Kendrick Lamar Wants To Stay “Humble,” But This Is a Video To Brag About

It’s finally happened: one of the most innovative rappers in the game today has teamed up with one of the most innovative music video directors in recent memory–and the result is a visual banquet you can’t watch just once.

Kendrick Lamar recently dropped a clip for presumably his first single from his forthcoming album. “Humble” marries Lamar’s intricately stacked bars with director Dave Meyers’s eye for arresting imagery to chronicle (and temper) the rapper’s come-up. Throughout “Humble,” Lamar slips into references including the Pope, Jesus at The Last Supper, Steve Jobs, and Grey Poupon’s iconic 1988 commercial, all of which is filtered through the iconic lens of The Little Homies (Lamar and president of Top Dawg Entertainment, Dave Free) and Meyers whose hip-hop music video credits run deep.

Meyers has been a mainstay in the business for decades, but it’s his work with Missy Elliott that is probably his most recognizable. From her earlier classics like “Get Ur Freak On,” “Work It,” “Lose Control,” to her newest tracks “I’m Better” and “WTF (Where They From)”. Run Meyers’s reel and you can instantly see a creative through line in his videos, and here’s hoping that he’s found an additional muse in Lamar.