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Kendrick Lamar has won the award for Best Cinematography at the 2025 MTV Video Music Awards for his song Not Like Us.
Although the R&B artist earned 10 nominations at the VMAs this year, he didn’t attend the event. In an interview with Harper's Bazaar, he explained,
"[I] can't identify with my performances onstage.”
He elaborated:
“I can’t hold my true whole identity to that person who’s onstage. Because if I did, that means I will judge every movement, every time I f*ck up a lyric, every time I’m off-key. It’s too much to deal with. So I have to have a distance between the performer and the person I close my eyes and look at the ceiling with.”
The video for Not Like Us is directed by Dave Free and Lamar, and has stood out for its visuals. This marks the third win for Kendrick Lamar in the Best Cinematographer category as he won the same VMA award for Humble in 2017 and for Family Ties (with Baby Keem). Lamar has won a total of 11 MTV Video Music Awards in his career.
Continue to read more about his career.
Exploring music career of Kendrick Lamar
Born on June 17, 1987, Kendrick Lamar is a hip-hop artist from Compton, California. His birth name is Kendrick Duckworth, and he is sometimes also known as K-Dot.
Today, Lamar is one of the most celebrated music artists of the industry with 22 Grammy wins, 11 MTV VMAs and a Pulitzer Prize for Music. According to Business Insider, he has released five No. 1 albums to date including his latest album, GNX.
Lamar grew up in poverty with his three younger siblings including two brothers and a sister. His parents, Kenny Duckworth and Paula Oliver, moved to Chicago from the West Coast three years before his was born. His father was part of Gangster Disciples, a South Side street gang, while his mother worked at McDonald’s initially, and later as a hairdresser, charging $20 per head.
Kendrick Lamar was inspired by Dr. Dre and Tupac Shakur to become a rapper, though initially in life he dreamed of making it big in the NBA due to his love for basketball. Life, obviously, had different plans for him.
He was also encouraged by his English teacher to learn poetry in seventh grade, which motivated him to pen his own lyrics. In a 2015 interview with the Rolling Stone, he said:
“You could put all your feelings down on a sheet of paper, and they’d make sense to you. I liked that.”
His father said that they wondered what he was doing with all the paper. At first he thought he was doing his homework until he found he was scribbling lyrics. His mother was reportedly shocked on discovering the profanity in his words.
Kendrick Lamar adopted his moniker K-Dot in high school. At the age of 16 in 2003, Lamar released a first mix tape, Y.H.N.I.C. (Hub City Threat: Minor Of The Year), under his former stage name K-Dot. This is widely considered the moment that marked the start of his rap career, and landed him a deal with then-local rap label, Top Dawg Entertainment (TDE).
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After releasing several more mixtapes, Kendrick Lamar was discovered by Dr. Dre, who invited him to work with him on his album, Detox. Lamar then released his debut album Section.80, in July 2011, which reportedly received positive reviews from the critics.
Since then, there has been no looking back for the artist. Throughout his career he got the opportunity to collaborate with popular recording artists such as Drake, Young Jeezy, The Game, Talib Kweli, Busta Rhymes, and Lil Wayne.
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