The last time Kendrick Lamar was in London – back in 2022 with The Big Steppers Tour – he came on like no one so much as David Bowie in his Thin White Duke era, bringing a stark, expressionist theatre of ego to the soulless bowl of the O2. It was a fabulous display of force and control, but it left you wondering whether he was ready to evolve – to create a show that seduced as much as it impressed, and to prove he truly was a bona fide 21st-century superstar.
Tonight, as blowtorches send blue smoke rings into the north London sky and 60,000 fans chant along to every bar, he delivers – in spades. The Grand National Tour, staged at the state-of-the-art Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, feels like the apotheosis of 21st-century pop: choreography, pyrotechnics, cinema and music, fused with peerless technical excellence into a scintillating spectacle.
The pre-show mix leans heavily on Prince, whose unholy blend of genres, modes and registers may well be the presiding spirit of the evening. Co-headlining with the sensational alt-R&B siren SZA transforms what could have been a devastating but one-dimensional rap show into a full-spectrum stadium phantasmagoria, thrilling not just the teenage boys in backwards caps filming themselves miming every line, but also the twentysomething women harmonising with every SZA rhapsody – and even the mums and dads swaying to Black Panther ballad “All The Stars” as the duo duet from towering platforms across the glittering stadium.
Astonishingly, for a set that runs close to three hours and features around 50 songs, the evening is impeccably sequenced. Kendrick and SZA alternate (and occasionally overlap) with sets that draw on the full range of their discographies. Kendrick, fulfilling his manifest destiny as the undisputed champion of 21st-century rap, takes us from last year’s GNX back through his Compton roots (though “M.A.A.D City” now comes mashed up with Anita Baker’s “Sweet Love”). SZA, meanwhile, dives into her ballads of romantic dysfunction, riding a giant antm – “my preferred mode of transport,” she drawls – and ascends into the sky on glittering butterfly wings.
The whole production is interspersed with surreal, stunning visuals: big-screen interrogations and insectoid transformations, like a Hollywood noir scripted by Franz Kafka and directed by Busby Berkeley.
The obvious precedent is the Beyoncé/Jay-Z On The Run tours of the last decade – though The Grand National has reportedly outgrossed even those icons. But where On The Run presented a power couple ascending into showbiz royalty, Kendrick and SZA keep each other at a deliberate distance, creating a kind of split-screen, schizophrenic spectacle.
While “All the Stars” provides the requisite Hollywood climax, the highlight is inevitably the full-stadium eruption for “Not Like Us”. SZA had already teased the crowd with a lubricious rendition of her Drake collaboration “Rich Baby Daddy”, possibly extending an olive branch to Drake, whose Wireless Festival set apparently fizzled into disarray at Finsbury Park last week. But Kendrick takes no prisoners, leading the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in scenes not witnessed since Ange Postecoglou brought the Europa League home.
As he leads his dancers through a merciless evisceration of Drake’s jabroni ass, the screens behind him erupt with neon Afrofuturist frescoes of black diaspora expression: sphinxes, pyramids, palm trees, Motown stars, jheri curls and grills. It’s a world away from the black-and-white austerity of his show three years ago. Maybe it’s taken the sauce and spectacle of SZA to bring about the full flourishing of Kendrick Lamar.
