Photo: YouTube
Kendrick Lamar previews new music and reunites the West Coast in his long-awaited music video for "Not Like Us."
On Thursday, July 4, the Compton native dropped the visuals for his chart-topping hit produced by Mustard. Lamar kicks off the video by previewing an unreleased song in the first 20 seconds.
"I am reincarnated, I was stargazing/Life goes on, I need all my babies," he raps. "Woke up looking for the broccoli/Hot key, keep a horn on me, that kamasi/IP ownership, the blue print is by me/Mister get-off, I get off at my feet."
The rest of the video has plenty of references to his beef with Drake that inspired the record like the owl-shaped piñata that Kendrick destroys, his physical challenge in cell block one, and the caged owl he closes in on at the end. Outside of those scenes, the pgLang co-founder puts the main focus on the best aspects of his hometown like Tommy The Clown and his dancers, who help bring Kendrick's vicious bars to life, and the hundreds of L.A. natives who flooded the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial at Compton City Hall.
Elsewhere in the video, Kendrick Lamar and Mustard go grab a bite to eat at Tam's Burgers and ride around the streets of Compton in a Ferrari. Lamar also teams up with Top Dawg Ent's Anthony "Top" Griffith, Terrence "Punch" Henderson and his former labelmates Ab-Soul, Jay Rock, and ScHoolboy Q. Towards the end of the video, he crip-walks with his life partner Whitney Alford and their two kids, Uzi and Enoch.
The video comes two weeks after he performed the song for the first time live at "The Pop Out" show on Juneteenth in Los Angeles. Directed by Lamar and Dave Free, the video was shot in various places in Compton and attracted hundreds of fans and other L.A. artists like YG, Big Hit, and more.
Watch the entire video below.