The latest music, videos & news relating to your favorite hip-hop, R&B & future beats artists. And if nothing else, I can at least feel like I’m sticking it to Fox News while I listen to it.Welcome to /r/HipHopHeads! /r/Hiphopheads COVID-19 Donations Thread It probably helps that not a lot of new rap has dropped recently that’s piqued my interest (the excellent new Vince Staples record notwithstanding), but the video has done its job nonetheless. Honestly, this video gets me excited about TBAP all over again. Is the death figurative, ending the celebration? Is it supposed to represent that not all cops do shoot black people, but a lot of them really want to? Can’t tell for certain, but the shot of the blood spray is dope, so I’m not going to worry myself too much about it.ġ0.
Since the cop so clearly has a real gun on him, the choice for the finger gun is interesting. Kendrick falls, black blood splattering on the gray-scaled sky, and he falls to the ground, picking right back up with the TBAP poem as he does. He gets out of the car with what looks like a shotgun, and then raises his fingers in an imaginary gun, pulling the trigger.
As Kendrick perches atop a stop light (a different one this time, in the hills overlooking LA), a cop pulls up. The end is interesting, and I’m not going to try to give a definitive “meaning” behind it, but I do want to extrapolate. Need that windbreaker/rain slicker/jacket/thing pronto.ĩ. Now, he’s proclaiming the entire city as his. “i” and “King Kunta” heavily focused on smaller neighborhood, Compton civic pride sort of celebration. This is Kendrick’s “turn it up to 11” mode. I mean, he’s rapping on top of a stoplight in downtown Los Angeles. I don’t pretend to begin to fully comprehend that feeling as a white male, but it’s easy to empathize with while watching this video.ħ. It reminds of something I saw said (on Twitter, I’ll admit) about how each laugh and celebration for the African American is a small rebellion winning the its own tiny fight. “Alright” as a music video is about relishing that survival, and turning that instinct to survive into something more like thriving. Equipped with just the music, “Alright” is a song about survival and finding the things that keep Kendrick, his friends, and his city going when it seems like the world is against them. Even the “ i” or “ King Kunta” videos don’t touch this level, even though the songs themselves seem more suited to it. The flying, the mob of kids moshing with Kendrick, the cops carrying the car he’s driving: this video is more than a celebration it’s triumphant. Kendrick’s first line in the song proper is “ Alls my life I has to fight,” and the rougher side of LA shown at the beginning of the video reflects that line well in its own right, but watching Kendrick practically laugh out the lines as he does donuts in a car and a little kid chucks money out the window is way more fun.Ħ.
This video is an undeniable celebration, which is a great turn to this song. Taking “ Drive Slow” to levels Kanye never even dreamed of there. So, the cops carrying the car TDE is riding in wasn’t expected. Good to see them and hope they’re along for the ride.ģ. With Kendrick becoming the biggest rapper in the world, it’s easy to see how the “crew” mentality could pretty easily die down. Black Hippy seemed to be going that way too not so long ago. Schoolboy Q’s sophomore album was as good (if not better) than his debut, but sounded a bit frustrated at points. Ab-Soul continues to be everyone’s pick for “third-best TDE rapper,” and we’re *still* waiting for Jay Rock’s album. But with A$AP Yams gone, the New York crew increasingly just seems like friends for A$AP Rocky to put in the back of his videos, and Odd Future seemed to get consumed in the black hole-level gravity created by Frank Ocean and Earl Sweatshirt’s albums (Side note: if you need a new rap crew fitting these definitions in your rotation, I highly recommend Two-9). Think what you will about Odd Future and A$AP Mob, but they created some interesting music and collected an energy together that was infectious. Solid rap crews are pretty hard to come by these days, groups that give equal thought and passion to their solo stuff as they do to their group cuts. Like a lot of people, I fell in love with the potential and group energy of Black Hippy before Kendrick began absolutely killing the competition, so it’s nice to see the TDE gang bumpin’ along with K-Dot, even more so since the solo world of each artist has seemed to consume them more and more lately.
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