Trauma Fresh like A New Peel
A commentary on Kendrick Lamar’s 5th Studio Album, Mr Morale & The Big Steppers.
From as far back as Sing About Me I’m Dying of Thirst, Kendrick has always brought us to the fore of his trauma. Or let me say some trauma, and only because I doubt that these stories are his.
Since after “Section 80”, we can scarcely differentiate between when he tells his own experiences and when they are stories of other people. I used to think that maybe it is only our cognitive bias, and we feel that these stories of a gruesome past don’t fit face with his current days of glory. I mean, if he told you he killed a nigga when he was 16, would you believe him?
Maybe it’s because Kendrick uses it to maintain this vague veil, a painful nudge that says “Listen to the message. The storyteller owns his tale whether he’s lived it or not.”
And we listen. Kodak Black’s spoken words cracked in his South Florida accent is refreshing on a melody of angels.
The calmness in Mother I Sober is exquisite. Taylour Paige is sure that we will glorify the toxicity between her character and lover. We will find hurt, we will rub it on the ones that love us. But they will embrace you because they still love you. People are dancing on hard hollow wood. Tip Tap Tip Tap Tip. Stop tap dancing around the conversation.
I am sensitive, I feel everything, I feel everybody.
This album sounds like he started musing on the beats from his footsteps out of the therapist’s office and started writing the words as soon as he got into his car. Then he wrote some more in an empty room at the funeral of a loved one. He kept the stories up to date, but only at times when the pain is still fresh. And that is what we hear. Fresh trauma.
I know what a fresh peel feels like. It’s laced in almost every song on this album so you know it too. You hiss in empathy with the injured because their pain meets your pain somehow.
Father Time allows me to look up the Drake Kanye diss and I could have as well continued to live in oblivion of it. But besides that, I start to think about the values I hold close to my chest, and how much of those are flawed because they were not forged for me by a father figure. And how many errors could I have avoided while I was growing up? How many “Are you not a man?” It is more complex than learning your left from right. I just feel like there are so many gaps in my design because I learnt all of these things by myself.
I grieve different.
The stories are more reflections now. I think Kendrick has grown to an extent that he has begun to scratch the surface of his trauma. Either inherited from another person’s story or experienced by self.
We Cry Together with Taylour Paige is a Malcolm and Marie strip. This one has colour, and we can glamourize the toxic black relationship. Not just because we see it too often, but because we actually live it too. Call women hypocrites for being pillars of the same patriarchy that they blame men for. They in turn call us misogynist and queerphobic. A cycle of claw swinging between people that love too much to embrace themselves.
Religion is another pain point. It’s harder to hold on to beliefs that go against peaceful existence in your society. Kendrick talks about regret from early life, and how acceptance is a necessary ingredient for love. But people have to come to that decision on their own. Pending the time they get to the turning point, they might have to pay for their earlier actions with some selfish grief.
Dimitrius is Maryanne now.
Some other regrets that Kendrick discusses bring to the surface of one’s thoughts many memories from the past that may never be unpacked. I mean, if the guilt that a young boy feels from not being able to stop his mom from being abused can haunt him decades down the line, then I probably should have some more time before I face this trauma.
But here it is, staring me right in the face. That is how trauma is. It is fresh with every new peel.
No, I can’t please everybody.
I started writing this review because I have felt this album, and I was trying to articulate how deeply I felt it.
On Twitter, there is talk about how “Mr Morale & The Big Steppers” doesn’t have as much depth as “DAMN” or “good kid, m.A.A.d city,” and so there shouldn’t be this fuss over it. However, it’s not so much the depth as it is the rawness. It is the wet puppy shaking water from its fur. It says that as Men, we don’t get rid of everything at once, but therapy could help.
Whenever we can afford it.
