have virtually no free will.

When you are unconscious, you are controlled by the mind patterns that are lodged in your psyche. You cannot really speak of free will by somebody with zero awareness. And yet the entire makeup is conditioning from the past. So the famous sentence phrase used by Jesus,

in connection with forgiveness on the cross, he said, "Forgive them, for they know not what they do." In other words, if he had spoken these days using our terminology, he probably would have said, "They are completely unconscious." Now, when you see that, then you don't

Tolle's concept of unconsciousness seemed to influence Kendrick's characterization of humanity in Worldwide Steppers, which he defined as "killers and walking zombies trying to scratch the itch of their ego." Within this conceptual framework, Kodak Black is pretty clearly someone who's behaved unconsciously,

Thus, in this morality play, Kodak Black represents the Big Stepper, someone whose unconscious behavior has been heavily influenced by his extreme environmental conditioning, and someone who's inherited the difficult life task of transcending this conditioning. However, we must also consider that in Worldwide Steppers, Kendrick made it a point to universalize the symbol of the Big Stepper. He called everyone a killer, defined all of us as walking zombies.

In that episode, we discussed that Kendrick was attempting to illustrate that all human beings contain within them the potential to cause suffering and act unconsciously. Our upbringing and life circumstances influence how extreme these qualities are cultivated, but the potential is within all of us. Like Kendrick said, the noble person that goes to work and pray like they're supposed to, slaughter people too. Your murder's just a bit slower.

Understanding this, I believe Kendrick wants you to recognize a part of yourself in Kodak Black. He wants you to see yourself in him. He's actively challenging the way the world judges the Big Stepper, because through the lens of Eckhart Tolle's work, how we judge people like Kodak Black is ultimately a reflection of our own level of consciousness. What judgment really means in spiritual terms is to equate something that you see in another, a deficiency, a

that is regarded as not so good, to equate that with who that person is in their essence, their identity. If you make an identity out of it, then it's a judgment. The judgment becomes when you say he is or she is such and such. He's a liar. Let's say that. He's a liar.

Next time he comes, you're not meeting a human being, you're meeting a liar. And by doing that, you have yourself reduced yourself. You get trapped in your own judgments. The way in which you relate to this person is diminished. You're not relating freely anymore to that person. You yourself become constrained by your judgments because it will then control this, the mental concept will control your behavior towards him also.

So that's why I believe it was, when you judge, you judge yourself or something like that. So there we need to be careful when we make pronouncements about others, when we transform their behavior that we deem unconscious into an identity for them.

Tolle's assertion here adds depth to Mr. Moral's central symbol of a mirror. Because when we judge someone, we no longer see them as a human being. We see them as the label we construct for them. That label functions like a mirror, reflecting back to us our own egoic perspective.

Throughout his entire discography, Kendrick has challenged the way members of his community have been historically judged by society. Here he is explaining the album cover of "Tepemba Butterfly," which features a large group of Kendrick's friends from Compton, who he might also think about as big steppers. They stand in front of the White House towering over a white courthouse judge knocked out on the ground. That's a judge laid out on the ground. You look at these individuals and you know, you look at them as bad people or

Menace to society, but they're actually good people, you know, just a product of their environment. And the one person that always represent their lives negatively is the judge. You know, only God can judge these individuals right here. Not no one with a gavel handing out football numbers of years and not giving these kids a chance at life.

As Kendrick articulates here, having grown up with individuals like Kodak Black, who would fit right in on Tapimpa Butterfly's cover, Kendrick understands first-hand how these individuals are more than their unconscious actions, that beneath their environmental conditioning is a rich spirit capable of cultivation, if only they are more frequently offered patience, guidance, and understanding of the extremely challenging circumstances they inherited. But as

But as we see in the story of Kodak Black and others like him, many of these individuals get swept up into a historically biased judicial system at an incredibly young age, when environmental conditioning is most potent. So they are judged both by society and by literal judges, who symbolize a biased judicial system that has been historically weaponized against black people in America.

And I think this idea of judgment is ultimately at the heart of Kendrick's decision to feature Kodak as a character in his theatrical morality play, which is so much about attempting to better understand human behavior so that behavior might be corrected. Personally, Kodak's character and the context around him inspires a number of deep, eternal questions about the human condition. Like, why do we do what we do? Why do smart people sometimes make horrible decisions?

Why can't we change even when we want to? Where exactly is the line between free will and environmental conditioning? If Kodak Black were born into my personal circumstances with my genetic makeup, would he turn out different than me?

And if I were born with the same genetic makeup as Kodak into the same circumstance as he was, would I be any different? Is that even possible? If it is, does that mean people are simply born with better moral values than others? And if not, how do we then go about dealing with those who have inflicted extreme suffering onto others? Is incarceration or cancellation alone truly going to help the Kodak Blacks of the world?

Or do these responses also need to be supplemented with a more challenging degree of empathy, where we attempt to see ourselves in human beings that have done horrible things, understanding the potential for evil deeds resides in us all? Is empathy only reserved for those who show remorse or desire to change? Or can this empathy be cultivated by considering the history of suffering that created the environment of suffering that raised Kodak Black?

Can this empathy be cultivated by the teachings of Jesus, who ate with the sinners and said, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick." Can this empathy be cultivated by the teachings of Eckhart Tolle, who warns against making an identity out of someone's unconscious actions and challenges us to see the transcendent dimension in all human beings?

And finally, can this empathy be cultivated through the art of Kendrick Lamar, who chose to platform a controversial Big Stepper in order to challenge our judgement of him and others like him? Or is all of this simply an attempt to justify behavior that is morally reprehensible? Period. End of story. Ultimately, I think these are the kinds of questions Kodak Black's presence on Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers is intended to raise. How you personally answer them, well, that's up to you in the mirror.

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