Hey everyone, just a heads up that after today's episode, we will be taking a mid-season break

from our Mr. Morale episodes. However, I will have some other content to share every Tuesday during

the break, including an epic two-part Super Bowl halftime show analysis and a special episode

on GNX. Thank you for your understanding, and I hope you enjoy today's episode.

For the Ringer Podcast Network, this is Dissect, long-form musical analysis broken into short

digestible episodes. This is episode nine of our season-long analysis of Kendrick

Lamar's Mr. Moral and The Big Stepers. I'm your host, Kolkashna.

Last time I dissect, we examined Mr. Morales' eighth track We Cry Together.

It was there we experienced an exchange of toxic verbal assaults that we interpreted as a dramatization of a pain body episode. According to Eckart Tolle, the pain body is composed of all the

unconfronted trauma we've experienced in our life. In order to survive, the pain body requires

a renewal of pain that it seeks out in the form of drama, most commonly with intimate partners or close family members.

This drama typically occurs in a state of complete unconsciousness, when the ego and pain

body unite, taking full control of your behavior. This is what we heard play out on We Cry

Together, two people completely overtaken by their pain bodies and looking to inflict as much pain on each

other as possible. Once fed, the pain body goes dormant again, which allows the couple

and we cry together to use sex as a mask to offset the abuse they just experienced.

While by the end of the song, it seemed clear the couple did love each other, their pain

bodies, i.e. their unconfronted trauma, keeps them

trapped in a toxic cycle of abuse. And until that trauma is confronted, the cycle will continue.

Hence Whitney's demand at the end of the song.

Stop tap dancing around the conversation.

Whitney's command puts an end to the charade.

...