Kendrick Lamar can be seen holding a shotgun in newly-released outtakes from his Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers album cover shoot.
The photos were unveiled at an exhibition in New York City by photographer Renell Medrano, who also shot the final cover for the critically acclaimed album.
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The previously unseen photos bare a close resemblance to the finished product, with Kendrick surrounded by his family.
However, one of the images shows the Compton rapper holding a shotgun and standing behind his fiancée Whitney Alford and two children.
Another picture sees Kendrick holding his son Enoch while wearing a crown of diamond-encrusted thorns on his head — the same $3 million Tiffany & Co. accessory he wore during his headlining performance at Glastonbury festival in 2022.
It was teased that Kendrick Lamar fans were missing out on many hidden Easter eggs on Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers.
In a resurfaced interview from last year, veteran mixing engineer Manny Marroquin detailed K. Dot’s creative process and the thought he puts into his music.
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“It’s such a deep album. Ten years from now, some people are gonna get it. They’ll be like, ‘Oh, this is what’s happening,'” he said.
“There’s a lot of Easter eggs along the way that when people start discovering them, it’s gonna have new life and new listeners. But he won’t talk about them, which is a shame.”
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Marroquin added: “I wish people would hear what he’s told me about the album and how this song connects to this song and this lyric is an answer to a question. I mean, can people please find out? Because it would blow your mind.”
Kendrick fans are generally pretty good at finding hidden references in his music, especially during his beef with Drake this past summer.
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While the video for his chart-topping diss track “Not Like Us” was full of obvious visual jabs at the 6 God, it wasn’t until weeks after its release that eagle-eyed fans noticed a potentially deeper aspect to the clip.
One part of the self-directed video sees K. Dot recreating a scene that resembles a photo of model and actress Mila Jovovich as he raps: “Say, Drake, I hear you like ’em young/ You better not ever go to cell block one/ To any bitch that talk to him and they in love/ Just make sure you hide your lil’ sister from him.”
Jovovich, who is best known for starring in Resident Evil, was caught in the middle of various underage scandals herself.
The Ukrainian-born star was discovered while still a minor by French model agency boss Jean-Luc Brunel, who was later accused of raping a child and supplying young girls to convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. He hung himself in prison before trial.
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When she was 16, Jovovich was briefly married to 21-year-old actor Shawn Andrews and later married The Fifth Element director Luc Besson, who had previously been in a relationship with a 15-year-old when he was 32 and has been accused of rape by multiple women.
