The Story Behind the Dancing in Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” Video

Not long ago, Charm La’Donna was presented with the opportunity of a lifetime.

Kendrick Lamar was getting ready to shoot the music video for “Not Like Us,” and he asked if she could do the choreography.

It was a high-pressure moment. “Not Like Us” was the biggest song in the country and it had already become one of the most anticipated music videos in years. So how did La’Donna respond? With confidence. After all, there’s no one on Earth more qualified for the job than her.

La’Donna has danced and choreographed with Kendrick for years, working with him on everything from his 2018 Grammys performance to his 2022 Super Bowl appearance to the entirety of The Big Steppers Tour. And when the Compton native found out about the LA-centric concept for the video, she knew it was the perfect project for her.

“When I looked at the treatment from Dave [Free] and Dot, I was just excited to even have dance be a part of it,” she remembers. “Being able to bring in a lot of LA dancers was the highlight for me for sure.”

La’Donna immediately started making calls to local dancers who she’s worked with over the years and put together an all-star cast of West Coast performers. From there, everything happened quickly. First, they breezed through relaxed rehearsals at legendary LA dancer Tommy The Clown’s studio. (“I wouldn't even call them normal rehearsals,” she clarifies. “It was just fun.”) Then they jumped straight into the video shoot itself, where La’Donna focused on being as natural and collaborative with the dancers as possible.

“We all wanted this particular piece to be very collaborative because it’s all of our culture that we get to share,” she says. “Literally everything you saw in that video was just us just having fun and being very, very ourselves and taking pride in our culture. I think that's what people resonate with, especially with the dancing. It's definitely catered to LA and the entire West Coast region.”

La’Donna tried not to overthink the choreography itself, leaning instead on the instinctual movements that have been ingrained in her since growing up as a kid in Compton. “It's my culture,” she points out. “It's where I'm from, so it's like, I just do me. I do what I feel.” Citing an example, she adds, “Like, the sway that everybody's doing in the video is very nostalgic to our culture. It's like, wap, wap.”

The video itself is a love letter to LA, and the community-oriented feeling of the shoot was very apparent to everyone on set. “It just hit different being home and being around dancers who I know come from the same place I come from,” she says. “I'm able to share what I hold so dear to myself, which is my culture and how I grew up dancing. It was so natural. It wasn't forced, it wasn't pressed. We were just being us.”

While some of the dancing in the video was improvisational, there were also scenes that required elaborate choreography. Take the dancing during Kendrick’s third verse, for example, where La’Donna paired Tommy The Clown’s T-Squad crew with various dancers from other parts of Los Angeles, merging different worlds together in a way that pushed them each in new stylistic territory.

“On that verse, in my mind I was like, ‘I want the dancers to tell the story,’” she says. “Because a lot of what we do dance-wise is storytelling. It’s all about how we feel, what we hear, what we see… So with the verse [raps ‘Once upon a time, all of us was in chains’] I really wanted to just bring that to life.”

When it comes to the specific symbolism and storytelling techniques behind the dance moves, though, La’Donna is coy. “It's up to your own interpretation,” she says. But when pushed to get more specific, she offers, “OK, here, when they lay down on the floor… To me that represents a railroad… But it may not represent that to you.”

La’Donna admits that talking about the specific meaning and symbolism behind her choreography doesn’t come naturally to her, because so much of it is created from a place of feeling that words can’t describe.

“Even me trying to explain it right now, I feel like I'm being forced in a corner to kind of make some stuff up,” she says. “Because I just move based off how I feel, what the song says, or what the people do. It's that simple for me. I think that's why my art resonates with so many different people, because no matter where you’re from, you can relate to some part of it.”

Still, she has appreciated seeing all of the fan-created breakdown videos that inevitably follow Kendrick’s work. Not long after the video dropped on July 4, fans started sharing detailed theories about the symbolism behind every frame, including the dance choreography. “I saw so many breakdowns and I love them,” she says with a laugh. “I love every single breakdown.”

One part of the video that fans have been dissecting is the tightrope scene, which features an appearance from La’Donna herself.

“Dave Free and Dot had this crazy idea to literally walk on a tightrope,” she remembers. “Other people tried, and it's just really hard, though. We were trying to get the shot and I was like, ‘Fuck it, I'll try.’ So I end up doing it.” Looking at footage of herself on the tightrope, she continues, “I'm trying to Crip walk on the damn rope, but it's hard, so I'm trying to do my best in the balance and still get the walk off. I hope I did what was supposed to be done. Everybody's saying they love it and everyone gets it, but it was definitely a challenge.” With a laugh, she adds, “I fell off that damn thing a couple of times and busted my ass.”

It was all worth it, because the scene has now become a fan-favorite. As La’Donna tells it, “I have women saying, ‘Charm, this is every Black woman in America. Charm, this is every Black woman in corporate America. Charm, this is me every day, all day.’ And I'm grateful that the art that I create can get positive responses from people. I’m grateful it can get people thinking and inspired.”

La’Donna says most of Kendrick’s dance moves in the video weren’t choreographed, coming instead from the Compton rapper “just vibing” on set. “His dancing complements the music extremely well, and it's just him,” she explains. “This is our culture and he’s just sharing that.”

People often like to put Kendrick in a box as a lyrical rapper who wouldn’t like to dance, but La’Donna is quick to put that narrative to bed, pointing out how good he actually is at dancing. “He can move!” she exclaims. “Stop playing with him! Don't play with my bro. It's natural and it's never forced. And I love that. Don't play. My bro can step. Period.”

One of the most talked-about parts of the video is the scene where Kendrick and his partner Whitney Alford dance in a living room with their kids. The whole thing happened very naturally (“They're just doing their thing,” La'Donna describes) and when I bring up the fact that some fans were surprised with Whitney's dancing abilities, she responds, “But she’s from the city! We can dance!"

Overall, La’Donna is proud to have pulled off a video that features so many prominent dancers from California, including including Tommy The Clown and T-Squad, LayLay, Envy, Yak, Tootoo, Ieema Copeland, Storm DeBarge, Dezi, Lady Bang, BZ, Taiwan, Kida, Theo, Tyler Jackson, Chris Castillo, JK, and more. “I feel like we haven't seen our culture highlighted in such an artform in a long time,” she says.

The decorated choreographer has worked on a lot of big projects in recent years, collaborating with artists like The Weeknd, Dua Lipa, Selena Gomez, Rosalia, Metro Boomin, Becky G, but she says the “Not Like Us” video was a particularly special experience for her.

“This video has rejuvenated me in a way and given me some different type of inspiration that I almost lost for a little bit,” La’Donna reveals. “I feel good about all my shit, but this is like… My little cousin's seen the video!” Taking a step back, she adds, “No one really knows how big anything is going to be. And then you do it and you're like, ‘Shit, 20 million views in 24 hours, what the fuck?’ [Laughs.] So it is definitely a special moment for sure.”