MUSICVID #20: Kendrick Lamar - HUMBLE.

POSSIBLE POINTS OF INFLUENCE:

• The heads in conformity, have them turned around, people from JugendClub, could turn around and start to sing. They could be praying to some dystopian ruler, and she rebels against that? (Is it really dystopian and dictatorial if she can rebel against? Or is it all inside her head, bzw. it's what she feels like letting out. Oh, ooooh, maybe at the end it turns out she's in a prison, like just about to go to Room 101. maybe give it a digital twist with all these worries with surveillance and cyber crime, space and war and shit)
• The money, dollar bills being burned, a part of yesterday's society
• The end, he silently walks out facing camera like the band and their followers in Kraftklub's Chemie Chemie Ya, and then the found footage blips
• The splitscreen, and them going from one to another (needs to be extremely carefully filmed and edited in order to visually work)

ACT: Kendrick Lamar
TRACK: HUMBLE
ALBUM: DAMN
YEAR: 2017
GENRE: Hip-hop
DIRECTOR: Dave Meyers + The Little Homies
LABEL: Top Dawg (owned by UMG)
SINGLE?: Yes, lead single, released two weeks before the album

BACKGROUND/CONTEXT

• Kendrick Lamar started out as an underground rapper, in 2012 he assigned to a major label, TDE Entertainment
• This is his fourth studio album and third with the label
• He is known for a very intense and political style of music, having even met Barack Obama in the White House
• The advent of the Trump presidency has an influence on this most recent album
• Huge chart success, and also retaining critical success

PERFORMANCE, NARRATIVE OR CONCEPT?

Performance and concept.

EXTRA SOUND:

Silence while the titles play and the camera remains static, and the track starts with different lyrics, very unconventional.

TITLES:
As is typical for the label they are included in the titles. All white and upper-case, roles are smaller for the director however for the label they are the same size, signifying how they want to assert their brand in their video products. 

TDE PRESENTSKENDRICK LAMARHUMBLEDIRECTED BY DAVID MEYER + THE LITTLE HOMIES

NARRATIVE ENIGMA:

Lamar is in extreme logshot, we don't see his face.
Then the second shot we see his face.

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LYRICS AND VISUALS:
B**** be humble - Heads bowing.

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SOUND AND VISUALS:
First cut as we cut to the lyrics.

GENRE SIGNIFIERS:
We get rap dance moves, typical for hip-hop. 

INTERTEXTUAL REFERENCES:
To Christianity, or specifically the Bible, to The Last Meal.

OTHER NARRATIVE THEORY:
Is Kendrick Lamar being branded as the Proppian hero, he certainly seems to have a number of princesses.

BRANDING:
The opening shot is used as the cover of the single, which Lamar has done with other singles such as Swimming Pools.

REPRESENTATION:
GENDER: Heavy Female Gaze, received criticism, some labelling Lamar even as a misogynist. We just get men bowing their heads, as if it's men he's levelling 

ETHNICITY: The image of Lamar with glasses, a pun on white intellectualism?

AUDIENCE REPRESENTED/TARGETED:
The Female Gaze will help to attract a wider male teen audience, however the music itself has already been very successful among both teen males and females in my own school.