Hours after it was announced that his Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers project has broken Apple Music’s 2022 first-day streaming record, Kendrick Lamar dropped off the music video for one of the album’s standout tracks – “N95.”
As HipHopNMore reports, Dave Free first teased the clip for fans last night, and some loyal Kendrick lovers were able to piece together that the video lines up with leaked footage from September of 2020 that showed Lamar shooting a visual at the time.
The three-minute and 15-second long song boasts production by Boi-1da, Hykeem Carter, Jahaan Sweet (check out the album’s full credit list here), and finds the father of two seemingly responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The world in a panic, the women is stranded, the men on a run / The prophets abandoned, the law take advantage, the market is crashin’, the industry wants / N*ggas send bitches to sleep in a box while they makin’ a mockery followin’ us / This ain’t Monopoly, watchin’ for love, this ain’t monogamy, y’all gettin’ f*cked,” the 36-year-old reflects on his second verse.
Genius notes that the bridge and the first half of “N95” were due to appear on Baby Keem’s “vent,” but ultimately, K-Dot only provided the chorus vocals. He still showed his cousin some love on this release though, tapping him to appear in the music video.
Check the Dave Free and Kendrick Lamar-directed visual out above, and tap back in with HNHH later for more hip-hop news updates.