Bugs and Crips

On April 19, Kendrick Lamar and SZA, two generational talents, started their international co-headlining tour in Minneapolis, Minnesota, at US Bank Stadium. Given that I live slightly more than two hours away, I had to go. So, I did. After walking into the stadium and choking at the price for merch (120 for a hoodie! 55 for a t-shirt?!), my wife and I got to our seats on the floor. Aside from the immediate recognition that we were extremely close to the stage, I noticed that the background music was Anita Baker, which was extremely appropriate given one of the lines on GNX.

After milling about for an hour and change, DJ Mustard appeared out of the energy pit (i.e., the area in the stadium where you can pay an exorbitant amount to stand around for several hours) to open up the night. Maybe it is just me spending my youth and adulthood listening to mixes, but I believe that DJs are supposed to create a flow in their set; songs should flow into one another and either build to something or set a particular mood. DJ Mustard’s set did none of this. The set was full of non-transitions. He would just stop one track and throw on another. Sometimes there was dialog between them, but there wasn’t always. It was an absolute failure of an opening DJ set. That said, he was an effective opener.

The goal of the opener is to get the crowd ready for the headliners. In this goal, he actually did succeed. With his hypeman skills on full display, Mustard got the crowd into his mishmash DJ set and brought a lot of energy to the stage. He got people filling in lines on songs I didn’t recognize (which made me feel extremely washed, a feeling that has become second nature to me at this point in my life) and dropped “Mo Bamba,” so I wasn’t really complaining. I would have loved to hear “Magnolia” if we’re just going to throw around random rap tracks.

After his 45-minute set—which he ended with fun. because why not—the crowd continued to fill in the remaining seats. At about 8:10, 8:15, the lights drop and the sound of the mariachi singer from the beginning of GNX fills the stadium. Kendrick Lamar was first up on this co-headlining bill. First song on the night was “wacced out murals.” Kendrick started rapping this from inside of the titular car as it was raised onto the stage. After he actually got out and started working the stage, he brought a lot of energy with him, rattling through his five songs quickly.

After he completed the first part of “tv off,” the GNX, which had disappeared, came back covered in flowers and with SZA laying on its hood. Together, they performed “30 for 30,” and it was clear that they love working together. They were looking at each other and having a lot of fun performing the track. SZA then takes over and performs some tracks from Ctrl.

Over the course of the next two and a half hours, the two of them swap sets, performing various bangers from their catalogs. The sets were separated by various video interludes. For SZA, these included her being out in nature and a video of a female praying mantis biting the head off of a male praying mantis, among other things. Kendrick’s involved him driving around in a GNX and clips from a deposition that he is giving to a lawyer. Unless you have had your head under a rock for the past few months, you are familiar with the ongoing saga of Aubrey Graham (a/k/a D- - - -) suing Kendrick for defamation. These videos are clearly referencing that situation. Kendrick addresses the accusations with the appropriate amount of seriousness: he offers to buy the lawyer deposing him fried chicken. There was also an amusing video of Kendrick and SZA together at a gas station buying snacks.

As one might expect, the message density in Kendrick’s sets was immense. The set itself is not particularly complex. There is a runway that is painted concrete grey with a massive concrete wall that serves as the video wall for the concert. While the set was simple, the visuals and the dancers’ costumes were packed with allusions to Los Angeles, gang life, Christianity, and the Black experience. In short, it was a melange of issues that Kendrick has been working through in his music since the beginning.

SZA’s sets were beautiful, as they were nature themed, full of flowers and greenery. She and her dancers dressed in various insect-related costumes, some jankier than others. For example, there was a point at which the men were dressed in these sort-of-baggy silver outfits with stripes and insect antennae headpieces. They looked like something SZA came up with while high one day, got them made, and just rolled with it. She also had dancers dressed as praying manti on stilts during “F2F,” which was very cool as they had articulated joints. They looked a little janky, but again, this is not a problem. As my wife and I discussed after the show, the jankiness really fits for the messy woman that SZA is in her songs.

There were also moments of out-and-out brilliance during her set. One such moment was during “Saturn” when she rose up from the stage out of her cocoon, turning into a butterfly. (Apologies for the photo quality; I took it with my phone.)

After she came out of the cocoon, she proceeded to glide across the stage. It was very beautiful to watch. This was the best visual element of the entire night for sure.

The show ended in the only way that it could: with audience participation. Kendrick’s last set started with an untitled track and then returned to “tv off,” which he started in the first set all of those hours ago. There are few things that are more fun than having 60,000+ people yelling “Mustard!” at the top of their lungs, and one of them is 60,000+ people yelling “A minor!” during “Not Like Us.” Everyone was going up during these songs, and it was the most fun I had a rap show since I was 18 watching People Under The Stairs in the Discotheque at Oberlin.

After Kendrick finished the required tracks, SZA came back out and the show closed with “luther” and “gloria.” It was excellent to watch how much the two of them like each other while singing these songs. They have an excellent working relationship and just fantastic vibes together. Kendrick and SZA were both happy to be out and playing for fans. After they disappeared back into the stage in the GNX, the crowd was thrilled with what they just saw. If things keep going as they are, fans, hardcore and casual alike, are going to have an great time at the Grand National Tour.

If I have grand takes from this whole event, it was how impressed I was with their ability to scale up their music. Kendrick Lamar writes intense, personal rhymes that are permeated with ideas of faith, race, politics, and community. This makes music that is perfect for headphones (how I listened to all of his albums before I went to the show). The question that remained in my mind was how does this scale to a stadium, a massive space where words, the true stock of his music, can get washed out? In seeing him live, the answer to my question is that it scales mostly well. Kendrick’s not Playboy Carti; he’s not going to get a bunch of people moshing to “DNA.” That said, the audience got to see a rapper who loves to rap, and that enthusiasm for his craft came out on stage. I got engaged with what he was doing because he was so committed to his music.

I had the same concern for SZA that I had for Kendrick. I find the character of SZA on her albums to be really fascinating, but I also think her music is made for arenas smaller than a stadium. The emotions are big, but I worried about whether her sound would be enough for the space. Much like for Kendrick, it mostly works. I don’t think her sound fully scales to the stadium, but her commitment to her music got me engaged with her performance. It is also interesting that a set in which so many of the songs are about sex, SZA’s performance was not sexual. In a world where so many women in music are hypersexualized, this is an intriguing, refreshing change of pace.

You will all hear from me again at the week’s end with some new music things to try out. I hope that my listening picks up because the last couple of days have been uninspiring.

As a general life note, consider investing in good ear protection. I did so years ago, and it has been a real game changer. I can hear everything clearly and my ears don’t ring the next day. It’s a win-win.

Until the next dispatch, live like Keanu Reeves.