Kendrick Lamar just dropped a new music video with a song titled The Heart Part 5.
The first series in the Heart series actually dropped back in 2010.
And in this video, he's getting a lot of attention because of the fact that he used
Deepfakes to present himself as various celebrities who have been in the news.
Who have passed away in some cases,
including Kanye West,has been in the news, hasn't passed away.
You've got OJ Simpson, Will Smith, Jesse Smollett,
Kobe Bryant, and also Nipsey Hussle.
And so he's gotten a little bit of backlash for
presenting himself as these individuals, with these deep fakes and
rapping the lyrics from the perspective of these individuals.
Some people think that it's a little disrespectful, but I actually think,
look, Kendrick Lamar is an incredibly thoughtful artist.
His music and the lyrics that go along with it are incredibly meaningful.
His first album.
I mean, I like his music, his first album was my favorite album,
and it's one of the greatest examples of storytelling that I think you got
to listen to it from the beginning to end.
And so I trust him enough to not do this in like a slimy way or in a way that would
be disrespectful to the individuals who have passed like Kobe Bryant and all that.
But he did get some positive feedback.
He got a few people who were not happy with the Deepfake component of it before I
get into like the meaning of the song and all of that Genk,
I wanted to give you a chance to jump in.
>> Yes, so for the people offended by the Nipsey hustle part, for
example, that's when he was talking about how he's literally in heaven.
I know it's tripping people out when they see him next to OJ and
other crazy people like Kanye West.
It doesn't appear that that's what he meant at all.
So you have to pay attention to the lyrics and
which part of the video are matched up with which lyrics.
I thought they were going to be more controversy.
There was gonna be and maybe there will be eventually more controversy about
what he's saying about culture and compton.
And among fellow black folks.
Okay, because if you listen to the lyrics, he's calling out cultural problems, right?
And the main theme is hurt people, hurt people.
And so he's calling it out in a thoughtful way and saying, look,
all this violence was done upon us.
But yet we're now perpetuating that violence ourselves against ourselves.
And so he's not doing it in an old school Bill Cosby.
Well why don't you pull up your pants?
And then we saw what happened with Bill Cosby, right?
And when he's not doing it in a Fox News way, but he's doing it in a genuine way,
like I've seen the violence, it's taking people from me and by the way,
it took Nipsey from us too.
And so we've got to stop this cycle of violence because hurt people hurt people,
right?
And so that's why it's thoughtful.
>> Yeah, I wanna read from complex magazine and their interpretation of
the symbolism that's in the music video because I do think it's powerful.
They write the music video centers around the idea of perspective using
Deepfake technology.
Kendrick Lamar embodies the perspectives of OJ Simpson, Kanye West Jessie Smollett,
Will smith Kobe Bryant and NipNipsey Hussle.
In the first verse, Kendrick appears as himself,
as he wraps from his own perspective.
But then he opens the second verse by morphing into OJ Simpson's face
while interloping Jay Z's iconic opening line from ISO beyond
the symbolism of OJ's rise to fame and fall from grace.
There's also a subtle knob to hove rapping about OJ on the story of OJ.
Kendrick's face morphs into Kanye, next as he raps about a bipolar friend
who is surrounded by opportunists that might be taking advantage of him.
Then he morphs to Jussie Smollett, hinting at the hypocrisy surrounding
the controversy of staging a racist, homophobic attack.
Kendrick closes the second verse by wrapping in a land where hurt people,
hurt people f calling it culture from the perspective of Will Smith,
who recently faced backlash when he slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars.
When he's rapping from Kobe's perspective, Kendrick's lyrics hint at how
they've both changed their respective games thanks to hard work and dedication.
So it's not just about pointing to examples of
controversial actions that were taken by these men.
He also points to people like Kobe Bryant people like himself who have put in
the hard work and dedication to actually kind of change that cycle, right?
That's the point, I think, but
also to show like there's another way that you can accomplish great things
without going down a path that almost feels like is pre-selected for people.
>> Yeah, and I think that this is a really interesting conversation that only a guy
like Kendrick Lamar could start, it doesn't have to be him in particular.
But someone with credibility who, who's gone through this and
live the life that he lived and clearly comes at it from both good
intent point of view and an intelligent point of view, right?
So it's not Kanye talking about black culture or
cultural violence because Kanye is a weirdo who has lost his mind and
the right wing is right now, that's not, that doesn't help anybody, right?
That's, that's not an interesting conversation and he's, by the way,
Kendrick, Lamar is totally right.
The people around him, obviously taking advantage of him because he says he should
get mental health counseling.
They shouldn't just drive him out to concerts and media appearances
where he makes an absolute fool of himself just to cash in on his fame.
But it's a super hard conversation to start because the minute you do
the right wing jumps on the conversation goes, right.
And and that's why I think he says that line about this isn't a culture, right?
This is something we have to fix in terms of, and
I'm over focusing on the violence, but certainly that part of it too.
And so I'm glad he started that conversation and
because we've got to pull people to a better place, a better direction.
>> Yeah, I totally agree.
And just to give you a few examples of people criticizing him for
doing the deep fakes and rapping from the perspective of like Kobe Bryant and stuff.
One person says that don't sit right with my soul, not a good thing or trend.
Another person says, no, that ain't it.
It's cool to honor Kobe, but this is weird.
One other person says, yeah, that's a little weird, let the man rest.
So we wanna know what you guys think.
I generally agree with that perspective, but
I think that this it's an exception for me.
At least I can't speak for everyone else because there was a point to it,
there was a deeper point, an important point.
But we wanna know what you guys think.
We have a poll about this on our website.
Go to tyt.com/polls.
The question is,
was Kendrick Lamar's use of deepfake in The Heart Part 5 appropriate?
Yes or no?
We wanna know what you guys think so, share your thoughts.