DNA. Music Video | Kendrick Lamar Explained

Earlier today, Kendrick Lamar dropped a music video for the wildly popular song "DNA."
off of his newest album "Damn."
Upon my first watch, I had no idea what was going on, so as I rewatched it a few times,
I started to get an idea of how the video relates to and even further explains the song
it accompanies.
I want to start off my revisiting my initial analysis of the song from my previous video,
the full version of which you can check out in the card above.
Here's the clip:
Next comes DNA.
DNA is what decides the kind of person you will be, it codes for your traits . Kendrick
compares DNA to his circumstances and the kind of lifestyle he is confined to because
of said circumstance, it's all decided from birth and he can't do anything about it.
He was born to kill because of his environment, he was born to become a star because of his
natural talent.
He thus proposes that circumstance is just as binding and influential to a person's life
as their DNA, and they can't change it or break out of it.
Everything a person does is something they were born to do.
To understand what these ideas have to do with the music video, we first have to decode
what's going on in the video itself.
It opens with Kendrick alone in a room at a table, handcuffed and hooked up to a lie
detector, as if going into interrogation.
A man comes in scoffing, and after telling Kendrick that "DNA" stands for Dead N-words
association, he sits down next to him Upon turning the Lie detector on, he goes into
a spasm, the song plays it the lie detector goes to work before anyone even starts speaking.
This is where we can begin our analysis.
The room that Kendrick is inside of represents stereotypes and the literal box that African-
Americans are put into full of assumptions about their race.
Kendrick is being interrogated but the lie detector starts up before he even starts speaking,
representing that if an African American is accused of a crime, racism leads to assumptions
right off the gun that turn the cards against the accused before they even get a chance
to defend themselves.
As I said, the song DNA is filled with statements that associate things like Drugs, hustle,
riches, and murder with a person's DNA.
A common argument made by racists and white supremacists that roots in 20th century Eugenics
is that African Americans are just biologically inferior and more likely to be aggravated
to crime than Caucasians.
What's most interesting is that despite one man in the room being the criminal and the
other being the law enforcer, they are both singing the same song and saying the same
thing about their DNA, meaning that it doesn't matter who you are or what you do, you'll
still be subject to racism and assumptions about who you are, what things you've experienced
and what you are capable of.
Backing up this theory is the very thing that the interrogator said DNA stood for in the
start.
Association can mean a group of people sure, but it has another meaning, and that meaning
is " a connection or cooperative link between people or organizations."
These stereotypes and assumptions about the DNA of African Americans are what, as the
acronym suggests leaves African Americans dead.
The beat switch is where this metaphor continues in an interesting way.
The interrogator is left to die under the scope of these circumstances, but Kendrick
makes it out and is greeted by a group of people decked out in Top Dawg Entertainment
gear.
I think this represents Kendrick saying that hip hop is what helped him make it out and
what helped him establish his own identity that isn't enclosed by stereotypes or norms.
He very cleverly plays the fox news clip right while he's escaping to highlight the BS in
their statements, they say that hip hop is hurting African Americans, but it is really
their way out of a system that hurts them.
The lyrics once he escapes reflect that.
Not only does he more specifically start describing the grandeur of his own life , but he says
"My DNA not for imitation" fully drawing the line between himself and others and claiming
his own individuality.
He also reflects how he was influenced by hip hop in his own journey when he says " Sex,
Money, Murder : These are the breaks", a possible reference and homage to Kurtis Blow's song
" The Breaks"
There's my interpretation!
If you liked it please, leave a like, subscribe if you haven't already, Follow me on Instagram
at the account in the description, and if you didn't make sure to let me know what didn't
make sense down below so I could gain a better understanding of the video for myself.
Thanks for watching, and have a good day!

DNA. Music Video | Kendrick Lamar Explained

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