Kendrick suffers from Bipolar Disorder

I’ve had this suspicion for the longest time and I thing Heart pt. 5 comes close to confirming it (edit: as other people have mentioned, he’s speaking from Kanye’s perspective, everything else on here still stands though)

We all know that Kendrick has had depressive episodes. But if you listen closely there’s more to his suffering.

untitled 06 is the biggest clue. “A Gemini duality personalities always conflicted me”. Although the illness isn’t a personality disorder, Kendrick perceives his illness as such. In the rest of the intro he’s trying to tell a girl he’s into not to be scared of him because of the way he acts “But don’t be scared of me girl…I can explain…” (which I can totally relate to). He then conveys that he thinks his illness is a gift rather than a curse from God. I can understand this somewhat as when I had my manic episode I felt extremely creative and productive. Cee Lo Green’s chorus beautifully describes the polar opposite mood states that are characteristic of the illness: “…both sides of me are evenly odd”. There’s more to get from this song but I’ll you guys dig into it if you’re interested.

In “u” Kendrick says “I know your secrets n…., mood swings is frequent n….”. People with Bipolar Disorder, for the most part don’t have “mood swings” in the way that people think we do. We don’t bounce up and down between mania and depression in a day. These mood states generally last for a few weeks to months at a time. However, when I am depressed, my mood can dramatically change within the day from super depressed to feeling mildly depressed and it’s scary sometimes, so maybe these are the mood swings Kendrick is referring to.

“They may say I suffer from schizophrenia or something…” off “Blacker the Berry”

Now with the Heart pt. 5, Kendrick says “Friends bipolar”. I’m not sure if he’s referring to a friend who has this illness or himself but I think we’ll find out more when this album drops.

I want to end this by saying people with Bipolar Disorder are just like “normal” people. When we aren’t depressed or manic, we have the same social, professional and romantic lives as anyone else. We are not dangerous. We are not unstable (unless we don’t take our meds). Manias are usually few and far in between for most people and a vast majority of the time spent Ill is actually in depression which is unfortunately the hardest phase of the illness to treat. It’s also why it takes a long time (a decade for me) for a diagnosis to change from depression to Bipolar Disorder.