Coming off of a banner Tuesday where he led all rappers with six nominations for the 2023 Grammy Awards, Kendrick Lamar kicked off his Wednesday morning by dropping a new music video for “Rich Spirit.”
In contrast to his Saturday Night Live performance of the song, where he stood stoically and rapped essentially motionless as a shadow did all of the movements for him, Kendrick evokes shades of his dance heard round the world on the “Family Ties” video with a new arsenal of moves.
The Calmatic-directed clip begins with him seemingly in a paranoid mind-state, holed up in a dimly-lit hotel room. He kneels by the bedside before popping up and strutting around the room to the rhythm. If there’s been one constant to Kendrick’s dance moves, it’s their lack of inhibition and he lets himself go to get lost into the song’s message of remaining confident amid deep self-analysis.
Note the cowboy boots that K-Dot wears with the all-red outfit at the video’s onset. Clearly a custom job, they have an image of Kendrick and his daughter from the Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers album cover. Nightfall hits the room, and he dons a robe in a paranoid flash, before shifting into two other casual get-ups, dancing into a cascading mirror, and then ends the clip in a sparkly white indoor leisure suit. Then, the phone rings…
Watch Lamar’s video for “Rich Spirit” above.