Who is aware of if Kendrick Lamar will sit for a proper deposition in Drake’s ongoing defamation lawsuit in opposition to Common Music Group, after Lamar flambéed him on “Not Like Us.” However at SoFi Stadium on Wednesday, Lamar and his co-headliner SZA had a fantastic recurring bit imagining what may occur.
In a pretend video montage performed between set changeovers, Lamar responded to mock-questioning like, “When you said you want the party to die, was that a metaphor or are you serious?” and “Don’t you think disappearing is a form of attention-seeking?” by blowing him off and phoning in an enormous order of takeout. SZA then lighted up an unlimited joint within the lawyer’s workplace.
The pair’s Grand Nationwide Tour is a triumph of the unbothered. Wednesday’s set — the primary of a three-night SoFi stand — was a bountiful, meticulous three-hour present that centered on the camaraderie between two of a very powerful acts in modern music. They had a depraved humorousness concerning the efficiency too. At one level, SZA seduced an enormous, slicked-up praying mantis dancer. If solely all of us had the identical leeway when deposed.
Lamar, coming off a pair of Grammy wins for “Not Like Us” and a gleefully petty Tremendous Bowl halftime present, is at maybe the height of his profession. So it’s price noting how inspiringly egalitarian this hometown present was — a hierarchy-free cut up with former TDE labelmate SZA, typically totally meshing their units collectively for his or her on-record collaborations. The format introduced new vitality and understanding into their catalogs, all whereas the pair gassed one another up as virtuoso dwell performers.
Kendrick Lamar and SZA on the 2016 Grammys.
(Lester Cohen / WireImage)
On Wednesday, SZA arguably made the a lot of the stadium-sized alternative. SZA is a powerhouse vocalist and musical omnivore with a stoner’s comedian timing (most lately seen within the charming comedy movie “One of Them Days”). However she’s now honed her stagecraft to be on par with any pop royalty. Between “Snooze” and “Crybaby,” she was lifted on wires, revealing a gauze prepare within the form of a chrysalis, to spellbinding impact. It took some actual mettle to then carry out her ballad “Nobody Gets Me” midair.
A shock cameo from Lizzo paid alms to their lengthy friendship, and a bawdy slice of her verse from Drake’s “Rich Baby Daddy” proved she will be able to personal even a nemesis’ materials together with her charisma. When she spun “Garden (Say It Like Dat)” into “Kitchen,” the dancers’ delightfully goopy, insectoid costumes and monolithic ant sculpture felt like H.R. Giger taking mushrooms on a heat afternoon in Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Space.
When she and Lamar shared the stage, as on the Oscar-nominated “All the Stars,” “30 for 30” and their respective solo cuts “Doves in the Wind” and “LOVE.,” there was an alchemy between two superfans, their bodily presence throughout the diamond-shaped catwalks reinvigorating this long-beloved music.
At this level, Lamar’s case for being the very best rapper alive is totally closed. In fact he’s. Even when you thought the title was a bit wobbly after the knotty, skeptical “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers,” the acid-bath of “Not Like Us” and the L.A-embodying shock launch “GNX” slammed the controversy shut because it spun off hit after hit. Who else may make a pitch-perfect indictment of the present American political local weather onstage on the Tremendous Bowl halftime present, whereas needling his most loathed enemy and spinning off memes with only a fast grin in bootcut denims?
At SoFi, a couple of miles from his previous Compton yard, he drew from that monumental catalog and recontextualized it for this club-ready, venom-streaked period. The present’s format coated greater than 50 songs between the 2 artists, so even when he solely bought to a verse or two, there was at all times one thing new or bracing. Right here, “m.A.A.d. city,” certainly one of his hardest and cruelest road cuts, grew to become a meta-R&B quantity that made the music much more eerie. On “Humble.,” he was flanked by feminine dancers posing in vicious geometric types, bodily embodying the ego-check of the music’s refrain.
The Drake flame-war materials was scrumptious enjoyable, from the shots-fired kickoff verse on “Like That” to the relentless, cruel taunts on “Euphoria.” However the “GNX” segments, just like the Tupac-conjuring “reincarnated” and the ice-cold “peekaboo” (and, clearly, the nice Mustard-y howl of “tv off”) made the case for the way this album will proceed to disclose new textures and resonate in L.A. lore. There wasn’t room for a five-times-reprised “Not Like Us” like at his history-making 2024 “The Pop Out: Ken & Friends” set. However when he did play it, it was much less about his archenemy than about L.A., a metropolis with a brand new music within the canon, a definitive “Us” who had been all alike in screaming it.
It felt poignant that Lamar and SZA reunited once more for the set’s closers, the unexpectedly relentless Scorching 100 fixture “luther” (now at 13 weeks at No. 1) and “gloria,” Lamar’s bait-and-switch about his sophisticated relationship to his personal writing course of. With SZA as his Greek refrain, he ended the evening on a notice about how all this relentless work was price it to reach at actual self-understanding. An ally that may by no means fail, regardless of who out there may be deposing you.
