The one song that I keep listening to in order to try and make out the denouement is "Mother I Sober." Obviously it's gutting and soul-baring to him, and his fiance (I thinks he's still his fiance?) talk about how he came through and is better - but I guess I don't really understand how the story ends, how he lifted the generational curse. By not accusing his cousin? Or not raping a female family member? I don't entirely understand - when it's included with his confession about sex addiction, I think that's part of why I find it so confusing, because he DID use sex to hurt someone and himself. I feel a little bit like a failure for not fully getting that one - and am assuming it's because I do not have the cultural background he does where this is generational, so maybe I'm not meant to understand.
To me, Mother I Sober is the moment he accepts who he is. His shortcomings, his failures, his achievements. These things can define him, but they aren't "him".
I could be way overthinking this but I'm a TOOL fan, so pretentious overthinking is kind of our calling card. If an alcoholic gets sober, especially when their children are very young like Kendrick's, they (the children) may still have the genetic makeup that makes them susceptible to alcoholism, but that "curse" is more likely to be broken because the children aren't raised around it, it's not part of their culture.
All that nasty stuff that happened in the first album, it happened and it made Kendrick (or the character) who he is, but in the second album he's coming to terms with those things, growing from them, and becoming a better man and a better father. His kids will be raised in a better home than he was because he broke the curse.
If you look at the progression of the albums as well, TPAB addressing a lot of issues and it's been pretty documented Kendrick sees (or at least saw) himself as this messiah or savior of the streets. I think after the success of TPAB he thought there'd be some sort of change or I'm not sure. DAMN is definitely a more commercial sounding album, but he's dejected because he didn't really "save anyone" after TPAB. This new album, like you said is way more introspective than anything else. He's grappling with this savior complex and coming to terms with who he is an an artist and as a man.
Kendrick speaks a lot about black issues, so the concept of generational curses is super relevant IMO. Whether it's poverty, crime, drugs, violence, whatever...those things can be generational curses for any race, but it seems more prevalent in the black community. Maybe this is Kendrick's letter to the community about how to break the curse?
PURELY MY OPINIONS
