Introspective lyrics, slick flows, an interesting music video and a Marvin Gaye sample, Kendrick Lamar season is in full effect and rap fans are ready for it.
The weekend before Lamar’s fifth studio album, Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers is set to drop, the rapper surprisingly released a new song and video for the “Heart Part 5,” the fifth installment in his “The Heart” series to whet the appetite of hip-hop fans.
The track was first teased on April 19th when Lamar’s site oklama.com included a folder named, “The Heart.”
The Compton rapper took a similar approach five years ago in 2017 when he released “The Heart Part 4” a couple of weeks before he dropped his fourth studio album Damn.
As the title of the track suggests, Lamar is spewing his emotions throughout the entire track, giving us a perspective on what he feels about the “culture” and other thoughts that have been on the rapper’s mind during his musical hiatus.
First of all, the fact that Marvin Gaye’s “I Want You” is sampled on the track is amazing. Fellow The Root staff writer Murjani Rawls tweeted, “Marvin’s estate is like the All-Madden difficulty of clearances.”
They had to know he was going to drop some heat on it.
The video opens with the quote, “I am. All of us.”
To start the song, Lamar says, “As I get a little older I realize life is a perspective and my perspective may differ from yours.”
The music video for the track is pretty simple. It’s Kendrick, with a white tee, black bandana, braided out hair and red background, nothing crazy.
The most shocking part of the video is about a minute and 44 seconds into the music video when the rapper’s face changes into former NFL running back O.J. Simpson.
This trend continues for the rest of the video with Lamar morphing into Kanye West, Jussie Smollet and Will Smith during the second verse, who all have been criticized for problematic behavior.
Lamar’s final verse finds him morphing into fallen Los Angeles legends Kobe Bryant and Nipsey Hussle. He’s not only taking on the faces of these people, but he’s also taking on their perspectives.
Once Lamar morphs into Smith he raps, “In the land where hurt people hurt more people fuck callin’ it culture,” referencing Smith’s infamous Oscar slap.
Lamar continues this trend when he changes to Nipsey. He raps, “Should I feel resentful I didn’t see my full potential? Should I feel regret about the good that I was into?”
He continues, “To my brother, to my kids, I’m in Heaven. To my mother, to my sis, I’m in heaven. To my father, to my wife, I am serious, this is Heaven.”
The artwork for the single might be just as interesting as the track. At first glance, it just looks like six random hands. But thanks to the Twitter detectives, they seem to be the hands of the people he morphs into during the music video.
As you would imagine, the internet was in shambles after the track was released on Sunday, and the discussions of the track and predictions on what the album is going to sound like have begun.
After five years, Kendrick Lamar is back and we are all ready.