Kendrick Lamar talks album ‘Mr Morale’ on trip to Ghana in Spotify Documentary
Spotify aired a short documentary titled ‘A Day in Accra, Ghana,’ about Kendrick Lamar’s trip to Ghana on Friday, June 17, a month after his new album Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, was released, with the rapper sharing insight into some of the record’s themes.
The mini-documentary’s release fell on Lamar’s 35th birthday as he spoke about the album for the first time. “This is my most present album,” he said in the documentary.
As part of the documentary, Lamar visited Ghana and stopped at the Freedom Skatepark in Accra. Prior to his death in 2021, Virgil Abloh contributed funds to the skate park’s construction.
“What he means to them, you know, as far as letting them have this creative space for them to enjoy themselves. That’s special,” Lamar said of Abloh, paying tribute to the American-born son of Ghanaian immigrants.
As he steps away from the bustle on social media, the rapper spoke of finding relief in Ghana. But when it comes to therapy, the 35-year-old says Black men confront a mental health difficulty.
“One of my favorite lines on the album is where [Whitney Alford, Lamar’s wife] say ‘You really need to go to therapy.’ And I say, ‘Real niggas don’t go to therapy,’ because that’s how niggas feel,” Lamar said.
“We grew up where our parents don’t know about that, our grandparents don’t know about that. You live and you experience this shit that you go through and you deal with it right then and there, or you don’t ever deal with it. We learned to hold all our shit in.”
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He added, “This life shit is about an experience, and everybody got their own different experience.”
Lamar said in the mini-documentary that he still struggles to receive therapy, as he sits down with a group of young men in Accra, but that he challenges himself to break out of old behaviours.
“It’s like a whole new step in a whole new generation, it’s growth,” he said.
Abeeb Lekan Sodiq is a Managing Editor & Writer at theafricandream.net. He is as well a Graphics Designer and also known as Arakunrin Lekan.
