Kendrick Lamar and Dave Free are helping keep music videos alive
thefader.comThe Director’s Label was a definitive document of the MTV era’s waning days. The series of DVDs celebrated music video directors who elevated the form and created a new mini-universe of aspiring auteurs: Spike Jonze, Jonathan Glazer, and Michel Gondry all went on to win Oscars, and underground sci-fi visionary Chris Cunningham helped usher Aphex Twin into popular consciousness with videos for “Come To Daddy” and “Windowlicker” before disappearing.
It’s been decades since the Label’s last release, but it remains an essential document of the Golden Age of Music Videos that was brought to its end by falling budgets, sapped attention spans, and a dearth of original ideas.
But a flicker of that originality remains in the work of high school friends Dave Free and Kendrick Lamar, whose collaborations would be worthy of any Director’s Label.
The two have worked together on Lamar’s visual identity since the release of his first EP in 2009, first as The Little Homies with Top Dawg Entertainment, then under the banner of their company pgLang from 2019 onwards.
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