Kendrick Lamar Fucks the Patriarchy, Pt. 1
How "Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers" Takes Off the Fake Woke
Since Friday the 13th, Kendrick Lamar’s latest in his avant-garde catalog of hip-hop albums has been on repeat for me. Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers, his fifth album (which we’ve been waiting on for, like, ever), is perhaps the most vulnerable scrapbook to ever come out of hip-hop. His scathing commentary on cancel-culture and misogyny intersects his own searing condemnation of self to reveal a marriage of identity and politics — all identity politics aside. He tells us he’s got issues and makes no pretense about it: he is not our savior.
Auntie Diaries, so far the most controversial track on the album, details Lamar’s childhood relationship with his transgender uncle and how Lamar grew to understand the power that language has to harm. Many in the LGBTQIA+ community have been vocal opponents of Lamar’s use of the anti-gay slur “faggot,” dead-naming his relatives and Caitlyn Jenner, and his tricky use of pronouns throughout, arguing that ultimately these make the album and rapper more harmful than helpful. This argument falls short, however, given the meticulous and precise lyricism we know this Pulitzer Prize-winning rapper embodies. I believe he chose his words deliberately and as a queer person, I’m thankful he did.
Kendrick lays bare the intersection between the f-slur and the n-word, the former of which he uses to subtly advance his narrative against political correctness. Though that’s not his central purpose with this song, nothing about growing up in Compton as a black boy is politically correct; nothing about the way the dominant culture interacts with black bodies is politically correct, whether trans or cis or anything in between. It would seem to me that Lamar is taking performative wokeness to task by demonstrating that the boys on the playground using the f slur won’t be impacted by cancel-culture, but Kendrick might be simply for using the word, despite his intention.
One trans fan reminds us on Twitter that Auntie Diaries is a narrative, a story, and should be read as such:
The deadnaming of Caitlyn Jenner is in reference to the time period being discussed. She came out in 2015 which was a big moment for trans visibility bc of her history as an athlete / media figure. Kendrick's cousin transitioned before Caitlyn changed her name.
Lamar’s decision to use the f-slur is also simply one of quoting himself and the characters in his story accurately. The song follows a trajectory and is part of the greater memoir of the album. In the final bars, Kendrick gets to the crux of his learning, by addressing his trans cousin, Mary Ann, directly:
If every second, you challenge the shit I was kicking
Reminded me about a show I did out the city
That time I brung a fan on stage to rap
But disapproved the word that she couldn't say with me
You said, "Kendrick, ain't no room for contradiction"
"To truly understand love, switch position"
"Faggot, faggot, faggot," we can say it together
"But only if you let a white girl say, 'Nigga'"
The moral of Mr. Morale’s story is that language is powerful, both personally and politically. As Spencer Kornhaber explain in his essay The Impossible Ambition of Kendrick Lamar’s New Album, “The question of how far that power extends, and how far it doesn’t, is the key tension of Mr. Morale—as it is across society in our era of vicious arguments over rhetoric.” Lamar is doing something much different here with the f-slur than, say, what Common did in his 2000 song Dooinit, when he rapped, “in a circle of f******s, your name is mentioned.” He’s not doing what Chappelle did in his 2021 Netflix special The Closer, when he said, “I’m team TERF.” As another Twitter user explains, “Kendrick Lamar, the rapper, is not saying the f slur. The young boy in the story isn’t saying the f slur. Society and the black community around him is saying the f slur.” As the narrative demonstrates, that is exactly who is saying it.
Lamar’s bold lyrical choices are a common thread throughout all of his albums and Mr. Morale is no exception. The f slur is far from the only contentious word on his new double album, logical given that he calls us to “stop tap-dancing around the conversation.”
Kendrick, naturally, gets it right, expanding on how he thought as a child, constantly exposed to a stream of offensive jokes without having the context for their offense, even as he struggled to relate to an aunt and cousin coming out through the lens of his religious upbringing. It’s ambitious and thought-provoking; by showing the work, his face turn becomes genuine and earned. There are plenty of rappers in his peer group who could afford to do the same introspection. -NAAB Radio
If the Black community is the majority of Kendrick’s audience, we must acknowledge the homophobia and transphobia with which the world of hip-hop is historically rife, just as he does. Lamar didn’t make this album for the white and/or LGBTQIA+ community, he made it for himself and as an extension of that, his own culture. As such, he chose the language of his own culture - language he admittedly doesn’t use anymore - to bring to the forefront what empathy and allyship can look like. With his heart on his sleeve, Lamar challenges generations of toxic masculinity and patriarchy through this work of art.