Ep 24 - Kendrick Lamar - Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers

This Is Not Happening - An Album Of The Month Podcast

Our last Album of the Month (AOTM) was the beautiful 'Life on Earth' by Hurray for the Riff Raff. This month the This Is Not Happening crew tackle Kendrick Lamar's 'Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers' head on! We get stuck right into this challenging album in Part 1 of the pod. In Part 2, we play 'Spin It or Bin It?' where we judge the tracks that we've chosen for this month's theme.
Part 1 - Album of the Month
This month it's Nolan's choice, Kendrick Lamar's 'Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers' . We discuss the album in length, favourite tracks and their impact on us and other music fans and if there is a missing track from this album.
We want you to have access to great conversations about great music - here are some links to some of the best content on this album that we've consumed;

• A great 'explainer' article from Ambrosia for Heads - read here
• NYT's Popcast Podcast Episode (this one is great for a Kendrick Sceptic view) - listen here
• Great Tempo Tribe Podcast conversation - listen here
• A shorter listen at 22 mins - the NPR Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast - listen here

This was one of our toughest albums to think and to talk about ... but we hope you enjoy it.

Part 2 - Spin it or Bin It

In the second part of this episode we get stuck into 4 tracks representing this months theme - 'LA Tracks' - or favourite tracks from LA based artists. We all pick a track, introduce our track and ask the others the painfully binary critical question; 'spin it' or 'bin it?'
We try not to go super-obvious on our track selections each month ... this is what we chose to represent LA;

1. Joey's track selection is - 'Chum' by Earl Sweatshirt
2. David's track selection is - 'Twelve Thirty' by The Mamas and the Papas
3. Nolan's track selection is - 'Runners' by Evidence ft. Defari
4. Guy's track selection is - '86' by Truncate

Next Month
Episode #25 will be with you soon - Guy will be guiding us through 'We' by Arcade Fire one of is favourite artists ever ... what could go wrong? Have a listen to the album and share some thoughts with us on the blog or on our Insta.
Other episodes of the pod and 10 years of the blog;
If you enjoyed this episode, please check out the others. If that's not enough for you then there's 10 years worth of music discussion on the blog at www.thisisnothappening.net, which runs alongside the podcast choices and much, much more. So check them out so to see what we like and where we clash, and comment if something catches your eye. We'd love to see what you think.

We've been writing the blog for years come and have a look - https://thisisnothappening.net/