Kendrick Lamar, the Pulitzer Prize-winning rapper who has been dubbed “the voice of a generation,” has finally released a new album after a five-year hiatus.
His fifth studio album, Mr. Morale & the Huge Steppers, was released overnight on digital services with big hopes from fans as well as big worries about Lamar’s future career path..
Lamar, 34, is one of the few significant artists in today’s music market who can keep listeners waiting for such a long time without surrendering fan devotion or critical status — where a steady flow of new content is viewed as a requirement. “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers” is expected to make a big mark on the Billboard albums chart even after Lamar’s lengthy hiatus.
Good Kid, MAAAD City” solidified Lamar’s status as one of the most ambitious rappers of the millennium generation with his debut album (2012). His third album, “To Pimp a Butterfly” (2015), featured a number of musicians from Los Angeles’ jazz community, including Kamasi Washington and Thundercat, who collaborated with him on the project. The song “Alright,” which became an unofficial Black Lives Matter protest anthem, is from that album, which the Times pop music critic Jon Caramanica described as “a work about living under constant racialized surveillance and how that can lead to many types of internal monologues, some empowered, some self-loathing.”
His 2017 album “DAMN.” was nominated for five Grammy Awards, but Bruno Mars’ “24K Magic” was named album of the year. (In total, the rapper has garnered 14 Grammys.) In addition to being the first rapper to win the Pulitzer Prize for music, Kendrick Lamar was born and raised in Compton, California, and has incorporated the city’s culture and problems into his music. On the basis of its vernacular authenticity and rhythmic vitality, the 2018 review of “DAMN.” said that it is “an impressive collection of songs” that “offers moving snapshots that capture the complexities of contemporary African-American life.” Lamar embraced the award, and appeared in concert with a banner reading “Pulitzer Kenny” behind him.
The “Black Panther” soundtrack’s executive producers included Lamar and his record label’s president, Anthony Tiffith (also known as Top Dawg). A Lamar and SZA song, “All the Stars,” was nominated for an Academy Award as best original song because of its outstanding quality. Video artist Lina Iris Viktor filed a complaint in late 2018 claiming that her work was exploited without her permission in the video for a song.
He has kept a quiet profile since then, appearing on a number of other artists’ tracks and, most recently, on Baby Keem’s “The Melodic Blue” album, which includes the Grammy-winning “Family Ties,” a collaboration with Keem and Lamar. Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, 50 Cent, Eminem, and Mary J. Blige all performed at the Super Bowl LVI halftime show in February, which left Lamar in the unusual situation of being either a relative newcomer in an oldies show or already being somewhat of an oldie himself.
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As a prelude to the release of “Mr. Morale,” Lamar dropped the teaser video for “The Heart Part 5” on Sunday. The film opens with the line, “Life is perspective,” and then cuts to Lamar’s face merging with the faces of a number of other Black men, including O.J. Simpson, Kanye West, Jussie Smollett, Will Smith, Kobe Bryant, and Nipsey Hussle, depending on the level of cultural heroism or controversy associated with them. the “South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone launched Deep Voodoo, which developed the deepfake effects in collaboration with the longtime collaborators Lamar and Dave Free of pgLang. Deep Voodoo will continue to work with pgLang on future projects.
On Wednesday, Lamar shared a photo of the cover art for his next album, “The Heart Part 5,” which was taken by Renell Medrano. While a woman nurses a newborn on the bed, Lamar, in a crown of thorns, holds the child in his arms.
In some ways, those may also serve as hints for Lamar’s future career development. “Mr. Morale” will be Lamar’s final album for Top Dawg Entertainment, or TDE, which has distributed his music in association with Interscope from the beginning of his career. Instead of signing a new record deal, he’s working with pgLang, a “multilingual, at service company” that’s working on a variety of creative and commercial initiatives, including the video for “The Heart Part 5” and a new Converse shoe collection.