Behind the Scenes of Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Squabble Up’ With Bay Area Turf Dancers

After uniting the West Coast with “Not Like Us” earlier this year, Kendrick Lamar has arrived with another anthem, “squabble up.” The standout track from K.Dot’s surprise new album, GNX, which hit streaming last Friday, is a funky flip of Debbie Deb’s freestyle classic, “When I Hear Music.” Its music video arrived Monday morning, and Lamar packed it with hip-hop culture (and history) references that lean heavily into his hometown of Compton, and also include an homage to the Bay Area.

In the video, Lamar posts up in an empty Victorian living room, rapping nonchalantly in a Dodgers-blue hoodie while scenes unfold around him, like Henry Taylor paintings brought to life. David Hammond’s red, green and black African American Flag hangs on the wall. Dancers c-walk; girls pose in front of a mall-style airbrushed backdrop; and a lowrider hits the hydraulics. Lamar also slips in references to Black pop culture staples, including Isaac Hayes, Soul Train and the 1993 film Menace II Society, which features the late Oakland rapper Saafir.

About 50 seconds in, we see Lamar crack open a book called How to Be More Like Kendrick for Dummies as Bay Area turf dancers go stupid and ride scraper bikes around him. Local fans might recognize Dmonte, Icecold 3000 and Aktive of Turf Feinz and Kiing Velo (a.k.a. All Gold Niinoo) of Best Alive Dance Crew.

“Thank you for phuckin wit east Oakland, west Oakland and Richmond,” Icecold wrote on Instagram.

Icecold 3000 tells KQED the opportunity came about when he least expected it. One day, while playing NBA 2K with friends, he got an Instagram DM from the video’s director, Calmatic. “He said he needed me to come down to L.A. for something. But he couldn’t tell me what it was because he was on a contract,” Icecold says.

He and Aktive decided to take a chance and drive down. When they arrived on set, they started to notice it was buzzing with industry figures like L.A. rapper G Perico and dancer Storm DeBarge. Among the many L.A. faces, they ran into Velo and Dmonte, who they knew from the turfing scene in the Bay.

“Our chemistry was just so, so electric when we were shooting our takes,” Icecold recalls. “I think we shot like 20 takes almost, and they was asking, ‘Did you just meet each other today? How is the chemistry so high?’ So we had to tell them, we from the same area. We grew up around each other.”

As for the scraper bikes, they weren’t imported from Oakland. The music video production team recreated their signature colorful wheels. “I think they did a good job with the design, down to the clothes they had us wear. They was really trying to capture the actual essence of the hyphy movement [of the 2000s],” Icecold says.

Surprisingly enough, Kendrick Lamar was actually not on set with Icecold and the dancers. He was added into the scene after the fact, in post-production.

“So it was basically just everybody else [there], like all the other rappers and artists and people connected to him,” says Icecold.

Lamar’s nod to an iconic Bay Area dance style is not the first time the hitmaker has referenced the region in his art. He shot his music video for “Alright,” from his pivotal album To Pimp a Butterfly, on Treasure Island in 2015. More recently, he tapped Vallejo legend E-40 to host his Juneteenth stadium show in L.A. as he made his victory lap after his beef with Drake. “squabble up” is just his latest show of appreciation for the Bay’s contributions to West Coast hip-hop culture.

Icecold 3000, who noted his phone’s been blowing up all day, says he walked away from the experience with a deep sense of gratitude. Not just because Kendrick showed love to the Bay, but because the “squabble up” video reminds audiences that dance is a crucial part of hip-hop. He hopes more artists will include turfing in their videos and keep the art alive.

“Just him showing love to the dance community first and foremost — I love and respect that,” Icecold says. “I think people forget how big the dancers is, and how important the dancers have always been.”