Kendrick Lamar's "Humble"

Kendrick Lamar's "Humble"


The Humble music video is a combination of the performance and thematic style of music video. It has themes of realism, naturalism and humility. There is a lot of religious imagery including Kendrick Lamar as the first shot as the pope. He also uses the last supper as a form of iconography for being humble. It is also arguable that when Kendrick is seen later on in the video with the men in suit. he's at a church congregation of some kind.

The message of the song is clearly shown in the music video. He says that he is "sick and tired of all the photoshop". What you see in the video slightly parodies skincare advertisements with the before and after themes. However what is different is he shows the woman with the makeup on first before showing her looking natural giving the impression that he believes that being natural is better. What is noticeable as well is that when Kendrick goes through the split screen his appearance is unchanging suggesting that he is not fake to how he appears in the media. His views of realism is also seen through the close ups of another woman's bum whilst saying that it is natural to have stretch marks.

Although Kendrick talks about being humble, he does common traits seen by most rappers in music videos. These include having a lying in money whilst shooting it out of a money gun, being surrounded by half naked women and being surrounded by "hype men". Judging by the nature of the song, there is a possibility that he is doing this ironically.

Kendrick makes use of the many different camera angles. There is an overhead shot when it appears as if he is cycling on top of the world. Most of the shots are either close-ups of his face or wide shots of his whole body that shows off his high star persona. Also a lot of the background colours are dim, bringing more emphasis on his face. The biggest moments when the camera is fully utilised is the shot of him standing still with the camera moving around him at 7 different angles. This could be his way of repeating the fact that every way that you can look at him, he still remains the same person.



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