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You're listening to Sound Opinions and this week we're sharing our favorite songs that pose questions. I'm Jim Deorgatus and I'm Greg Kott.

But first we have new albums by Kendrick Lamar and Florence in the Machine to review.

That is a little bit of united in grief. The opening track on the highly anticipated new album by Kendrick Lamar, his first Greg,

in five years, Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers. Kendrick Lamar won a story and won an artist, raised in Compton, California, started out with mixed tapes like so many rappers do, got signed to the big leagues and began to make a hell of a splash.

Good Kid Mad City, 2012, to Pimpa Butterfly and Damn, 2015 and 2017, got every accolade imaginable from Grammys to the Pulitzer Prize for Kendrick.

And then he went silent. For five years, as I said, people have been wondering what is Kendrick doing, what will he return with? I'll tell you, he returned with a sprawling 70-minute double album cut into two distinctive parts, a journey from beginning to end with some of his regular producers and many other guest stars and guest producers.

And it's a cast of seemingly a hundred. Let us play a track from Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers and then we'll come back with our opinions. There is a lot to talk about with this record.

This is a song called Mirror. We bumped in with United in grief, which opens this sprawling collection of music. Mirror concludes it. Kendrick Lamar on Sound Minute.

Because all of this toxic girl, I'm not relevant to giving on profit. Personal gain of my pain is nonsense. Darling, my demons is off the leash for a mosh pit. Baby, I just had a baby, you know she need me. Working on myself for canceling is not easy. Don't you point a finger, just a point of finger.

That's a track called Mirror from the new Kendrick Lamar record. Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers, a dance record. If this were a vinyl record or a CD collection, it would be two discs.

Two albums. Most albums might be a meaty short story. This is a novel on the level of war and peace. This is like a purge. Can you tell this guy's been to therapy? He tells us about a hundred times.

That's right up front that he has been and he's in a process of self examination. Big time on this record to the point of where you wondering is is is Kendrick a nice guy or not, you know.

There's a lot of questions that are here and I'm not saying this in a in a mean spirited way at all. It's fascinating in a lot of ways. But when I think about this young guy, what he did early on in his career section 80 good kid Mad City.

Talking about growing up in one of the toughest areas in the entire world for a young black man to pimple butterfly looking outward and the social outreach extending what he saw on the ghetto to the world around him.

Okay. Can I interject when you want to understand black lives matter in the wake of George Floyd and so many others, you need to listen to pimple butterfly.

Absolutely. What we have here though is a man going interior again and I think much like Dylan sort of casting off that yoke of spokesman for a generation. Kendrick doesn't want any of that.

Don't call me a savior. Don't call me this. Don't call me that. It's fascinating in the way he's deconstructing himself and basically saying, look, I'm as screwed up as anybody else and he's showing us exactly how.

I mean, when you talk about some of these tracks here, it's deeply disturbing the cameos by codec black who's not exactly the most enlightened artist on the plant is support is support of our Kelly.

A man, you know, we are an intimate terms with from the standpoint of, you know, the wrongs he committed the attack on cancel culture.

The use of gay slurs and a track about a relative struggle with gender identity.

I mean, these are the kind of things you leave yourself questioning. What's going on here? And I think Kendrick is doing this intentionally.

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