From the Ringer podcast network, this is Dissect, long-form musical analysis broken into short, digestible episodes.

This is episode 15 of our season-long analysis of Kendrick Lamar's, Mr. Morrell, and The Big Stepers.

I'm your host, we examined Mr. Morales' 14th track, Auntie Diaries.

It was there we heard Kendrick's journey of unlearning the homophobic and transphobic teachings

he absorbed as a child. While Kendrick's heart always accepted his trans-uncle and cousin,

Marianne exposed Kendrick's hypocrisy using homophobic slurs when he himself requested white people not use the N-word, even when rapping to his songs.

Despite the moral lesson of the song being rooted in empathy and acceptance, Kendrick used the very same slur he learned not to use throughout

Auntie Diaries, leaving the song morally ambiguous, a decision he knew would ignite some backlash.

And we hear a depiction of this backlash as the album continues into its next track,

the subject of our episode today, Mr. Moral.

It was during the worst performances I've seen in my life.

I couldn't sleep last night because I felt this shit.

Produced by Farrell, Mr. Moral begins with an ominous probing synthesizer scoring a sample of a YouTuber named Shango, whose channel is focused around the Dallas Cowboys.

The video that's sampled is an impassioned rant about the Cowboys losing by 20 points the

day before.

It was the worst performances I've seen in my life.

I couldn't sleep last night because I felt this shit coming because we were walking around

like, we're the shit.

We beat the damn world champs.

We're good.

Oh, cocky!

Devoid of its original context and appearing directly after Auntie Diaries.

...