If you’re anything like us you’ve had Humble on repeat since it dropped 2 weeks ago. Here’s another sweet piece of the puzzle to wet your whistle.
Cinematic, stunning and thoughtful, Kendrick Lamar shares his latest video from Damn with DNA.
Like he did with 2015’s To Pimp a Butterfly, Kendrick Lamar is already supporting his new album, Damn, with a series of stunning, cinematic videos. Following up on the brilliant “Humble,” Lamar has released the video for “DNA.” While “Humble” was more a non-linear collection of set-pieces, the “DNA” video takes a narrative approach, beginning with Lamar and Don Cheadle in an interrogation room.
The two rap the lyrics back and forth with Lamar chained to the table before Cheadle releases the rapper to join his crew playing dice on the sidewalk. At one point, as Lamar walks out of the interrogation room, the video takes on the style of a kung-fu movie—as he did with his set at Coachella on Sunday. The video also includes an extended outro with Schoolboy Q walking toward the camera in slow motion.
If this album is anything like his last, Lamar will continue to support it throughout the summer with a number of production heavy music videos. He’s proved to put as much thought into the peripheral material with an album as he does into the music itself. With Kendrick, there’s an obsessive attention to detail and quality.
He doesn’t just release a music video to promote a single—he does so to augment the art and add to the overall experience of the album. At Coachella, he clearly defined this album’s theme of borrowing from classic kung fu imagery, which he hints at in the “DNA” video. One would only imagine he will continue to tease out this idea throughout subsequent videos. In other words, there’s more to come, and we can’t wait. – Esquire
