Transcript
Cole Kushner (0:01)
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. Morale's 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 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, quote, 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, unquote. 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.
Kodak Black (1:32)
Until my partners, they figured it out without a father. I salute you. May your blessings be neutral to your toddlers. It's crucial. They can't stop us if we see the mistakes. Till then, let's give the women a break. Grown Men with Daddy as she Ending.
Cole Kushner (1:46)
Father Time with a direct address to individuals in his community creates a direct thematic pipeline into Mr. Morale's next track. The subject of her episode today, Rich Interlude.
Kodak Black (2:00)
I learned entrapping in the business Smart people making horrible decisions Rich nigga get my dick sucked after the show I ain't gonna lie we were poor.
Cole Kushner (2:08)
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 Duval 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 that 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 theater Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers might be modeled after Now Theater 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 were 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 in the soul of Every human being. To express this universal conflict, morality plays contain 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 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 Everyman to him, and Everyman 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, Everyman 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 Everyman. 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 good will 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 have 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 Mr. 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 World Wide 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 world wide 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. Morale's 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.