Kendrick Lamar‘s victory lap continues. Just a little over every week after footage surfaced of him filming a music video for “Not Like Us” round completely different places in his native Compton, we lastly have the completed visible and it doesn’t disappoint.
The video additionally comes shortly after his Pop Out live performance in Inglewood, the place he introduced out dozens of LA hometown heroes—like Russell Westbrook and DeMar DeRozan, his TDE Black Hippy crew, rappers each regionally beloved and globally identified, factions from road cliques that will in any other case be at warfare with one another, and hip-hop adjacents like Steve Lacy—for a present of unity and neighborhood delight. The “Not Like Us” video follows in that spirit, with a lot of those self same individuals popping up for cameos, together with Tommy the Clown (who received loads of consideration on-line throughout his look on the Pop Out) in addition to places like Tam’s Burgers (the beloved spot he shouts as a go-to hangout on “Factor”), and the Compton courthouse, a neighborhood landmark the place he filmed certainly one of his older movies approach again when. Very similar to the Pop Out, “Not Like Us”—regardless of its origin because the obvious knockout blow in Kendrick’s back-and-forth with Drake—shortly turned larger than beef. It is a Tune of the Summer season contender, and a brand new LA anthem, a sentiment Kendrick and director Dave Free lean all the way in which into.
And but, under no circumstances have been the 2 pgLang co-founders going to simply gloss over that it’s nonetheless, at the beginning, a diss monitor. The visible is heavy on owl motifs, with Kendrick beating a piñata formed like an owl and later, flexing with a reside owl in a cage. The owl, after all, is Drake’s de facto mascot and the image of his OVO label and crew, whom Kendrick refers to as “birds” on the monitor (which, for the uninitiated, has a a lot much less wavy ornithological connotation in hip-hop tradition).
The video additionally continues Kendrick’s pattern of refuting Drake’s scandalous claims about him in barely subtler vogue than the technique his opponent has taken. On his music “The Coronary heart Half 6,” Drake responded to Kendrick’s accusations of being a sexual predator with traces like “this Epstein angle was the shit I anticipated” and “If I used to be fucking younger ladies, I promise I would have been arrested/I am approach too well-known for this shit you simply instructed,” outright denials that many rap followers noticed as a win for Kendrick for placing Drake on the defensive. Against this, Kendrick addressed Drake’s allegation on “Household Issues” that he bodily abused his companion Whitney with traces like “put the unsuitable label on me”—”label” as within the label of abuser— “I’mma get him dropped,” and “The household matter and the reality of the matter/It was God’s plan to point out y’all of the liar.”
In “Not Like Us,” Kendrick’s household is entrance and middle—notice Kendrick standing behind his son Enoch, whom Drake has insinuated is not biologically his. And if their look, plus some strategic blocking, wasn’t sufficient to get the purpose throughout, Whitney steps out and hits a imply cripwalk to Mustard’s beat. (Talking of Mustard, do not look previous him carrying a Toronto Blue Jays hat.) Drake’s diss tracks tried to color an image of a household in disarray; the scenes right here (with Dave behind the lens) are supposed to painting unity. The identical will be stated for TDE label head High Dawg’s look, one other relationship of Kendrick’s that Drake claimed was strained.
Now that the video is lastly out and positive to increase the music’s lifespan that for much longer, will this reignite the meat? Or will Drake simply reply with a slick IG story? Is there a brand new Kendrick Lamar album on the horizon? Solely time will inform, till then cue the video and do your greatest Whitney-walk to the reigning Tune of the Summer season.
