Name: ELEMENT: How Kendrick Lamar Collaborates
Uploaded: 2026-03-15T17:07:58.000Z
Duration: 7 min 11 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Relative clauses (Restrictive vs. nonrestrictive)

They're often just a promotional add on to a medium that works just fine on its own.

In fact, I think most of the time music works better without visuals.

For me at least, they close down the possible ways I can experience the music most of the time.

Hey 30 millions later notification Auntie on my telegram like be cautious I be hanging out at Thames I be on Stockton I don't do it for the ground do it for Compton Kendrick Lamar's new video for his song Element is a powerful example of a music video actually expanding my experience of a song rather than collapsing it.

And it's got me thinking again about what exactly makes for compelling work in this in between medium.

Watching this, I think the answer has something to do with collaboration.

He occupies a really rarefied place in popular culture, celebrated for quality and integrity pretty much across the board, with a couple notable exceptions.

This is why I say that hip hop has done more damage to young African Americans than racism in recent years.

But we'll get back to that in a little while.

One of the things that's less talked about is Kendrick's ability to work seamlessly with other artists.

Of course, collaboration is sort of a prerequisite for hip hop.

Good rap music depends on the fusion of lyrics and production.

Kendrick's role as a marquee artist in hip hop is a lot like that of a film director who acts in his own work.

He can control the lyrical content and its delivery himself, but

it's also up to him to choose other artists according to their strengths and help them realize their own creativity in the service of his vision.

Working with him throughout the process for me was like very.

It was like being kneaded like a piece of dough, you know, it felt like somebody was like bending and stretching and like, you know, yeah, pulling different things out.

It's this kind of skill for directorial collaboration that makes Kendrick's music video so strong.

To understand the element video, you have to understand from first the collaborators.

The first is Jonas Lindstrom, a commercial fashion photographer from Berlin.

Lindstrom directed the video alongside the Little Homies, which is a pseudonym for Kendrick, and

Dave Free, the president of Top Dog Entertainment.

The element is highly reminiscent of Lindstrom's previous work, namely his short film Truth or dare, which features 21 performances or vignettes, an elevated version of the content found on mobile phones.

Interested in the boundary between photography and film.

Lindstrom is great at creating these slow moving tableaus that serve as a reference point for a larger environment.

In element, Kendrick has him apply that to his own, namely to the violence that's been an inescapable fact of that environment for his whole life.

Violence has always been a preoccupation of Kendrick's work.

He's examined it from every angle, looking at the violence that he's endured, sometimes at the hands of those closest to him.

I been stuffed out in front of my mama My daddy commissary made it to commerce bitch y' all my grandma's dead so ain't nobody praying for me I'm on your head aye.

The violence he's caused at the violence used to oppress his race and the violence his friends and family visit on themselves.

Each of these facets of violence is distilled into a photographic moment.

they're scrambled, drawing you into this churning cycle of violence that is the result of all these distinct images.

Kendrick can't be sure that he himself hasn't contributed to this cycle.

He's deeply conflicted about his violent past and about his position as rap's quote unquote savior, following the rapturous reception of his last album to Pimple Butterfly.

In many ways, Damn is a rebuke to that perceived divine status.

And Element is a prime example of that rebuke, showing that he's not above hip hop's competitive shit talking N thought they wouldn't go see me, huh?

Niggas thought that k real life is the same life they see on tv huh?

Niggas wanna flex on me and be in LA for free, huh?

Next time they hit the tee and freeway we need receipt, huh the one thing Kendrick Lamar is sure about, that the music itself is not the problem.

Kendrick plays this sample elsewhere on the album.

Clearly it's something he's wrestled with.

But for Kendrick, music is a way to cope with and understand his world, not the cause of its ills.

And this is where his second collaborator comes in.

Three of the shots in Element are direct references to the work of Gordon Parks, one of America's all time great photojournalists and filmmakers.

Parks was the first prominent commercial photographer to capture the black experience for a nationwide audience.

His focus on the inner cities for Life magazine was hugely important during that period.

And the power of his photography is that it forces people to see what would otherwise remain invisible to them.

Parks was heralded for his ability to get close to his subjects, to earn their trust so that he could illuminate the intimate truths of their lives.

I don't give a. I don't give a. I don't give a fuck.

By citing Parks, Kendrick aligns their artistic goals.

He, like Parks, commits to depicting the realities of his community with clear eyes, even if that means depicting himself as the product of a violent culture or a violent country, or sometimes as someone who perpetuates those things.

the way Kendrick brings the visions of Lindstrom and Parks into sync and with his own is masterful.

The result of the collaboration is a music video that operates a lot more like a poem, that connects the song and the album's content with more touchstones, not less.

Element is a video that lets you look into Kendrick's world and in the end, for a brief, terrifying moment, forces you to see through its eyes.

If I gotta go hard on the bitch Imma make it look sexy I pull up, hop out, air out made it look sexy.

They won't take me on my element now take me on my element.

This episode was brought to you by Casper Mattresses.

There is a mattress in this box right now.

It's actually a really cool sponsorship for us because we needed a new mattress in our bedroom and Caspers are really comfortable.

I had one when I was living in San Francisco, and I've been meaning to get one anyway.

It's a foam mattress that comes delivered in a box just like this, and

when you open it, it expands into the size, in this case of a queen mattress.

You take the mattress out of the box like you can see me doing right here.

You unfurl it on the bed frame and then just remove the vacuum seal plastic wrap, and

The mattress is obsessively engineered to have the ideal amount of firmness and bounce in its foam layers.

It's super affordable because it's sold directly to consumers.

You get free shipping and 100 day free trial with no hassle returns.

If you're not happy and if you go to Casper, do use the offer code nerdwriter.

You can get $50 off the purchase of a mattress.