Review: Kendrick In Concert
I'm an avid concertgoer, or at least as avid as I can be while almost qualifying for food stamps. My criteria for whether I will attend a concert are pretty simple: 1. Is it cheap?, 2. Do I absolutely love the artist/band?, or 3. Is one of the two true?
In the case of Kendrick Lamar's DAMN. Tour, #1 was certainly not true, but anyone who knows me knows that with #2 in mind, there was no way I wasn't going to the Palace of Auburn Hills concert.
So, attend it I did, and boy was it a lot to take in. We entered the arena right as the second opener, up-and-comer Travis Scott, was kicking off his set. (Side bar: sadly, we arrived too late to catch the opener opener, D.R.A.M. I had recently been turned on to his infectious hit "Cha Cha", as well as his terrific Tiny Desk Concert, and let's just say it was a serious bummer to miss out on that performance. *Side eye at my tardy friend Steven* **Actual side eye at the unnecessarily slow Michigan traffic**)
I certainly would have benefitted from knowing more than 4 of Scott's songs; the Palace was already almost at full capacity for his set, and the crowd was so engaged, you could be forgiven for thinking he was the main act. Sure, it helped that his stage of choice was an animatronic bird that flew about the front of the actual stage floor, but still, Travis Scott clearly has a devoted and expanding fanbase. Speaking as someone less familiar with his tracks, however, I was left wondering if arena was a natural venue for rap. This was a question I would return to throughout the night. From where I sat, the volume and reverberations made it hard to follow both his rapping and his speaking. I was, fortunately, able to make out his rant about the presence of V.I.P. sections at arena shows; he lambasted the idea of a V.I.P. attendant, preaching to the thousands that "there is only one V.I.P., and that's the Lord God. Amen?" He immediately followed that up with an earnest question: "Now who's ready to F***ING RAGE?!?!", sending the crowd into a tizzy.
That Scott's set ended with his hit "Goosebumps" was apropos of Kendrick Lamar's set, even if the latter rapper did not emerge to rap his featured verse on the track. It set the tone for a setlist of crowd-pleasing, recognizable singles. Indeed, when Lamar finally emerged, he opened with a trifecta of "DNA.," ELEMENT." and "King Kunta," the former two being current radio releases and the last being his bonafide ground-stomper from the wildly successful To Pimp A Butterfly.
Speaking of the main event: what an entrance Kendrick made. A massive, albeit minimalist banner simply reading "DAMN." had been raised to cover the stage, and after an introductory video explaining the origins of the legend of Kung Fu Kenny (a mini piece of cinema equal parts hilarious and impressive), that banner fell and fog filled the stage. The already raptured crowd reached peak delirium as the middle of the stage slowly rose to show Kung Fu Kenny in the flesh, crouched and ready. In a move reminiscent of Michael Jackson's famous halftime show, Kendrick remained silent and motionless while the crowd continued to lose their collective minds, for what felt like 5 minutes. He finally broke his zen to bust out the aforementioned trinity of bangers, performing them back-to-back before even once addressing the Detroit crowd. I've mentioned before that simply listening to Lamar's work gives one the feeling of witnessing a legend; if anything, his introduction to the main stage all but solidified that feeling.
It was hard to find too many complaints with the setlist as it progressed. True to the focus of the tour, Lamar performed all but two of the tracks off of the album DAMN., but there was good variety beyond that. There were the usual suspects: "Swimming Pools," "m.A.A.d city," "Bitch, Don't Kill My Vibe" and "Alright", but also some less obvious inclusions: "untitled" tracks 07 and 02, as well as covers of Future's "Mask Off" and Schoolboy Q's "Collard Greens."
Though Kendrick typically used the whole main stage to dart around by himself with video playing behind him, there was more than one interruption to that theme. One, and perhaps the most ridiculous, example was the recurring videos that continued the story of Kung Fu Kenny. It was difficult to determine if there was a deeper point intended with the videos beyond comic relief, but if nothing else, they certainly gave the spitfire star a respite to catch his breath and drink water.
Another interruption came in the middle of the set, when he walked to a tiny stage in the middle of the crowd, much to the ground audience's delight. On this B-Stage, he first performed "LUST.", then as the stage developed to resemble a cage around him, he followed up with "Money Trees."
However, the most significant change of pace came near the end of the show, as Kendrick kicked off a cover of J. Cole's "Deja Vu." In a shock move, the mini stage rose again, this time to reveal J. Cole himself. Cue pandemonium. (Seriously. I'm not sure I'll ever forget seeing the stage-center crowd reaction from my nosebleed seats.) Cole performed 3 of his tracks alongside Kendrick, once pausing to instruct the entire crowd to cheer for Lamar and "look around the arena and realize what [he] has done" for rap music. If you were in that crowd, you would realize that on this night, a short man from Compton and a tall dude from North Carolina absolutely owned the city that once belonged to Eminem and Big Sean.
If you thought Kendrick was going to let the energy die after J. Cole's exit, you're silly. He closed the show out with a left hook-right hook of "Alright" and "HUMBLE." If there is a more striking image then seeing young black couples, teenage yuppie white high schoolers, a soccer mom, and a middle-aged bald black man all fervently shouting "We hate po-po! When they kill us dead in the street fo sho! My knees get weak, my gun might blow, but WE GONNA BE ALRIGHT!", then I am yet to see it. And as for the final song of the night-- it's hard to top hearing 20,000+ rap nearly an entire song for our esteemed performer:
But Kendrick, gracious as he is, knew that we really came to listen to him, and so he started the song over from the top and performed it all himself the 2nd time around.
All in all, the DAMN. tour was well worth the price tag, a Bucket List item happily checked off for me. If you're thinking of seeing a show on this tour, go and don't even think twice. If you're also wishing that you could have seen Kendrick perform his To Pimp A Butterfly tracks in a more intimate setting last time around, you're not alone there, either.