Kendrick Lamar at Kimbell
Kendrick Lamar at Kimbell Art Museum
It didn’t take much to deduce that something big was happening. It was August 2020, the height of the pandemic, and I was pressuring someone who worked at Red Productions to disclose their latest project. I had caught wind that a prominent celebrity was in town filming a video. Someone huge; someone whose name would cause my eyes to widen and lips to chap. I just didn’t know who the hell it was and was trying my darndest to catch a leaky faucet; a mole akin to Deep Throat of Watergate fame. Alas, all my attempts were futile, and my opportunity to break the story had gone the way of the dodo.
But every now and then, I’d think about it, still perplexed as to who it might have been. So much time had passed, I assumed the celebrity was either a) not that big of a deal after all, or b) didn’t end up using any of the b-roll shot in Cowtown for whatever project they were concocting.
A full twenty-one months later, and I discover that the famous person was none other than Kendrick Lamar. The world-renowned rap artist, Billboard topper, and Grammy Award winner filmed large portions of his “N95” music video at the famed Water Gardens and Kimbell Art Museum.
According to Hear Fort Worth, the “top secret video” was a joint project between Red Productions and Freenjoy (aka Nathan Scherrer).
The video itself doesn’t follow any discernable narrative, and the rapper clearly did some city hopping to accumulate enough footage for the 3-minute, 26-second song, but it no doubt gives Fort Worth some much-needed credentials as a “cool city” to see Lamar performing atop the Water Gardens’ Mountain.
More importantly, the fact dozens (if not hundreds) of people involved managed to keep a lid on the project is enough to make me think that major conspiracies do, in fact, exist.
You can check out the full music video below. The Kimbell makes its first appearance at 52 seconds, and the Water Gardens comes in at 1:23.
Happy viewing and listening, y’all!
