Kendrick Lamar's new video features the faces of Kanye West, O.J. Simpson, Will Smith and others briefly imposed over his own face.
“To my brother, to my kids I’m in heaven … To the killer that sped up my demise: I forgive you, just know your soul’s in question/ I seen the pain in your pupil when that trigger had squeezed/ And though you did me gruesome, I was surely relieved/ I completed my mission, wasn’t ready to leave/ But fulfilled my days, my Creator was pleased … To my neighborhood, let the good prevail … I can’t blame the hood the day that I was killed.
“The following statement was released today by oklama, through his company pgLang at 11:00 a.m. PT in Los Angeles, CA:All factual information for this release will come directly from this source only.” Lamar’s last full-length project was 2017’s Grammy-winning “DAMN,” which was released just two days before his headlining Coachella set, also led to his Pulitzer Prize and made him the honoree at Variety’s inaugural Hitmakers event.
He followed a year later by curating and contributing several songs to the “Black Panther” soundtrack, including his duet with SZA, “All the Stars.” In 2021, he featured on two songs from his cousin Baby Keem’s latest album — “Range Brothers” and the Grammy-winning “Family Ties” — although those appearances just seemed to energize and make his fan base even more impatient.
There have even been several false alarms, such as a social media frenzy ignited last summer by his record label TDE, but that turned out to be a tease for the Isaiah Rashad album. As several fans pointed out on social media, Lamar announced his long-awaited new album via a minimalist fax page similar to the one Michael Jordan put out in March 1995 to announce he was ending his retirement and returning to the NBA.