Kendrick Lamar och Dave Free inspirerades av “Belly” och Quentin Tarantino i skapandet av kortfilmen “We Cry Together”

"It sparked a lot of other ideas..."

Ett av de mest omtalade och starka spåren från Kendrick Lamars senaste skiva “Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers” är utan tvekan “We Cry Together”. Det infekterade relationsdramat fick som bekant en kortfilm regisserad av Lamar och pgLang-kollegan Dave Free tidigare i år och nu har duon öppnat upp om skapandeprocessen tillsammans med skådespelerskan Tessa Thompson.

I samband med en privatvisning av kortfilmen, där vi ser Taylour Paige agera jämsides Kendrick själv, modererade Thompson ett samtal med pgLang-kreatörerna. Där berättade de att syftet var att adressera ämnen som “we as a society kind of shy away from”, medan Hype Williams “Belly” och Quentin Tarantino namngavs som inspirationer till kortfilmen.

“The crazy part about this joint is that it started with the film first and the music — putting it on the actual album — came after. The idea was always to capture this writing, not no song, [but] the writing and the film and the texture and the cinematography of it in order to get the full experience out”, berättar Kendrick enligt Complex.

De båda utvecklade också kring sin tillit och beundran för varandra, i synnerhet då man känt varandra sedan tonåren.

“I always had trust in Dave, and vice versa, to trust all of our ideas as a collective. And I think the energy that we bring, and the groundwork that we put forth brought us individuals like Taylour and Jake to come and say, ‘OK, this is a collective I want to be a part of and not be blocked in by the margins of what people perceive is OK’”, säger Kendrick medan Free kallar det “the holy grail to work with Kendrick”:

“I knew this super young because we would have conversations where we’d be like, ‘Why do we think like this?’ … We weren’t even really prepared to be ourselves. But I was able to be myself with him and talk to him about these quirky ideas.”

Kendrick Lamar konstaterar sedan:

“Ultimately, the main thing is, [we wanted to show] people that we can actually identify with, not only from our culture but from cultures all around the world. I think we all [know] individuals out there that feel like they can’t find an agreement — whether it’s their surroundings, or whether it’s their psyche that puts them in that environment. So the environment played a huge role, that’s something we definitely wanted to bring to life along with the script. It was just as important as the individuals that were actually spewing out the insults.”

Dave Free menade också att kortfilmen blevt startskottet för flera liknande idéer.

“It sparked a lot of other ideas for us. And now we have a lot more things we’re pursuing in the space. This was one piece that felt like it was a marriage of the world that we are coming from and the world we would go into.”

Duon är som bekant aktuella med en långfilm framöver, tillsammans med “South Park”-skaparna Matt Stone och Trey Parker.