Kendrick Lamar has dropped a single titled “The Heart Part 5″ days ahead of his fifth solo album, “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers” on May 13.
Lamar dropped the single along with a video which was directed by Lamar and Dave Free.
The video has Lamar rapping but with a switch up of his face changing from one dead black man to another troubled black man. His switch begins with OJ Simpson, Kanye West, Jussie Smollett, Will Smith, Kobe Bryant and Nipsey Hussle.
“I am. All of us” showed on the opening scenes of the video which is linked to “Oklama,” a name Lamar has used to refer to his recent announcements about the album.
The switching faces are also connected with the lyrics as they come. Kanye West face shift has him saying “friend’s bipolar,” while Simpson’s face is heard rapping “bulletproof rover,” and Hussle’s face switch ends the face switch with the dead rapper giving a long soliloquy that mirrors the perspective of the dead rapper who was murdered in 2019 and a close friend of Lamar.
Lamar’s rap in the face of Hussle’s goes;
“To my brother, to my kids I’m in heaven … To the killer that sped up my demise: I forgive you, just know your soul’s in question/ I seen the pain in your pupil when that trigger had squeezed/ And though you did me gruesome, I was surely relieved/ I completed my mission, wasn’t ready to leave/ But fulfilled my days, my Creator was pleased … To my neighbourhood, let the good prevail … I can’t blame the hood the day that I was killed.”
The mellow jam is Lamar’s ongoing series called “The Heart,” which goes back to 2010.