Last month, Kendrick Lamar unveiled his fifth studio LP Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, an 18-track body of work that saw additional assists from Baby Keem, Kodak Black, Taylour Paige, Summer Walker, Ghostface Killah, Blxst, and more. Filled with personal themes about family, mental health, false idols, and more, the project proved to be Kendrick’s latest critical success. Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers also landed the Compton emcee his fourth number one on the Billboard 200, falling just short of 300,000 album equivalent units during its first week of release.
During that time, it was revealed that Kendrick was spending some time in Accra, Ghana. Through the lens of photographers like Renell Medrano, we were able to see Kendrick enjoying his time in the West African city by playing soccer with locals, visiting a skatepark created by the late Virgil Abloh, and putting his feet in the sand at the beach. Today (June 17), Spotify has premiered a new feature titled “A Day In Ghana,” which gives us an even closer look into Kendrick’s excursion.
In the four-minute clip, Kendrick opened up about Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers and what it revealed in regards to his life. He also speaks to what therapy has done for him and what it could do for others:
“One of my favorite lines on the album is where it say, ‘You need to go to therapy.’ And I say, ‘Real niggas don’t go to therapy.’ ‘Cause that’s how niggas feel, you know what I’m saying? We grow up where our parents don’t know about that. Our grandparents don’t know about that. You live and you experience this shit that you go through, and you deal with it right then and there or you don’t ever deal with it. We learn to hold all our shit in.”
Check out more of what Kendrick Lamar had to say on “A Day In Ghana” below.