Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers

Kendrick Lamar’s Mysterious Website Now Has Hundreds Of Folders And Fans Are Puzzled

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Kendrick Lamar Austin City Limits
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A couple days ago, Kendrick Lamar shared some long-awaited news: His next album is called Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers and it’s set for release on May 13. Lamar revealed the news on his mysterious oklama.com website, which fans noticed last night has been updated. It’s not currently clear exactly what this new update means, though.

Currently, oklama.com/theheart features a window full of numbered, retro-looking computer folders, like the ones that were on the site when the album announcement was made. Since that update has gone live, fans have been clamoring to figure out what’s going on.

Fans tried opening all the folders on the page, but each one leads to the same error page. One fan dug into the site’s code and found that every folder is set to lead to the error page, even the one black folder that is labeled “important.” Furthermore, somebody else noticed the amount of folders on the page actually changes relative to your internet browser window; I was able to get as few as 11 folders to show up by decreasing the size of the window and increasing the page zoom (I actually got to nothing showing up at all by making the window as small as possible), and over 5,000 folders by doing the inverse. With default settings, my browser displayed around 500 folders.

Even with the functionality of the website figured out on a technical level, that still hasn’t solved the mystery of what it means. Some have speculated that given the page’s URL, “The Heart Part 5,” a sequel to 2017’s “The Heart Part 4,” is coming soon. Others believe that at a certain point, the “important” folder will be updated, perhaps to direct to new music from Lamar.

Whatever’s going on here, Lamar and his team have come up with an intriguing way to get fans excited about new music, so kudos.

Kendrick Lamar Channeled Michael Jordan For His New Album Announcement And Fans Love It

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Kendrick Lamar 60th Annual Grammy Awards 2018
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For most of the day so far, the music world was focused on looking back at the first weekend of Coachella. Everything changed this afternoon, though, when Kendrick Lamar came out of nowhere and announced that his next album is called Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers and it’s set for release on May 13.

Lamar shared the news via a tweet and almost immediately after doing so, he became the No. 1 trending topic on Twitter. While most of the conversation consisted of excited knee-jerk reactions to the news, some fans took a minute to observe how Lamar’s announcement bears a striking resemblance (intentionally, it appears) to an iconic Michael Jordan moment.

Lamar shared the news via a simple letter that plainly states the news of his album, with the formatting of the note seemingly modeled after the famously minimalist fax MJ sent in 1995 to confirm he was ending his retirement and returning to the NBA. Journalist Andreas Hale also observed that Lamar’s announcement comes almost exactly 27 years after Jordan’s: MJ’s note was dated March 18, 1995, while Lamar’s is from today, April 18.

Imitating the Jordan fax has actually become a bit of a trend in hip-hop lately: Migos did the same thing last May and Logic followed suit the next month.

Check out some more Lamar reactions, to both the Jordan similarities and to the album news more broadly, below.

Kendrick Lamar Finally Confirms The Release Date For His Next Album, ‘Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers’

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Kendrick Lamar has finally delivered a due date for his new album. Titled Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, Lamar posted the official album announcement via his oklama.com website, but he let the world know in extremely eccentric (and very Kendrick Lamar) fashion that shows he’s been listening to all of the Twitter stans demanding an album update for months.

Lamar quote retweeted a two-month-old tweet saying, “Kendrick Lamar is officially retired,” with just the link to his website.

On the website’s landing page, there are two old-school Microsoft Windows folder icons. The first one labeled “nuthoughts” takes you to his statement from last August where he indicated that his next album would be “my final TDE album.” But the new folder, marked by an all black Windows folder takes you to a statement printed on official pgLang letterhead (the media company/label founded by Lamar and Dave Free in 2020) and it reads simply:

“Los Angeles, CA (April 18, 2022) – the following statement was released today by oklama through his company pgLang at 11:00am PT in Los Angeles, CA:

Album: “Mr Morale & The Big Steppers”
Release date: 5/13/2022

All factual information for this release will come directly from this source only.”

So there it is. Kendrick Lamar has finally announced Mr Morale & The Big Steppers. Let the countdown to May 13th begin.

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