“Mother I Sober” is the eighth track on disc two of Kendrick Lamar’s fifth and final studio album with Top Dawg Entertainment, Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, and the seventeenth track overall. It features Beth Gibbons on the Chorus and Sam Dew on the outro, respectively.

Lamar instantly opens up with heartfelt and personal lyrics where he battles his trauma head-on. At the start of the song, Lamar details his upbringing and the trauma associated with it. He details his mother’s experience with sexual abuse and then her fear that Lamar may be experiencing assault as well. Later on, Lamar asserts he was never subject to drug addiction, rather it was lust itself. Lamar then feels a sense of despair and hopelessness as he opens up to cheating on his, at the time, fiancé. He compares this action in the same vein as his mother’s abuser. He then describes the instantaneous remorse and guilt he has to this day. Shortly after, Lamar broadens his viewpoint on the toxic sex culture faced by the Black community and how it must be brought to attention. He exclaims, however, that sexual abuse many Black children face can be a root cause of this culture as our society doesn’t feel like a safe space. This is what is later coined as the “generational curse” Black people face. Towards the end of the song, it is then where Kendrick metaphorically frees himself and everyone affected by the toxicity through the use of transparency, pride, and positivity, thus aiming to break the “generational curse”.

This all relates to the theme Kendrick is constantly reasserting throughout the project. Kendrick is only human and he too is prone to make mistakes.