Full Circle Like a Rotary Phone: Karena Evans Dials Up Kendrick Lamar’s “Luther”

Friday was the premiere of Kendrick Lamar’s “Luther” music video from GNX, a short film directed by Karena Evans. The film crescendos both when Kendrick fires a gun and SZA steps from room 13, a chrysalis lit by angelic halos.

SZA then sheds a blue jean jacket like a past left behind. In what appears to be a hotel, she glides past doors marked 6, 8, and 10. The numbers, [6,8,10], they have resulted in much speculation as to their possible numerological meaning like the publisher of The Vill recently stated, if you search with the key term [Drake June 8, 2010], it results in a YouTube, when Drake, while in Manchester, UK on tour with Jay Z, premiered “Light Up”.

The song was featured on Drake’s debut album Thank Me Later, ‘Light Up’ and included Jay-Z but not Lil Wayne, whose Rikers Island verse—phoned in for the June 8, 2010, Ustream premiere—declared, ‘I’m feeling like Elvis, Jailhouse rock / I’m not 2Pac, I’m the new Pac.’ It’s like a full circle moment.

At door six, in the distance, the Drake doppelgänger leans, his gaze heavy with the weight of betrayal maybe for sleeping with another man's women like Kendrick said on Not Like Us — or maybe even unkept plans and promises, like a man who took too much from life and gave no woman the world.

SZA doesn’t pause, though her moves reminiscent of the video vixen dancing with Drake in Miss Me featuring Lil Wayne — she dances as a means to distract her muse — as she continues to guide us through the story told through the juxtaposition of the songs composition. Kendrick doesn’t pause either, his moves in pursuit of his muse takes us up and down—in and out guiding us through the soul of “Luther", where women aren’t props, but the voice of H.E.R.—Hip-Hop in Essence is Real — like Common penned in I Used to Love H.E.R. One memorable shot shows his muse coming down in a glass elevator as Kendrick, waiting on a couch below, slides perfectly into frame. By the climax, SZA's gaze into the GNX mirrors Kendrick’s own hopeless romantic desires, their lyrics a text you can’t unsend.

In the end, Hip Hop's journey leads back to Kendrick, whose love jones, despite his dreams with H.E.R. become his melancholy reality—set to Luther Vandross’ “If This World Were Mine.” He’s not just rapping but weaving moments we forget when holding on to the words of Hip Hops most illustrious artists.

“Luther” isn’t just a video. It’s a five-minute short-film, spinning full circle like a rotary phone, where every call by the production connects to a promise kept or broken. Evans, the director, her power lies in the depth of layered juxtaposition—SZA’s subtle grace, Kendrick's vulnerability and the unspoken code of PGLang.