Whether it’s “Alright,” “King Kunta,” or “Bad Blood,” Kendrick Lamar has by any metric been in some of the year’s best music videos. His latest is for “These Walls,” the innuendo-laden To Pimp a Butterfly cut that features Bilal, Anna Wise, and Thundercat, and it’s another glimpse of the rapper’s sprawling, kaleidoscopic vision.
The director is Colin Tilley, who also helmed “Alright,” and whose roving shooting style nicely complements Lamar’s epic Compton portraiture. The video flits between a prison and a party, and is framed as one guy (comedian Cory Holcomb) recounting the story about how Lamar landed him jail. Part of that story involves Terry Crews crashing a talent show and hitting the quan, but I won’t spoil the rest.
