The final time Kendrick Lamar was in London – again in 2022 with The Massive Steppers Tour – he got here on like nobody a lot as David Bowie in his Skinny White Duke period, bringing a stark, expressionist theatre of ego to the soulless bowl of the O2. It was a wonderful show of drive and management, but it surely left you questioning whether or not he was able to evolve – to create a present that seduced as a lot because it impressed, and to show he really was a bona fide Twenty first-century famous person.
Tonight, as blowtorches ship blue smoke rings into the north London sky and 60,000 followers chant alongside to each bar, he delivers – in spades. The Grand Nationwide Tour, staged on the state-of-the-art Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, feels just like the apotheosis of Twenty first-century pop: choreography, pyrotechnics, cinema and music, fused with peerless technical excellence right into a scintillating spectacle.
The pre-show combine leans closely on Prince, whose unholy mix of genres, modes and registers could be the presiding spirit of the night. Co-headlining with the sensational alt-R&B siren SZA transforms what may have been a devastating however one-dimensional rap present right into a full-spectrum stadium phantasmagoria, thrilling not simply the teenage boys in backwards caps filming themselves miming each line, but additionally the twentysomething girls harmonising with each SZA rhapsody – and even the mums and dads swaying to Black Panther ballad “All The Stars” because the duo duet from towering platforms throughout the glittering stadium.
Astonishingly, for a set that runs shut to 3 hours and options round 50 songs, the night is impeccably sequenced. Kendrick and SZA alternate (and infrequently overlap) with units that draw on the complete vary of their discographies. Kendrick, fulfilling his manifest future because the undisputed champion of Twenty first-century rap, takes us from final 12 months’s GNX again via his Compton roots (although “M.A.A.D Metropolis” now comes mashed up with Anita Baker’s “Candy Love”). SZA, in the meantime, dives into her ballads of romantic dysfunction, driving an enormous antm – “my most well-liked mode of transport,” she drawls – and ascends into the sky on glittering butterfly wings.
The entire manufacturing is interspersed with surreal, beautiful visuals: big-screen interrogations and insectoid transformations, like a Hollywood noir scripted by Franz Kafka and directed by Busby Berkeley.
The plain precedent is the Beyoncé/Jay-Z On The Run excursions of the final decade – although The Grand Nationwide has reportedly outgrossed even these icons. However the place On The Run introduced an influence couple ascending into showbiz royalty, Kendrick and SZA preserve one another at a deliberate distance, making a type of split-screen, schizophrenic spectacle.
Whereas “All of the Stars” gives the requisite Hollywood climax, the spotlight is inevitably the full-stadium eruption for “Not Like Us”. SZA had already teased the group with a lubricious rendition of her Drake collaboration “Wealthy Child Daddy”, probably extending an olive department to Drake, whose Wi-fi Competition set apparently fizzled into disarray at Finsbury Park final week. However Kendrick takes no prisoners, main the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in scenes not witnessed since Ange Postecoglou introduced the Europa League house.
As he leads his dancers via a cruel evisceration of Drake’s jabroni ass, the screens behind him erupt with neon Afrofuturist frescoes of black diaspora expression: sphinxes, pyramids, palm timber, Motown stars, jheri curls and grills. It’s a world away from the black-and-white austerity of his present three years in the past. Possibly it’s taken the sauce and spectacle of SZA to deliver in regards to the full flourishing of Kendrick Lamar.
