uShortly after five, the square in front of the Frankfurt Festhalle is already full. The average age of those waiting, who are looking for the big community on Halloween without make-up, must be around twenty years. It’s getting dark, in four hours Kendrick Lamar, who has released a new album after five years: “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers”, his fifth, almost brimming with thought and musical experimentation, spread out over eighteen songs. He was last in the Festhalle in 2018, at that time still as an art figure “Kung Fu Kenny” with the successful album “Damn”, on which the brilliant songs “Humble” and “DNA” were streamed billions of times.
In the meantime, the rapper has become the father of two children, has taken stock of the pandemic, fought his demons, as he writes, through therapy, and in the new songs he is quite relentless in his judgment. Love, loss and grief have meanwhile destroyed his comfort zone, he wrote in a message to his fans. The key questions on the new album have actually stayed the same: What is really important in life, how can I create a better world? How do I love myself – as a prerequisite of everything else? These are unprotected questions that are easy to smile at, but at the same time they are central to black empowerment, in which white teenagers can also be reflected. This is Kendrick Lamar’s formula for success.
Inside the Festhalle there is no need for heating even after eight in November. The closer you get to the stalls, the warmer it gets. A few thousand young people are standing down there around a catwalk with three stages. After the rousing performance of Baby Keem, Lamar’s cousin, there is a half hour of reverent silence. A young woman behind us begins to rave: “The new album, I felt that way.”
The curtain, meanwhile, has closed around the largest of the three stages and the cuboid it encloses has almost the same proportions as the Kaaba in Mecca, even the crowd fits in with it. Something happens behind the curtain, then the chorus from “United in Grief”, which kicks off the new album, sounds, cheers spread. “I hope you find some peace of mind in this lifetime”, it sounds ethereally, whereupon a female voice, it is that of Lamar’s partner, adds dryly: “Tell them, tell ’em, tell them the truth”.
Like a procrastinating Shakespearean character
With robot-like movements, the dance ensemble of the Big Steppers first steps onto the catwalk, then a piano sounds from the darkest corner of the white Kaaba, which will later turn out to be a therapy room. The slumped figure at the keys is Kendrick Lamar, dressed all in black, with a hand puppet resembling him. “I’ve been goin’ through somethin’ / One thousand eight hundred and 55 days” he says, speaking of the demons that have befallen him and adding: “I hope the psychologist listenin'”. Right from the start, he shows no lack of honesty.
