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Kendrick Lamar performs like someone parceling out a secret. On the 2015 single \u201cKing Kunta,\u201d he stage-whispers, \u201cI swore I wouldn\u2019t tell,\u201d and then proceeds to flaunt industry gossip without naming names. Though the Grammy-hoarding, Pulitzer Prize-winning rapper has mastered literary opacity in his music \u2014 he\u2019s a generous user of perspective shifts and allusion \u2014 in videos and in live performances, Lamar\u2019s expressive stagings strike like visual poetry.<\/p>\n
Lamar has scaled up those performances, becoming more elaborate as his platforms have grown in the 14 years since his recording debut. Dave Free<\/a>, his primary creative partner and a collaborator on his visual presentations, has in the past attributed the rapper\u2019s mutability to what he called the roller coaster effect: \u201cYou give people some type of variation, they can\u2019t get used to you. They can\u2019t put their finger on you. The more you keep people on their toes, the more interested they stay in you, for a longer period of time.\u201d The zigzagging ride Free described is not unlike the sensory swerve of verse, especially Lamar\u2019s quirky couplets. Ahead of his performance at the Super Bowl halftime show on Sunday, and a planned stadium tour this spring, it\u2019s worth tracing how Lamar has visually explored intimate themes as his ambitions and career have expanded.<\/p>\n \u2018Bitch, Don\u2019t Kill My Vibe\u2019 video (2013)<\/p>\n \u201cBitch, Don\u2019t Kill My Vibe,\u201d the last single from Lamar\u2019s debut album, \u201cgood kid, m.A.A.d. city\u201d(2012), is his most straightforward exploration of a visual lament. \u201cI know you had to die in a pitiful vain, tell me a watch and a chain \/ Is way more believable, give me a feasible gain,\u201d he chants in one verse. The song\u2019s video, directed by Lamar and Free, is set at a funeral, with the rapper joining a procession of mourners wearing white in a hike up a picturesque hill. Their destination? A party with a preacher played by the comic Mike Epps.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n One of Lamar\u2019s most prominent motifs is his own haunting, his being spooked by loss and reminded of his own mortality. Elegies are featured throughout his discography. Lamar embodies a shooting victim in the video for \u201cPoetic Justice<\/a>\u201d:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The video, inspired by the John Singleton<\/a>-directed film of the same name, evokes the shocking nature of the senseless violence that is imprinted in Lamar\u2019s mind. In the clip for Flying Lotus\u2019s \u201cNever Catch Me<\/a>,\u201d on which Lamar is featured, children jump out of their caskets and dance:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Where the children try to escape their demise, Lamar runs toward his. \u201cLife and death is no mystery and I wanna taste it,\u201d he raps. The gathering on the hill evokes Samuel Beckett: The lively burial is more like the scene inside a hot-spot, and the parishioners live the high life while contemplating heaven and hell, both exclusive clubs. A few albums later, Lamar would observe on the track \u201cDuckworth,\u201d<\/a> that God is \u201ca true comedian, you gotta love him.\u201d Here, Lamar and Free begin to explore a visual grammar that matches lyrics that layer comedy and tragedy, the baroque and the bereft.<\/p>\n \u25b6 <\/em>Watch on<\/em><\/strong> <\/em>YouTube<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cSaturday Night Live\u201d Performance (2015)<\/p>\n Performing \u201ci,<\/a>\u201d the self-affirming lead single from his second album \u201cTo Pimp a Butterfly<\/a>,\u201d Lamar opts for a stark homage. His look \u2014 hair half braided in cornrows, half picked out in a wiry afro; black contact lenses\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u2026references Method Man\u2019s \u201cAll I Need\u201d video<\/a>, in which Meth\u2019s blunted Odysseus searches for his love:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n On \u201cButterfly,\u201d the rapper delves into the growing pains he experienced after the success of \u201cgood kid\u201d: the culture shock of returning to his hometown Compton, Calif. to find that the family, friends and community he\u2019d been rapping about on tour had changed, often for the worse, in his absence.<\/p>\n Plagued by survivor\u2019s guilt, anxiety and suicidal thoughts, Lamar channels those energies to convey the album\u2019s themes of metamorphosis under duress. Returning to the song\u2019s refrain, \u201cI love myself,\u201d Lamar pantomimes a search for self-love, bobbing and weaving at the mic, his whole body coiled with the kinetic energy he unfurls as the segment goes on. He accents the music with offhand ad libs and affected bits of stage patter as sweat, spit and tears fly in an act of utter vulnerability. Lamar holds onto the mic stand like it\u2019s a lifeline, marking the song\u2019s maxim as the kind of bottom-of-the-well promise a struggling person grasps at. Dedicated to his incarcerated loved ones, \u201ci\u201d gets at the idea of how crucial community can be to isolated people.<\/p>\n \u25b6 <\/em>Watch on<\/em><\/strong> <\/em>YouTube<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Lamar was the most nominated artist at the 2016 Grammys, with 11 nods, and in his featured performance that night he wove Pan-African imagery through a medley that morphs across three different sets. Launching into \u201cThe Blacker the Berry,<\/a>\u201d the rapper appears wearing prison blues, shackled to other men in a cellblock\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u2026before a black light reveals Lamar and his dancers\u2019 prison garb is striped with neon accents:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Like that clip\u2019s director, Hype Williams, known for his use of the fish-eye lens, Lamar is interested in the larger-than-life magnification of Black images. His lyrics compare the tribal fighting between the Zulu and Xhosa to that pitting Compton\u2019s Bloods and Crips against each other. As he segues into \u201cAlright,<\/a>\u201d Lamar, as a grizzled griot, moves in front of a large fire rapping alongside dancers and drummers until a darkened stage gives way to an illuminated cutout of Africa with the word \u201cCompton\u201d written across it, as if a map has been mislabeled, or maybe corrected.<\/p>\n Lamar walks over to a third stage for \u201cUntitled 05,<\/a>\u201d a meditation on injustice from the perspective of a man jailed inside a private prison, and the TV cameras adjust to his rapid-fire delivery by jerkily switching perspectives to match his flow:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The whole thing is a dizzying throwback to the Black Arts Movement and the L.A. Rebellion, a cinematic project that unfolded at U.C.L.A., not far from where Lamar grew up. One artist who might appreciate that vision is the Ethiopian-born director Haile Gerima, who made a hypnotic, erratically edited film<\/a> about an incarcerated Black woman that he cut to match his concept of the volatile rhythm of Black life.<\/p>\n \u25b6 <\/em>Watch on<\/em><\/strong> <\/em>Grammy.com<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n \u201cHumble\u201d video (2017)<\/p>\n The visual for \u201cHumble<\/a>,\u201d from Lamar\u2019s fourth album, \u201cDAMN,\u201d opens with the rapper in papal attire, the first time he dons religious regalia himself, and a portent of the string of holy imagery that would come to mark much of his iconography.<\/p>\n After the record\u2019s phenomenal success \u2014 it earned him his first No. 1 hit on Billboard\u2019s Hot 100 chart, triple-platinum sales and a Pulitzer Prize \u2014 Lamar would further mine ecclesiastical presentation by rocking a diamond-encrusted crown of thorns<\/a> in videos and shows for his next album, \u201cMr. Morale & the Big Steppers.\u201d For \u201cHumble,\u201d directed by Lamar, Free and Dave Meyers, the video director best known for his work with Missy Elliott<\/a>, Lamar and his friends sit at a \u201clast supper\u201d in a scene that gives way to a cornucopia of startling images and haptic camerawork:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In a series of meme-able shots, whether it\u2019s his cornrowed head among a sea of hip-hop heads on fire, or a bevy of bald pates, Lamar is the fulcrum:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n This blocking highlights his spot as one of rap\u2019s head honchos. But like Elliott, Lamar embraces absurd imagery as a way of taking himself less seriously. Here, he begins to process his ego, which he\u2019d go on to fully deconstruct on \u201cMr. Morale.\u201d<\/p>\n \u25b6 <\/em>Watch on<\/em><\/strong> <\/em>YouTube<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u2018Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers\u2019 Amazon concert (2022)<\/p>\n In the \u201cMr. Morale & the Big Steppers\u201d concert film, shot live in Paris and distributed by Amazon Prime, Lamar adopts a vaudevillian flourish \u2014 the rapper manipulates a ventriloquist\u2019s doll to perform alongside him. The doll is a tangible version of Mr. Morale, Lamar\u2019s righteous stand-in.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The Big Steppers embody diversions that enable Lamar to tap dance around difficult conversations. Other times, it seems Mr. Morale could be trying to grow in his humanity despite<\/em> the Big Steppers\u2019 distractions. It\u2019s just one trick of many that Lamar uses to pull off the difficult task of bringing the album\u2019s introspective material to an arena stage.<\/p>\n Here, the elements of his stagecraft \u2014 the choreography, panoramic sound design \u2014 are bigger than ever, even as he uses props to play with scale. A huge translucent box, for example, briefly becomes a Covid-19 test site:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Spotlights and shadow puppetry demonstrate the album\u2019s preoccupation with inner turmoil and relationship repair. He plays to the swooping cameras, knowing when they\u2019re in for a close-up and, when he has space, to woo and wave them away. Or to give them his back. The effect recalls Michael R. Jackson\u2019s \u201cA Strange Loop,\u201d as a protagonist interacts with representations of his own mind. At one point Lamar asks, \u201cIs anybody alive right now?\u201d a loaded question that hangs over that pandemic-era project.<\/p>\n The concert is no longer available to stream on Amazon Prime Video.<\/em><\/p>\n Squabble Up (2024)<\/p>\n \u201cNot Like Us,\u201d<\/a> the Drake diss track, has been one of Lamar\u2019s biggest career hits and an uncharacteristically straightforward statement: In its video and Lamar\u2019s Juneteenth \u201cPop Out\u201d concert, the line between his allies and his enemies is abundantly clear. But the video for \u201cSquabble Up,\u201d a single from his new album \u201cGNX,\u201d released last November, is Lamar at his most cryptic. Directed by Calmatic, the film director from South Central L.A., a world of action is contained in a single frame: a brightly-lit unfurnished room reminiscent of the one featured in The Roots\u2019s \u201cThe Next Movement\u201d (1999):<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Both videos leave the fourth wall open to the audience, and to interpretation. \u201cSquabble Up\u201d is an ode to conflict, but one with no directly targeted punches: Its jabs and barbs are left to the listener to parse. The video is similarly crafted for internet conspiracy theorists and message boards.<\/p>\n Tableaus change every few seconds, with new characters and set pieces streaming in and out, many of which nod to bits of West coast hip-hop culture. A kid on a tricycle wearing a cap backward\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u2026seems like a reference to the emotionally relentless 1993 drama \u201cMenace II Society<\/a>\u201d:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n That scene, which is also set in South L.A., foreshadows the death of the film\u2019s hero \u2014 the boy\u2019s playful pedaling prefaces a drive-by shooting.<\/p>\n In a different moment, a man appears dressed as Isaac Hayes on the cover of his \u201cBlack Moses\u201d album:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Later, Lamar squats next to a sidewalk candlelight memorial \u2014 to whom?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n He could be mourning the state of the music industry, which he bemoaned on the September 2024 single \u201cWatch the Party Die.\u201d<\/a> He could be paying tribute to Drakeo the Ruler<\/a>, the ascendant L.A. rapper killed in 2021. Drakeo rarely looked directly at the camera in his videos, preferring the oblique side-eyes and eye-rolls that Lamar adopts here. The effect marks him as both profuse and elusive, offering much but, ultimately, refusing capture.<\/p>\n \u25b6 <\/em>Watch on<\/em><\/strong> <\/em>YouTube<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n Produced by Tala Safie<\/p>\n Videos: Amazon; CBS; NBC Universal; New Line Cinema<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\nLayering Comedy and Tragedy<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\nMetamorphosis Under Duress<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\nExploring His God Complex<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\nInteracting With Alter Egos<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\nDropping Cryptic Easter Eggs<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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