A young rapper from New Jersey named AK is calling out legendary rapper Kendrick Lamar for allegedly copying the video concept of one of his songs. Lamar released a video to his song “The Heart Part 5,” which drew an immediate reply from AK.
According to AK, “The Heart Part 5” bears similarities to his own “Family Tree,” which was released in 2020. Indeed, both videos feature the respective artists standing in front of the camera while they pay homage to several rappers whose faces are then super-imposed onto the artist’s face using AI technology.
In AK’s video, he pays homage to the greats before him, and the rappers’ faces are merged with his while he raps. The rappers in his video are Lil Wayne, Missy Elliot, Eminem, MC Lyte, Tupac, Snoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar, Nate Dogg, T-Pain, J. Cole, Nas, Rakim, Andre 3000, AK (himself), 50 Cent, Jay-Z, and Drake.
The song has, however, not been as popular as Kendrick’s new song. The views started jumping, however, as many persons came to watch it to compare it to Kendrick’s moving from 600K on Tuesday morning to 688K by afternoon on Tuesday.
The young rapper pointed out the similarities on Instagram on Tuesday morning, sharing that both videos were created by Universal but are almost the same.
“Kendrick Lamar’s new music video is an exact copy of my video from 2020 of my song ‘Family Tree,’” he captioned side by side videos of the two songs.
“Maybe I’m fooling myself for thinking that Kendrick saw my video and was like, ‘Damn, that’s so good that I want to do it myself.’ But I was under Universal; he is under Universal. I did that video in 2020 with Universal. Obviously, the song didn’t do as good as if Kendrick was to do it, but the concept was so sick and I f***ing don’t know, but it’s the same exact thing — it’s a backdrop, it’s him in front of it, it’s one take,” he said.
“I want to make it clear like he’s an icon, I respect Kendrick. this is very weird…nobody has ever done this before but as an independent artist that’s the type of s**t you have to eat and my whole message is to keep going because you gotta eat sh*t sometimes but eventually you’ll be aight,” he added.
Meanwhile, Kendrick’s “The Heart Part 5,” is reportedly directed by himself and pgLang co-founder Dave Free.
On Kendrick’s turns, he turns into Kanye West, Nipsey Hussle, Will Smith, Kobe Bryant, OJ Simpson, and Jussie Smollett while rapping.
The song is the first to be released from his much anticipated fifth studio album, ‘Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers’, which is set for release Friday, May 13.
Kendrick Lamar has not responded to the claim by AK as yet.
