Much like the song itself, the music video for “N95” begins with a serenity that always heralds the coming of a destructive storm, with Lamar’s lonesome, eerie solo intro being the melodic quiet to the forthcoming video’s chaotic tempest.
It’s poetic, more than anything, that the video starts with Kendrick, clad in all-white, hanging from an unseen crucifix with arms outspread. The intro does well to carry over the Jesus Christ imagery already portrayed on the fourteen-time Grammy-winner’s latest album art for Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers. On the cover, a thoughtful and gun-toting Kung Fu Kenny holds his daughter while donning a twisted crown of thorns.
From that first depiction of Kendrick suspended on an invisible cross to the last one, which caps the song, the three-minute-long experience morphs into a mosaic of monochromatic scenes and religious symbolism scattered like a collage of old ideas already used in past works. The visuals boast a lightheartedness intrinsic to 2012’s “Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe” and “Backseat Freestyle” and balance this with the urgent and provocative visual storytelling characteristic of 2017’s “ELEMENT.”. And the ambition to reaffirm the Black man as his own saviour—as seen in 2015’s “Alright”—glues all these warring fabrics together.
The video’s fragmented texture makes it a menacing mural of the musician’s mystic mind and mesmerising madness. Notice those “THIS SHIT HARD” in all caps which keep flashing on the screen. The spicy transitions are anything but seamless. Abrasive and abrupt, they match the song’s uncanny and mentally-jarring personality filled with changing voices, flows, and viewpoints.
And yet, even with the confusing clash between the secular and the spiritual, Kendrick still oddly finds a way to marry all contrasting elements. And when he does manage, the result is unmatched storytelling. One such moment—my personal favourite—is when a mob of topless Black men chase a spooked Duckworth down the street in broad daylight before the scene switches to Kendrick levitating above rippling tides in the crucifix posture. This minimalist juxtaposition condenses the Compton native’s thirty-four-year life—from his troubled humble beginnings as narrated in his previous albums to his ascension and newfound enlightenment—in thirteen seconds.
Those are the shining moments of the music video.
Okay, back to the Christ theme. Yes, again, I know. There are just that many Jesus references, from the Pulitzer Prize-winner standing on water to him getting kissed on the cheek (Judas Iscariot’s kiss) and rapping in a bedroom riddled with crucifixes.
It’s crucial to remember Kendrick has never been one to shy away from expressing his divine nature through his faith in God. Just listen to the man in 2012, boasting about being “Compton’s human sacrifice” in “m.A.A.d city”. Who could forget the platinum-certified song “GOD.”—practically the only rap song I’ve ever heard that feels like a stained-glass window turned into music? That might be one way of deciphering the code.
The saviour complex concept is another angle of looking at the video, where Kendrick is analogous to Jesus, and hip-hop is the Lazarus that needs resurrection. The West Coast rapper sees himself (and also by peers, critics, and fans alike) as a street preacher-cum-prophet. After all, for most of the 2010s, the guy’s been the closest thing to a clergyman for hood folk. His albums have been the hood equivalent of the Testaments, and his songs have been prayers that comfort them in streets polluted with gang wars, police brutality, hopelessness, and death. Fairly accurate.
The lines, however, become blurred once he takes these two things a step higher and emulates Jesus. It reminds me of Michaelangelo’s classic fresco, The Creation of Adam; you can see that Kendrick is stretching his hand, but he can’t quite get his finger to link with God’s. Yes, he wears his crown of thorns with grace. Yes, he hangs from a cross with comfort. But one still gets the sense that such a crown is too heavy for him and the cross too big. And the music video’s genius is bogged down with similar Christ-inspired showings. Interestingly, Kendrick excels best at honest discipleship to Christ when he does it with his pen; however, when he purposefully impersonates Jesus, he comes off as a well-meaning but futile caricature.
The “N95” music video illustrates that K. Dot is everything and nothing like the Son of Man he spends all his time mimicking. He is nothing like him because he can’t save any of his beloved people and followers—a truth he has openly confessed in To Pimp a Butterfly. However, he is everything like him in that he stands for rightness, is a culture-shaping iconoclast, and continues to blaze new trails about what it means to be close to God through audacious godliness.
