The cover for Kendrick Lamar’s forthcoming album, Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers, was unveiled on Wednesday (May 11), accounting for the latest domino dropped in what has proved to be an epic rollout for the project’s release.
Shot by Renell Medrano, the cover captures Lamar, who’s wearing a white T-shirt and donning a crown of thorns, standing in a room while holding his 2-year-old daughter. In the background, his fiancée, Whitney Alford, is seen wearing a white tank-top breastfeeding an infant on a bed, leaving many to deduce the longtime couple secretly welcomed their second child together.
Set for release this Friday (May 13), the album will be Lamar’s first album in five years and is surely one of the most anticipated albums in all of music, as the world waits with bated breath to receive what Compton’s good kid has in store.
Word of an impending follow-up to DAMN. was first made official in August 2021 with the creation of a website called Oklama. In a press release posted on the site, Lamar also revealed that the album would be his last under the Top Dawg Entertainment umbrella, the label he’d called home since the outset of his rap career.
“I feel joy to have been a part of such a cultural imprint after 17 years,” he expressed of his tenure with the label at the time. During the time between the release of DAMN. and Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers, Kendrick has sporadically popped up on the musical scene, whether it be to help spearhead blockbuster projects like Black Panther: The Album, or collaborations with his protégé Baby Keem, who reached his own success with his 2021 album, The Melodic Blue, which featured multiple appearances from Lamar.
With the recent release of “The Heart Part 5” and its accompanying visual serving as a foreshadowing of what’s yet to come, Lamar has the full attention of the music world as he looks to further add to his legacy with Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers.