We’re just a little over a week out from Kendrick Lamar’s Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers, the first album from the hip-hop luminary since 2017. There’s a lot we don’t know about the album — no singles have dropped as of this writing. But a cryptic new photo on Lamar’s Oklama site does give us a few possible clues about what kind of album (or, possibly, albums) might be in store.
The photo showed someone — likely Lamar himself — holding two CDs — one labeled Morale, the other Steppers, along with a book with the album title. That could mean a lot of different things, but it seems at least possible that this means this upcoming release will be a double album. That might explain the unusually long delay between his last release and this one. But until we know more, it’s all speculation.
What we do know is that Lamar’s been spending a lot of alone time on this one. In August of last year, he pulled back the curtain a little on his creative process in a rare transparent moment. “Love, loss, and grief have disturbed my comfort zone, but the glimmers of God speak through my music and family,” he wrote. “While the world around me evolves, I reflect on what matters the most. The life in which my words will land next.”
In 2017, Lamar wrote a short statement about his thoughts on modern preaching in the Church, and how watered down he feels it has gotten. “Our God is a loving God. Yes. He’s a merciful God. Yes,” Lamar wrote. “But He’s even more so a God of DISCIPLINE. OBEDIENCE. A JEALOUS God. And every conscious choice of sin will be corrected through His discipline. Whether physical or mental. Direct or indirect.”
