“Humble” by Kendrick Lamar

According to Al Newstead on ABC, he said “Pope Kendrick. Steve Jobs cosplay Kendrick. Grey Poupon Kendrick. Last Supper Kendrick. Kendrick spitting fire while his head is blazing like a matchstick. These portrayals are mixed with iconic scenes that flesh out his lyrical jibes and ideas in ways that parody the cartoonish extremes of rap’s high life”

In this video, we can see Kendrick Lamar is trying to imply something to us.

In terms of scenes in this video, The director of this music video, “David Mayer”, has used many implications to interact with the lyrics. For instance, in the first 40 seconds, Kendrick was wearing a robe in a church and this scene was shot as ELS (Extra Long Shot), which it affects the audience could consider that Kendrick was attempting to be a humble pioneer. Meanwhile, in the last 30 seconds of the music video, David Mayer creates a scene as a classic painting “Last Supper” which implies Kendrick could be a model for all hip-hop singers should have this humble attitude (This scene shot as an LS (long shot)).

The screenshots from the “Humble” music video.

 

For the next cut, which is in barber. We could understand this scene as Kendrick Lamar is attempting to reminder citizens “do not be influenced by social media”. Additionally, the lighting design simulates the effect of traditional VR, and the focus was only on Kendrick Lamar (In this scene, the director uses Long Shot to highlight the character)”

The screenshots from the “Humble” music video and the VR glasses are from Google.

 

In many scenes, we could see David Mayer uses many amounts of comparison to emphasis the main character. For instance, complementary colors, and majority and minority. By this, David Mayer has successfully to emphasis and interact with the attitude of lyrics.

The screenshots from “Humble” music video

 

Furthermore, in this video, there are some scenes used different angles by the newest GoPro film camera. Through shooting in different angles without cutting, which let this video is full of technological sense.

The screenshots from “Humble” music video

 

As a result, David Mayer is good at visualising the lyrics which made by Kendrick Lamar. In every different scene, we may see the lyrics were interacting with the audience.

 

Reference:

Al Newstead 2018, Sit Down, Be HUMBLE.: Deconstructing Kendrick Lamar’s Hottest 100 #1 song, ABC Triple J, viewed 6 November 2019,

<https://www.abc.net.au/triplej/news/musicnews/hottest-100-kendrick-lamar-humble-feature/9366884>