Kendrick Lamar delivers a furious performance in a new short film, God Is Gangsta, that doubles as a music video for two tracks ? "U" and "For Sale" ? off his latest album, To Pimp a Butterfly.
The short begins with "U," the LP's most brutal, introspective offering and a drunken deluge of self-doubt, hatred and guilt over his newfound fame and those left behind in Compton. Lamar spits the apoplectic cuts as he swills whiskey and stumbles around a tiny room, his frantic, sloppy movements warping the camera.
When Lamar emerges from this bottle episode, he's being baptized, but "For Sale" is hardly a redemption song. Beaten and vulnerable, the second (NSFW) sequence finds Lamar dazed and in the throes of temptation as he unspools the story of his first encounter with Lucy, TPaB's devil-like figure, and her promises of material salvation.
God Is Gangsta caps off a monumental year for Lamar centered around the release of the widely acclaimed To Pimp a Butterfly.
