Fucking with the Grays

Thoughts on Kendrick Lamar’s Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers and F*ck!ng with the Grays

Last week, Kendrick Lamar released his fifth studio album Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers and it wasn’t long before my fellow hip hop heads started calling to get my thoughts on the album. It was clear that they were hyped, but I hadn’t even listened to one song. Now what I’m going to say is probably going to sound like blasphemy as a hip-hop head, but I am not a huge Kendrick Lamar fan. Now don’t get me wrong, I loved Good Kid, M.A.A.D City and thought it was a work of pure genius. I also think that Kendrick Lamar is an incredible lyricist and one of this generation’s greats. But I’m kind of ambivalent towards him and just never really pressed to listen him. So, I kind of thought my friends and the internet were overhyping this album so imagine my surprise when I found out they were not. This album is a piece of hip-hop mastery. It is thought-provoking and has the potential to be culture shifting. In a word, it is magnificent.  

But in another word, it is also problematic. Before I listened to the album, I saw the critiques from feminists about Kendrick Lamar’s hypocrisy because of his decision to feature Kodak Black on the album. I also saw the expressions of hurt from queer folks for his use of the F-Bomb on “Auntie Diaries.” I agree with these critiques and I don’t think that those who have levied them of “just don’t get it.” Their critiques are valid and we should talk about them. And yet, I still walk away with the conclusion that this is really a great album. But how can I, a feminist, believe that the critiques are warranted and also think that this is a great album. I think it’s because I'm a hip-hop feminist and being in these in-between spaces is kind of what we do.   

Hip-hop feminism lives at the nexus of the hip-hop music and culture we grew up with and the feminism that has shaped our politics and ideologies. As such, we have grown accustomed to the uneasiness of the intersection. In When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: A Hip-Hop Feminist Breaks It Down, Joan Morgan calls in a generation of young people who feel inside and outside of both hip hop and feminism. She declares that she “needs a feminism brave enough to fuck with the grays” and we all snapped our fingers. In this declaration, Morgan articulates a hip-hop feminist methodology. Hip-hop feminism is a type of border consciousness and “fucking with the grays” is how we navigate the border. I’ve been trying to be more deliberate about transcribing my feminist practices so that there are examples of what feminism looks like in real life and my ruminations about Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers is a perfect opportunity to do that. In this piece, I relay what it looks like for me to “fuck with the grays” with some of the most challenging part of the album. 

On the audience. As a Black woman, I find the very act of listening to this album to be a practice in fucking with the grays. Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers is to Black straight cis men as Lemonade is to Black women. That is to say, they are the center and the primary audience for whom this work is intended. I see this in the same category as Jay-Z's 4:44. On this album, Kendrick Lamar situates the pain, contextualizes the bravado, and lets us in to Black men’s internal dialogue about the conditions of their lives. Because of this, I have told the Black men in my life who have not yet listened to this work, to take their time with this album and to steel themselves. It feels like I’m reading someone’s therapy journals. It is so raw. In listening, I also imagine I am eavesdropping into a conversation that Black men would have with each other if they had the space to do so. It is what I dream for the Black men in my life. As such, as I analyze the album, I am thinking about who it is for, what is he trying to provide for his audience or help them heal from, and is it effective to what I think are his goals. Knowing the audience helps me have more nuanced reads of the music and the text.   

On Kodak Black. Kodak Black is prominently featured on this album via an extensive interlude and a feature on a song. I do not like that dude at all and between the sexual assault charges, homophobic remarks about fellow rapper Young MA, and his disdain for darkskin Black women, I have plenty of reason not to. So, I was not thrilled when Kodak Black’s voice intruded in my ears while I was listening to the album. Also, I am not mad at the dragging Kendrick is receiving around his decision to put Kodak on the album. Many Black women do not like Kodak Black and we are very vocal about that. But you know who does really like this guy? Black men millennial rappers. Specifically, the new three kings of rap, J.Cole, Drake, and Kendrick Lamar. They are all at least 10 years older than Kodak and have positioned themselves as his big brothers with a duty to save him.  

I first became aware of this Let’s Save Kodak mission when J.Cole mentioned him in his song “Middle Child.” In this song, Cole he raps about still being “little bro” to rappers like Jay Z and Nas, but also now that he’s older he is “big bro” to rappers like 21 Savage and Kodak Black. Of Kodak he says, “Had a long talk with that young nigga Kodak. Reminded me of young niggas from Ville. Straight out the projects. No faking just honest. I wish that he had more guidance for real.” Kodak recently shared in an interview that Drake, for some odd reason, told him that “you really all that for this generation and the next one if we being honest.” And now Kendrick Lamar has put him on this incredible album and making me have to fuck with the grays.  

Let me be clear as both a prison abolitionist and a Christian, I believe in redemption and I do not believe in throwing people away. So, I support these men in their attempts to redeem that child. But he is not my project to redeem. So, in this case, fucking with the grays means that I give Black men the space to save other Black men, but I simply wish them the best and keep it moving.  

On “Auntie Diaries.” Yikes! Fucking with the grays with this song is about sitting in deep disappointment in Kendrick Lamar. On “Auntie Diaries,” we listen to Kendrick Lamar come to terms with two trans/gender non-conforming people in his family. On the hook he raps “my auntie is a man now” and goes through all the ways he understood his aunt’s identity and admired him. The last verse he raps about his cousin saying “Demetrius is Mary Ann now” and proceeds to tell us about the ways that he watched his cousin be hurt by the church and how he stood up for her.  I can feel the love he has for both of them throughout the song and it is beautiful and makes me smile. I also think he manages to discuss trans identity and gender nonconformity in a way that a lot of Black men in his target audience will find relatable. I see huge potential in him moving the needle with them on this issue through this song.  

However, in the middle of all that love and potential, Kendrick confusingly drops a series of F bombs harming the very group that I thought he was trying to align himself with. It was shocking, inexcusable, and unnecessary especially because it was clear that he knew better. He says so in the song and even compared it to white people using the n-word. And I'm sure there is some artsy reason for why he made that decision, but he is smart enough to have come up with another way to have called his audience in.  

But fucking with the grays with this song has also made me think about the clunkiness of my own allyship. I am a firm believer that it is the job of privilege groups to get their people together. So white people need to get other white people together. Men need to get other men together. And straight people like me need to get other straight people together. But when I'm in the role of getting my people together, I am often thinking to myself, “Lord, I hope my queer friends never hear me doing this.” This is because I have not figured out how to have these conversations where I am trying to make inroads into deeply cemented beliefs without the “yeah, I hear you but...” and “that’s true, but also have you thought about...” I'm over here trying to educate and slowly bring people along when they really need to be cussed the fuck out and told that they sound foolish. The art of persuasion is some bullshit. I tell myself that I am focused on the goal of trying to convince them on one small thing with the hope that I can come back later and fix the rest. But it feels so icky. With that being said, I am also not Kendrick Lamar and these are post-dinner conversations with people I know personally. It is not on a record where millions will be hurt by the words or even within earshot of the community I am an ally to. What Kendric does was irresponsible. So with this song, I am a scavenger—picking what is useful to me and leaving the rest.  

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So this is what fucking with the grays looks like for me in real time while digesting Kendrick Lamar’s Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers. To be clear, fucking with the grays does not mean we as hip-hop feminists just take the music as is without making our dissent known. The music that has shaped our girlhoods has been deeply problematic from the jump. Thus, we have developed a myriad of ways of drawing personal lines and public protests. Sometimes, we all get into formation to stand with Spelman students as they take Nelly to tasks or to finally cancel R.Kelly. Other times, our resistance isn’t neat or easily measured. It may look like the daily turning of stations and skipping tracks, or throwing X’s up in the club and walking off the dance floor when the DJ plays a misogynistic artist.  As hip-hop feminists, we never had the luxury of unproblematic faves. We’ve always had to see them as complex figures and hip hop as a complex culture. We don’t search for the ambiguity, but we don’t refuse it either. We sit in the uneasiness knowing this is our method and our way. I can’t wait to hear your thoughts on the album.