Kendrick Lamar offered a modest victory on Friday in a crowded soldier. Walking around a series of ramps and tracks, the rapper has fallen his muscles as a proud champion of his title belt.
The somewhat mute display represented Lamar to his most physical ostentatious. Mainly reserved and incredibly targeted, the MC delivered the KOs with a delivery of dynamite after another. The singular path of Lamar with words has almost absolved the 160 -minute spectacle of its faults – mainly, the decision to intertwine its sets with those of the co -lineur sza in a continuous set of nine acts, and the irreconcilable contrasts which have succeeded.
In town during his “Grand National Tour”, Lamar traveled the speech. His boasting of being the greatest of all time? Difficult to discuss at this stage. Lamar did not need compulsory sequins that complement most of the massive concerts. Yes, there were fireworks in Gogo, Blast-Furnace flames, fireballs and mechanical platforms. The vignettes on the pre -recorded theme on the theme of the interrogation doubled in preludes. Lamar would have been just as effective if he had just his microphone for his razor voice and his spanning video wall to project conceptual imaging – lender on wages and the signaling of the corner alcohol store, three -dimensional digital sculptures, provocative collages, coded slogans – linked to songs.
Lamar also brought its 1987 black Buick GNX coupé from 1987 for the walk, using it as a recurring accessory and an occasional entry device. A dance team of 16 people, a descent on a staircase and a choreographed segment where the native of California walked at the top of a long table while his whole was seated on one side as theatrical as things took place in his universe.
He focused on narrative devices, demonstrating an elite command of dynamics, syntax, tone, timing, tension and height. Aside from a chain “X” Blinded-out suspended from his neck, Lamar avoided the bonus and only brought two outfits. No media threshing men, no special guests, no free self-promotion. And no manifest showboating, even with his voice. Mainly, a batch of dead songs and an effortless flow which often worked as the parallel of a section of world class.
With its current trek, Lamar joins Jay-Z and Eminem on the short list of hip hop artists who have co-line of stadium tours in North America. Although the three joined an R&B singer, Lamar planned an outing – the tour of 39 dates heads to Europe in July – more ambitious.
He regularly breaks records. In Seattle, he established the new brand of the highest gross income ($ 14.8 million) for a single performance by a rapper. It is already a fatal conclusion that the “Grand National Tour” will be classified as the most profitable rap tour in history, adding to a series of exploits that place the 37-year-old man on the same global phenomenon platform as Beyoncé, Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift.
Since he won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 2018 for his LP “Fuck”, Lamar dominated. His 2022 album “Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers “made his own public, gave him his fourth album n ° 1 consecutive and generated an international tour which included a place in Lollapalooza at the head of the poster. It turns out that he was only reheating. In the spring of 2024, Lamar embarked on a public quarrel with Drake, abandoned four acclaimed dissolving singles (with “Not like Us” by filling five Grammy Awards), published the LP “GNX” at the half-time “GNX” half-time and launched the half-time show of the superb most watched in history.
Meet the old “theater kid” of Chicago who stages Kendrick Lamar
Given his sequence of victories, no one would have started if Lamar supervised his part of the event as a celebration. However, moments of pure joy have arrived sparingly, a balance in a greater narration arc involving introspection, anger, reflection, comfort, struggle, fear, confusion and spirituality. He even reshaped the hymn of floating black life “
Complications, criticisms and conflicts have filled its verses. At more than one opportunity, Lamar appeared in an intense conversation with himself – and previous forms of himself – trying to navigate in deeply rooted internal conflicts.
During the “reincarnate” charged with piano, he linked his life spent to those of John Lee Hooker and Billie Holiday before zooming on his current self and his battle for the freedom of the devil. While it was an interpretation of Baby Keem’s “family ties”, the terms “respect” and “or” flashed interchangeably on the screen between “money” and “power”. Green on the hood of his vehicle, a predator ready to knock on any prey that was approaching, he spit the rhymes to “the man in the garden” as a mantra in an apparent attempt to convince his most tough critic – he deserves the booty of this life and the one who could follow.
“It’s not a song / It is a revelation,” said Lamar on “TV OFF”. He took these words to heart, whether it is to overthrow enemies with a scathing aggression (“euphoria”), rethink his hometown in a deceptive manner (“Dodger Blue”) or mix of slang, onomatopoeia and pop-culture references in a bass banger (“cave”). Lamar’s lyrical boastfulness and rhythmic control challenged the limitations. He treated sentences like changing puzzle pieces.
Precise and transparent, and garnished with a suspicion of grater, its hydraulic voice crossed each mixture. He changed his frequency similar to an analog radio tuner, run in front and then sailed as behind the wheel of an inflated car. Lamar has dodged and anerated syllables, trenched and syncopated rates, blinking the language in offbeat models that were dancing, mocked, bounce and attacked. He let the pace knock them with each opportunity.
If only he had played a single set and uninterrupted and supported constant impulse. Lamar’s decision to make extracts from multiple songs has also not failed the planned brand. Powerful cuts such as “King Kunta”, “Backseat Freestyle” and “Pools (Bread)” appeared as teasing or reflections.
But these are minor faux pas in relation to the inequality of the sequences exchanged by Lamar and Sza. The two would have been better served with autonomous programs and collaborating once in each segment.
Sza made a beautiful duet partner on the six songs they interpreted together. She has countered her roller trends with a smooth sweetness on dishes such as “Love” and the sincere ballad “Luther”. His moving voice was also proven to the height of his own equipment. But the similarities between her and Lamar’s approaches, as well as the clear fracture in their global musical styles, have created a cervical boost and a slower rhythm.
SZA also went too far with production, pyrotechnics and costume changes. Despite some out -of -competition moments during which she affirmed independence (“The Weekend”, coverage of Rihanna’s “consideration”), she was more often subordinate to the landscape and symbolism. Delivering itself to garden patterns, the singer mingled with dancers disguised as insects, rode a giant grasshopper and, for the “Nobody Get Me” based on acoustic, hovered above the stage with a pair of wings which transformed it into a sprite. The substantive visuals have strengthened his obsession with insects and meadows, which worked on an intelligent objective during the “Kill Bill” vengeance fantasy.
Unfortunately, many of the vocal and emotional subtleties that SZA showed during a tour stop at the United Center has blurred here. Perhaps in an effort to compensate, the native of St. Louis, aged 35, opted for the opposite spectrum. Embracing large melodies and sweet choirs, she deceived the exaggerated tablecloth and the drama swollen on a healthy number of pieces. With a guitarist by his side doing nothing other than hitting the poses of metal-metal contenders, Sza sang his knees and brought the pop rock from the 80s.
In another context, perhaps the backtrack succeeds. But during a visit on which Lamar is the equivalent of an undefeated price without close pretenders, a daring visionary taking places of hip-hop and dialect rarely explored, the disconnection is too severe.
Bob Gendron is a freelance Critical.
Soldier Field Setlist on June 8:
Kendrick Lamar
“WACCED OUT MINDALS”
“Bicker”
“The king’s municipality”
“Element”
“TV off” (Part I)
Lamar and its
“30 for 30”
Sza
“What should I do”
“Love to Gogo”
“Broken clocks”
“The weekend”
Lamar
“Euphoria”
“Hey now”
“Reincarnate”
“Humble”
“Backseat Freestyle”
“Families Lies” (Keem baby blanket)
“Piscines (BU)”
“Sweet Love” in “Maad City”
“GOOD”
“Man in the garden”
Sza
“Baby Scorsese Papa”
“F2F”
“Garden (tell him as dat)”
“Kitchen”
“Blind”
“Consideration” (cover of Rihanna)
“Weak”
Lamar and its
“Colombes in the wind”
“All stars”
“Love”
Lamar
“Dodger Blue”
“Peekuboo”
“Like that” (Future / Metro Boomin)
“DNA”
“Good credit” (Playei Carti cover)
“Count me” in “do not kill my atmosphere”
“Silver trees”
“Poetic justice”
Sza
“I hate you”
“Go Gina”
“Kill Bill”
“Drown”
“Open Brams”
“No one attracts me”
“Good days”
“Rich Baby Daddy” (Drake cover)
“BMF”
“Kiss me more” (Doja cat cover)
Lamar
“N95”
“TV off” (Part II)
“Not like us”
Lamar and its
“Luther”
“Gloria”
Originally published:
