From the Ringer Podcast Network, this is Dissect, long-form musical analysis broken into short

digestible episodes. This is episode 11 of our season-long analysis of Mr. Moral and The Big Stepers.

I'm your host, Cole Kushner. Last time I dissect, we examined Count Meow, the first song on the Mr. Morow half of the album.

It was there we heard a powerful outpouring of emotion, as if we were flies on the wall at Kendrick's

first therapy session. It set the confessional tone of Mr. Morrell's

second act, where we'll witness Kendrick Lamar Duckworth with his mask off, revealing his most

honest, most vulnerable, most uncomfortable truths. This intimate confessional setting becomes even

more apparent as Act 2 continues into its next track, the subject of the first half of our

episode today, Crown.

Crown was produced solely by Duval Timothy, the pianist that's featured throughout Mr. Morrell.

The instrumental is essentially a remake of Timothy's 2016 piece titled Through the Night.

The pieces in the music The piece's intimate, meditative quality has a lot to do with the piano's left hand,

which simply oscillates back and forth between an F sharp and a C sharp.

This is what's known as an open or an empty fifth because of the interval's distinct hollow quality.

It's not bright like a major chord or melancholic like a minor chord.

It's totally neutral.

And the way it's used in Crown as a repeating anchor, it takes on this kind of contemplative,

pensive quality, almost like time is suspended.

Of all the songs on Mr. Morrell, Crown most blatantly showcases the confessional role of the piano plays on the album.

According to Kendrick's longtime producer Soundwave, quote,

A lot of what you hear lyrically from Kendrick was all done from pianos. It's just literally a feeling you get when you hear

pianos. That's why when you listen to this album, 98% of the song is going to have a piano in there. Literally,

...