There’s just so much going on.
Rapper Kendrick Lamar speaks through his art – not only through his lyrically dense music, but also through his music videos, rich with intertextual references and visual metaphors, usually produced in collaboration with Top Dawg Entertainment (TDE) president Dave Free.
Kendrick’s music videos are designed for a highly televisually literate audience who’ll generate dialogue and discourse out of every single detail:
Dissect Podcast mines the sprawling, literate visual and cultural references in just one scene from the music video for ‘Not Like Us’, the death blow in the seismic cultural moment that was his rap beef with Drake (clip below, full podcast episode here):
Insider looks at the influence of photographer and blaxploitation classic Shaft (1971) director Gordon Parks on the music video for Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Element’…
… and examines the hidden meanings behind the music video for ‘DNA’, which co-stars Don Cheadle:
Dissect also digs into the announcement video for Kendrick Lamar’s Superbowl half-time show. The deceptively simple-looking oner is considered by many to be a follow-up to the beef with Drake, and to contain further subliminals and shots directed squarely at his Canadian rival (clip below, full podcast episode here):
Further Viewing
In order to do his usual pop song deconstruction, Todd in the Shadows finds he has to provide the storied context in which ‘Not Like Us’ is the culmination – and its implications for rap battles and hip hop more generally:
FD Signifier offers perhaps the most expansive (and longest, at 3.5 hours) analysis of the entire Kendrick vs Drake saga:
Why Kendrick’s Super Bowl Halftime performance was so much more than just another round (albeit on a grand scale) in his Drake beef:
Bonus 2 – this is just nice: