Kendrick Lamar Reveals Our Struggles with Sin in New Video "God is Gangsta"

Despite some profanity, Hip Hop artist Kendrick Lamar has released one of his most revealing videos, "God is Gangsta." When the Apostle Paul describes our human weaknesses and our propensity to sin in Romans 7, no song illustrates this truth better than Lamar's new video.

"God is a Gangsta" is a new mini movie featuring a drunken ranting.  This is short film, comprised of "u" and "For Sale?" songs off his Grammy-nominated album To Pimp a Butterfly. Opening with the Compton rapper alone in a room drinking from a liquor bottle while rapping along to "u" before being baptized in a pool of water. He finds himself surrounded by half-naked women, who can't keep their hands off him, while his interlude "For Sale?" plays. In between the powerful imagery, subliminal messages flash on screen: "I followed your rules for way too long" and "You played the game. I pimped it." 

Though Lamar's version of Christianity doesn't fit into the orthodox category, he does profess faith in Jesus Christ.  In a few of his songs, he often vents his frustrations with the sins often associated with the "gansta" culture.  In fact, he even professes to being baptized in 2013.  In a recent Billboard interview, Lamar credited favoritism from God for his deliverance from the gravitational pull of crime in his neighborhood, and then casually declared his belief that the apocalypse is near. "We're in the last days, man - I truly in my heart believe that," he said. "It's written."

Speaking to Complex last year, he revealed his conviction that his career is divinely inspired. "I got a greater purpose," Lamar said. "God put something in my heart to get across and that's what I'm going to focus on, using my voice as an instrument and doing what needs to be done."

In a later interview with Houston's 93.7 The Beat, Lamar extended that sense of purpose to all of humankind: "We're all put on this earth to walk in His image, the Master," he argued.

 On an instructive unreleased song called "Jesus Saves," Lamar spins a narrative enumerating the everyday pestilence of the inner city - guns, homelessness, fatherlessness, unemployment, incarceration - and thanks God for saving him from the fate of his peers despite being an unrepentant sinner. His voice cracks as he repeats the eight-word chorus over and over: "I don't know why He keeps blessing me." 

 

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