Kendrick Lamar - ELEMENT. Music Video In Depth Analysis
Kendrick Lamar released the music video for the song ELEMENT. from the critically acclaimed album DAMN. And this video is no different than Kendricks other music videos: full of secret meaning and awesome scenes. So let's delve into Kendrick Lamar's latest work of visual art, shall we?
The first couple of shots we see what appears to be a hand reaching out of water as the person is obviously drowning. Perhaps this is supposed to mean that Kendrick is drowning in violence or something similar, as the following scenes depict a fight, three children behind a barbed wire fence with one of them holding a revolver, two men in a fighting stance, and a man kneeling on the ground with blood all over him.
The following scenes after that seem to be heavily inspired by Gordon Parks, with some of the scenes being nearly identical to ones made by Gordon Parks. Gordon Parks was a photojournalist, photographer, director, and musician and helped push efforts in the civil rights movement.
After that series of scenes end the songs instrumental begins to sound darker and the scenes follow suit with the scenes depicting darker things after this sudden change of mood.
Scenes like two boys being handcuffed are shown along with the more darker tone of the lyrics.
This scene is quite interesting to me, as it seems like the man who is teaching the kid to fight is also the bloodied man that was shown earlier in the video. So either Kendrick is setting up a big storyline or maybe it's an allegory for something. Or maybe they just decided to use the same actor. But knowing Kendrick I would beg to differ on that notion.
This is another scene which is heavily inspired by Gordon Parks, in fact, this scene and Gordon Parks scene are nearly identical, which fun fact the Gordon Parks foundation has praised Kendrick for repeatedly using imagery made by Gordon Parks.
This scene is a bit hard to make out what it means in all honesty, if we are to believe that the man who was teaching the child to fight and the bloodied man are one and the same story-wise, we could try to make out some sort of side plot here. But since I haven't seen this man anywhere else in this music video besides from those two scenes or in any other Kendrick Lamar music video of any other DAMN. song, trying to make out a sub plot for this set of characters would be pretty fruitless. But hey, you never know.
"Fake my death go to Cuba, that's the only option." C'mon Kendrick, don't even try to be subtle here! We all know what your talking about. (Hint: tupac is in Cuba probably maybe not very likely no)
And that is my explanation of the most noteworthy scenes in the music video of ELEMENT. I could have gone by this scene by scene, but that would be a huge wall of text and pictures, considering most scenes are different variations or continuations previous scenes (i.e the nuns, kendrick slapping someone, someone drowning in water etc).
But that is just my take on the whole music video, for all I know I could be totally wrong. So let me know in the comments what you think of the song, the music video or anything!