Kendrick Lamar plays like someone keeps a secret. On his 2015 single “King Kunta,” he plays a stage whisper “I vowed not to say” and flaunts industry gossip without naming his name. The Grammy-style outstanding, Pulitzer Prize-winning rapper has mastered literary opacity in his music – he is a generous user of change in perspective and hinting – in videos and live performances, Lamar's representation Powerful staging attacks like visual poems.
Lamar expanded these performances and became more elaborate as his platform grew in the 14 years since his recording debut. His leading creative partner and visual presentation collaborator Dave Free has attributed Rapper's fluctuations to what he called the roller coaster effect in the past. They can't put their fingers on you. The more you keep people on your toes, the longer they will stay with you. The zigzag ride free described is not particularly different from the sensory turning of Lamar's quirky caplets. Tracking his performance at Sunday's Super Bowl Halftime Show and how Lamar visually explored the intimate themes as his ambitions and career expanded ahead of this spring's planned stadium tour It's worth it.
“Big, don't kill my vibe” video (2013)
Layer comedy and tragedy
“Bitch, Don't Kill My Vibe,” the final single of Lamar's debut album, “Good Kid, Maad City” (2012), is the easiest quest for visual lament. “I know you had to die in pathetic waste, please tell me the clock and chain/more incredible, give me a viable profit,” he said. Recited in one poem. The video for the song, directed by Lamar and Free, is set for a funeral, with the rapper joining a procession of mourners wearing white hikes through picturesque hills. Their destination? A party with the preacher played by Comic Mike Epps.
One of Lamar's most notable motifs was his own unforgettable, and he was scared of loss and reminded him of his own mortality rate. Elegy is featured throughout his discography. Lamar embodies the victims of the shooting in a video of “Poetic Justice.”
Inspired by a film directed by John Singleton of the same name, the video evokes the shocking nature of meaningless violence that has been etched into Lamar's mind. The kids jump out of their cass and dance in a clip from Flying Lotus' “Never Catch Me,” featuring Lamar.
As the kids try to escape the end of the mise, Lamar runs towards him. “Life and death are not a mystery. I want to taste it,” he raps. The gathering on the hill evokes Samuel Beckett. The lively burial is like a scene within a hotspot, with parishioners both living high lives pondering the exclusive clubs of heaven and hell. After a few albums, Lamar observed on the track “Duckworth.” God is “A true comedian, you must love him.” Here, Lamar and Free begin to explore visual grammar that matches the lyrics that are layered with comedy and tragedy, baroque and bereft.
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“Saturday Night Live” Performance (2015)
Pervert under forced
Playing “I,” the self-affirming lead single from his second album, “To Pimp a Butterfly,” Lamar chooses a harsh homage. His appearance – his hair is half braided with cornrow, half chosen with a passionate afro. Black contact lenses…
…See Method Man's “All I Need” video.
In “Butterfly,” the rapper delves into the growing pains he experiences after the success of a “good kid.” It's a culture shock to go back to Compton, California. On tour, his absence often changed to something worse.
Troubled with survivors' guilt, anxiety and thoughts of suicide, Lamar tries to convey these energies to the theme of obsessive perverts. Returning to the refrain of the song “I Love You” Lamar Pantomime is a search for self-love, a search for bobbing and weaving in the microphone, his whole body expands as the segment progresses. I was caught up in energy. He accents the music with live off-hand ads and influenced stage patterns, including sweat, spit and tears in totally vulnerable acts. Lamar holds the microphone stand like a lifeline and marks the song's sayings, promising that those struggling will grasp it. The “I” dedicated to his imprisoned loved one gets the idea of how important communities are to isolated people.
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Lamar is the most nominated artist at the 2016 Grammy Awards, and with 11 nods, he weaved images of Pan Africa that night in medleys morphing in three different sets. The rapper, who stands up to “The Blacker the Berry,” appears to be wearing a prison blue blue blue and tied up by another man on his cell phone…
…Before Blacklight reveals Lamar, his dancer's prison outfit is striped with neon accents:
Like the director of that clip, Williams, known for his use of fisheye lenses, Lamar is interested in magnifying its black image more than the real thing. His lyrics compare the tribal battle between Zulu and Xhosa to Compton's blood and clips against each other. When he separates into “It's OK,” Lamar as Grizzle's gliot, until the dark stage gives way to an African cutout illuminated with the word “Compton” with the words “Compton” written on it. It moves along with it in front of a large fire wrap. If the map is misunderstood or has been corrected.
Lamar walks towards the third stage of Untitled 05, a meditation on injustice from the perspective of a man imprisoned in a private prison, and the TV camera slowly switches perspectives to suit his flow. adapts to his quick fire delivery.
The whole thing is a dizzying throwback to the Black Arts Movement and Labelion, a cinematic project unfolded at UCLA, not too far from where Lamar grew up. The artist, who may appreciate that his vision is Ethiopian-born director Hale Gerrima, is hypnotized and irregular about an incarcerated black woman who cuts to the concept of volatile rhythms of black life. I made an edited film.
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“Humiliation” Video (2017)
Explore His God's Complex
The visuals of “Humble” from Lamar's third album, “Damn,” mark the pope-dressing rapper, when he first wore the religious regalia himself, and many of his iconography. It begins with a sign of a string of sacred images.
After the incredible success of the record, he won his first No. 1 hit with Billboard's Hot 100 chart, triple platinum sales and Pulitzer Prizes – Lamar's spine crown of diamond extrusion in videos and shows rock and dig deeper into the church presentation. His next album, “Mr. Morale and the Big Stepper.” Lamar, video directors best known for their work with Missy Elliott for “Humble,” directed by Lamar, Free and Dave Meyers. My friend is sitting in “the last night up” with a scene that gives way to a treasure trove of amazing and surprising images. Tactile Camera Work:
In a series of memeable shots, whether it's his cornrowed head in a sea of hip-hop heads or a flock of burp putties, Lamar is a fulcrum.
This blocking highlights his spot as one of the rap's headphone costumes. But like Elliott, Lamar accepts absurd images as a way to take herself seriously. Here he begins to process his ego. morale. “
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'Mr. Morale and Big Steppers Amazon Concert (2022)
Dialogue with Alter Egos
The “Morale & The Big Steppers” concert film, filmed live at Mr. Paris and distributed by Amazon Prime, features Vaudevilian Flourish. The doll is a concrete version of Mr. Morale, who replaces Lamar's justice.
The big stepper embodies the shift that allows Lamar to tap the dance around difficult conversations. And despite the big stepper's distraction, it appears that Moraal is trying to grow within his humanity. This is just a lot of the tricks Lamar uses to bring out the difficult task of bringing the album's introspective material to the arena stage.
Here, his stagecraft elements – choreography, panoramic sound design – are bigger than ever, despite using props to play on scale. For example, a giant translucent box can easily become a Covid-19 test site.
The spotlight and shadow puppet showcases the album's preconceived notions of inner confusion and relationship repair. He plays with the dive camera, ringing to plead and shake them off when they are participating for close-ups and when he has space. Or give them his back. This effect is reminiscent of Michael R. Jackson's “A Strange Loop.” The hero interacts with his own expression of his mind. At one point, Lamar asks, “Is there anyone who is alive now?” Loaded questions hanging on that pandemic-era project.
Concerts can no longer be streamed on Amazon Prime videos.
squabble up (2024)
Drop an inexplicable Easter egg
Drake's diss track “Like Us” is one of Lamar's biggest career hits and is characteristically one of the simple statements. Video and Lamar's June “pop-out” concert will have plenty of boundaries between allies and enemies. However, the video for “Squabble Up,” the single from his new album “GNX,” released last November, is his most inexplicable Lamar. The action world, directed by Calmatic and a filmmaker in the South of LA, is contained in a single frame. Bright, bright, unfurnished rooms reminiscent of what is featured in Roots' Next Movement (1999):
Both videos leave the fourth wall open to audiences and interpretations. “Squabble Up” is an ode to conflict, but there is no direct targeted punch. The jab and barb are analyzed by the listener. This video is similarly created for internet conspiracy theorists and bulletin boards.
Tableaus changes every few seconds, new characters and set pieces come and go, many of which nod to bits of West Coast hip hop culture. A child on a tricycle wearing a hat…
…It appears to be a reference to the emotionally merciless 1993 drama “Menace II Society.”
The scene, also set in South Los Angeles, premonitions the death of the film's hero. This is a drive-by shooting of the boy's playful pedal.
In another moment, we see the man dressed to Isaac Hayes on the cover of his “Black Moses” album.
Lamar then crouches down next to the candlelight memorial on the sidewalk – who?
He may be mourning the state of the music industry, lamenting on his September 2024 single “Party Die.” He may be paying homage to Ascendant's La Rapper, who was killed in 2021. Drakeo rarely saw the camera directly on his video. This effect marks him as massive and elusive, and offers a lot, but ultimately refuses to capture.
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Produced by Tala Safie
Video: Amazon; CBS; NBC Universal; New Line Cinema
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