On Saturday, Kendrick Lamar followed the release of his new album, Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, with a cinematic music video for “N95”.
The album, which plays out in two nine-track acts, is a sprawling statement examining everything from religious faith to childhood abuse to reconciling survivor’s guilt to balancing public perceptions of greatness with personal flaws. The “N95” video, directed and executive produced by Lamar and Dave Free via their production company, pgLang, is as stylistically bold and conceptually layered as Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers itself.
Loosely referencing the coming pandemic spring, Lamar addresses his own inner struggle as he urges listeners to strip away layers of masks and examine their true selves. Dovetailing with the religious themes on the album cover, the stark video cycles through an array of grandiose, messianic representations of the lauded rapper—though his face rarely shifts from a forlorn frown that seems to say, “you’ve cast me this way, but you got it all wrong.”
Highlighting a striking contrast from the very start, Kendrick’s nursery rhyme-like intro (“Hello new world, all the boys and girls, I got some true stories to tell”) under rows of red text proclaiming “THIS SHIT HARD.” These textual proclamations extend a shadow of contradiction over the video, the message at once playing into tropes of street bravado and addressing the heavy load of the hip-hop savior complex. That theme is reflected in various vignettes and aesthetic decisions throughout the clip, from a mirror image of the rapper shattering as he raps “take off your idols” to a shot of him being chased by a group of men as he laments, speaking for the public, “The world in a panic, the women is stranded, the men on the run. The prophets abandoned, the law take advantage…”.
This brief snapshot only scratches the surface of the many thematic trailheads that litter the video. “N95” is one small piece the complex puzzle that is Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, an album that will surely reveal new layers of meaning through many listens and impassioned discussions. The first video from the record may create more new lines of questioning than it illuminates existing ones, but it undoubtedly elicits a visceral reaction and continues to establish the ambitious project’s foreboding yet vulnerable aesthetic.
Watch the official music video for “N95” by Kendrick Lamar below. Listen to Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers here.
Kendrick Lamar – “N95” (Official Video)
Kendrick Lamar will hit the road this year for a lengthy arena trek billed as The Big Steppers Tour. Following appearances at Milano Summer Festival in Italy and Glastonbury in the U.K. in June, he will hit the road in July for shows in the southern U.S., including a stop at Rolling Loud in Miami, FL on July 24th. Lamar will then perform in major cities on the East Coast, in the Midwest, and along the West Coast, concluding with two shows at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles on September 14th and 15th. From there, Kendrick will then head to Europe for shows in October–November, and the tour will wrap up with five concerts in Australia and New Zealand in December.
Tickets for the tour go on sale May 19th at 10 a.m. local time. Click below for a complete list of dates. For ticketing details, head here.
The post Kendrick Lamar Releases Striking “N95” Video [Watch] appeared first on L4LM.
