This shot of the rioting looks completely surreal, an imagined nightmare, while other shots seem to be taken from true life. Worthy of its own separate video and introducing a core concept of the video it seems to exist on two different planes, a realistic plane and a surreal plane. The money being thrown, the burning car (I believe it’s a police car), the men celebrating the destruction, it’s the most cinematic scene so far. It’s only for a moment, but that clip captures all the rage and aggression of a city gone mad. It’s hard to catch the small details as "Cartoons & Cereal" is reintroduced, this time finally dropping in all its glory and showing the foreshadowed insanity. Next we see a quick glimpse at the bridge again and the boy that will later be seen riding in the car with Kendrick, along with the three people standing on top of a police car. “So I kept running, until I found my safe haven, I was trying to convince myself the stripes I got, making myself realize where my foundation was.” A bottle of Crown Royal is downed, a woman’s face covered in blood, a Molotov cocktail is thrown at a burning, graffiti rainbow as we hear another change in the poem. This video isn’t just incorporating other parts of the album but songs from years past. The perfect song for the mayhem that is about to be seen on the screen. For a brief second you see a masked man lying on the ground before a crowbar busts through a window and a snippet of "Cartoons & Cereal" is smoothly transitioned in as a tease. Instead of saying, “The evils of Luci was all around me” as on the album, it’s “The evils of Lucifer was all around me.” The camera pans to a perfect shot of a church, there’s no better place for someone with the Devil on his tail. This is also where we see the first big change in the poem. The first woman they show looks distressed, her face is shown right after an unidentifiable burning object. There’s a shot of three boys riding their bikes, a helicopter, a police officer, and a man that looks insane with anger. People are finally incorporated into the video, the first person is a body lying on the ground, no indication if he’s alive or dead. Kendrick is treating TPAB not as a finished product but a continued work in progress, capable of shape shifting as needed.
The skateboarder disappears and the scene changes abruptly.Īfter the switch is the first time we truly hear Kendrick, reciting the poem that is spoken throughout TPAB, although it’s important to notice that it’s not the same poem as the album, small tweaks are made.
I thought my computer froze the first few times I watched it but no, for reasons I can’t fathom it’s intentional. The video freezes like a buffering computer or a glitch in the matrix when a skateboarder appears soaring across the sky. The next scene is where things get weird. The addition of a drunken Kendrick in a hotel room on the verge of jumping from the 16th floor mixed into this array of images would perfectly symbolize the depression and loneliness of “U.” It’s like a mini video within the video, a sign of things to come. They intertwine an audio clip of “loving me is complicated” in the background before our ears are filled with Kendrick’s horrifying scream from “U.” Both screams are used during a strange shot of a black ceiling with mini lights glowing. Zooming in on the Port of Oakland, boats at sea, a neighborhood cloaked by smoke and sky scrapers. The first 30 seconds is completely b-roll footage that’s made into a slideshow of deserted locations, bleak and almost apocalyptic imagery. It’s a black and white tone with a deep contrast that gives off a gorgeous yet ominous ambiance. The video begins with a wide angle shot of the Oakland Bay Bridge in a color that can only be described as dark sky paradise (you’re welcome Sean).
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