In the Kendrick Lamar music video for the song Alright a motif that often arises is police brutality. Cops are portrayed as unnecessarily violent and are also shown shooting at African American men several times throughout the music video. In the music video, we see Kendrick travelling around Compton with people of the Compton community. Cops aren’t just shown shooting at African Americans they are also shown in another scene carrying a car that Kendrick is in.  This music video shows how the artist Kendrick Lamar feels about cops and the way they treat him and his peers. Kendrick Lamar and the director of this music video Collin Tilley did a great job directing this music video and used certain film techniques to express the idea that cops marginalize African Americas

One of the first times we see a cop in this music video is 1 minute and 33 seconds in when a cop is shown throwing an African American man to the floor. First the viewer gets a close up of the African American man’s face hitting the concrete, which makes you sympathize for this man because you are able to see the pain and struggle in his face. After that the African American man tries to break free from the officer, the camera starts to shake which shows the chaos that’s going on at the moment. About 5 seconds in to the camera shaking it then becomes still and everything slows down and the camera zooms in on the pistol that the officer is holding. You see a bullet fly out of the pistol in slow motion which makes a dramatic effect. There is no knowledge given to the viewer of what happened between the African American man and the cop prior to this incident so as a result this sequence causes the viewer to sympathize for the African American man. The viewers only knowledge of the situation is that this man is getting thrown to the floor, struggling to get up and is the shot at. Someone could view this clip as a cop marginalizing an African American man, because he’s portrayed as being innocent and powerless. The frustrating struggling look that is on this man’s face allows the viewer to connect with this man and have as a result have sympathy for him.

Cops appear in the music video in a couple other instances throughout this video but the one that really stands out is towards the end of the music video. Before this sequence occurs the lyrics of the song are “and we hate popo want to see us dead in the street fosho” and we see Kendrick standing on the street light and the cop uses his hand to shoot Kendrick off of it. The first shot we see in this sequence is the cop cruising in with his car, it then cuts to Kendrick joyfully dancing on the street lamp and then back to the cop getting out of his car with a shotgun. The viewer then again sees Kendrick dancing on the street post and then again cuts back to the cop who is now out of his car armed with a shotgun but rather than using his gun to shoot Kendrick down he just raises his hand and makes a gun with it. After the cop raises his hand and makes gun it cuts to a bug eyes view shot of Kendrick and it shows us how high up he is which could symbolize that he is high on life or maybe that he’s high power. We then see the cop shoot Kendrick off the light post just using his hand and Kendrick falls from the light post in slow motion. When he reaches the ground after falling it turns black and then the camera comes back to a close up of Kendrick’s face with a smile on it. By portraying Kendrick high in the air and making him look powerful, the cop shooting him could be looked at as marginalizing Kenrick because he doesn’t want him to be higher up or to appear to have more power than he does. By shooting Kendrick to the floor his power is completely taken away. Kendrick is simply just dancing in this sequence and the cop clearly shoots him for no reason. Collin Tilley, the director of this music video made an interesting decision in using the cops hand as a gun rather than actually using the shot gun. By using his hand it shows that they don’t need guns to marginalize African Americans.

someone going against the claim made in this paper would argue that cops aren’t constantly being portrayed as being unnecessarily violent and marginalizing the African American community throughout the music video. Someone that disagrees with this could back up their argument by stating that the cops in this video could have a reason for shooting at the victims, even though the people being shot at and arrested look innocent it would not be fair to say that they are innocent because the viewer really doesn’t know what they did to make the cop pursue them. The viewer could either look at it as the cops taking care of justice or just abusing their power. Another argument that could be made is that Kendrick didn’t make this music video to expose police for marginalizing African Americans but he simply just made it for the sole purpose or trying to get the African American community to come together, Kendrick wasn’t trying to criticize the police but simply just boost the morale of the Black community. If you were to make an argument going against the idea of African Americans being marginalized there would be much to work with. With the lyrics included I think it’s hard to argue against the fact that cops are being portrayed in a negative way. The music video itself and the lyrics both clearly indicate how Kendrick feels about the cops and that he clearly wants to portray them in a negative way and expose them for their corruption and trying to take power away from African Americans.

Cops are clearly portrayed as the victims in this music video and it is also cleary shown that Kendrick does not like how cops are treating him and fellow African Americans. A common motif that is constantly being portrayed is cops abusing their power. This music video is filled with scenes that show cop brutality and marginalization of the African American community.  The two scenes I chose to analyze are the best examples. Even though Kendrick feels that cops are abusing their power and are quick to shoot at Black men I thought he ended the video in a perfect way by having a close up on his face with a smile on it. It shows the viewer that despite everything that’s going on everything will be “Alright”.