Kendrick Lamar.
The Big Steppers tour. Birmingham, November 2022.
Mr. Morale.
Another rap gig I dragged Anita to, but a real moment for me. To Pimp a Butterfly and Mr. Morale are the two Kendrick albums I love.
Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers came out that May, five years after DAMN. had won him a Pulitzer, and it wasn't the victory lap anyone expected. It's a double album about going to therapy: childhood trauma, infidelity, fatherhood, the weight of being treated as a saviour, the stuff men of my generation were brought up never to talk about. Eckhart Tolle turns up on it. His partner Whitney Alford is on it too. It's uncomfortable in places, it's meant to be, and it's brilliant. It debuted at number one and won the Grammy for Best Rap Album.
Then he took it on the road, and the tour was the album turned into theatre. Kendrick plays "Mr. Morale", a man in therapy, with Helen Mirren as the voice of his therapist, of all people. He starts the show at a piano next to a puppet of himself. Halfway through, dancers in hazmat suits seal him inside a glowing box, which is cleansed with smoke and lifted into the air. By the end the screens are deepfaking his face into other people's. Mostly it's just him, a troupe of dancers in black suits, and a story told from start to finish.
We saw it in Birmingham on Bonfire Night, with Baby Keem opening. Thirty-two songs, starting and ending with Savior, with HUMBLE., DNA., Money Trees and Alright in the middle. The concept and the staging were fantastic, and even with all of it, he never forgot it was a gig.
Stage photo: Btheweeknd via Wikimedia Commons (CC0). Charlotte photos: Lexi Veronica via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0).
The setlist.
All 32 songs and interludes from the night, in order, including the three Baby Keem joined him for. Listen: Apple Music · Spotify
Setlist from setlist.fm. More from 2022: my songs of the year.
