Interesting take….

https://www.mic.com/culture/kendrick-lamar-mr-morale-big-steppers-review/amp

The closest analogs for Mr. Morale are Aceyalone’s A Book of Human Language and RZA’s Bobby Digital In Stereo, and not only because Kendrick’s album includes a nearly 1:1 recreation of the latter’s signature song. It lurches from style to style, stitching disparate parts together with an involved organizing concept. Aceyalone in particular looms over this record. While most of Kendrick’s principal influences are from slightly later — Lil Wayne, Andre 3000 — his style occasionally seems descended from Freestyle Fellowship and the Good Life/Project Blowed axis at large, especially when his archest, most athletic raps are dropped onto jazz beats, or digital ones that mimic their unorthodoxy. It’s amusing to hear someone at the center of pop culture evoke genuine outsiders: When he interrupts his own hook on “Worldwide Steppers” with that song’s knotty, robotic opening verse (“my genetic build can build multi-universes”), Kendrick sounds like a Kool Keith character who only ingests airport self-help books.