Listen to Kendrick Lamar’s long-awaited ‘Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers’
13.05.2022 - 07:45
/ nme.com
Kendrick Lamar has officially released his fifth studio album, ‘Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers’.It’s a lengthy affair, spanning 73 minutes of heady, jazz-tinged hip-hop with rapping that, in true Kendrick style, oscillates between soulful and explosive.
Last week’s tease that it would be a two-disc affair proved legitimate, too: ‘Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers’ is indeed presented as a double album, with each half sporting nine tracks.The album also features a handful of guest spots: ‘Father Time’ has Sampha aiding on vocals, and ‘Mother I Sober’ has an appearance from Beth Gibbons of Portishead.
Furthermore, three tracks on each disc are positioned as joint efforts – on disc one, ‘Die Hard’ is a three-way collab between Kendrick, Blxst and Amanda Reifer, while ‘We Cry Together’ sees Kung Fu Kenny join forces with Taylour Paige, and ‘Purple Hearts’ brings Summer Walker and Ghostface Killah into the fray.On disc two, we have ‘Silent Hill’ with Kodak Black, ‘Saviour’ with Baby Keem and Sam Dew, and the titular ‘Mr. Morale’ with Tanna Leone.
Each disc features an interlude: ‘Rich’ on the first, and ‘Saviour’ (a same-titled prologue to the aforementioned Keem and Dew collab) on the second.Take a listen to ‘Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers’ below:Lamar announced ‘Mr.
Morale & The Big Steppers’ just shy of a month ago, cheekily doing so by responding to a fan that erroneously declared, “Kendrick Lamar is officially retired.”At the start of the week, Lamar shared the album’s first and seemingly only single, ‘The Heart Part 5’. In addition to being his first headlined release since 2018 – when he dropped the SZA-featuring ‘All The Stars’, the lead single from his self-curated Black Panther soundtrack – it was notable for its
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