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Lamar inviting his Super Bowl wingwoman SZA along for the ride only added value, spice, warmth and a touch more spectacle, writes Fiona Shepherd
Acclaimed rapper Kendrick Lamar continues to ride high following his performance at this year’s Super Bowl Halftime Show - arguably the greatest show on earth. He may well have been able to fill Scotland’s national stadium on his own, but inviting his Super Bowl wingwoman SZA - one of R&B’s newest and shiniest stars - along for the ride only added value, spice, warmth and a touch more spectacle to proceedings.
Their joint Grand National tour is relay race rather than steeplechase. Instead of performing individual sets in full, the pair tag-teamed across 11 “acts” and a whopping 51 tracks, occasionally meeting in the middle for a collaboration. The approach created some curious tonal shifts but any show which lasts two-and-a-half hours is going to have its curveballs.
They started bang on 8 o’clock with a good two hours before it would be dark enough for the light show to have much of an impact. Still, the first blast of pyrotechnics heralded Lamar’s arrival onstage, emerging from the same car prop he used in the Super Bowl show, this one with a camera inside to capture a performer’s eye view of the Hampden crowd.
The cool, charismatic Lamar has his own approach to showmanship, often commandeering large stages on his own with his band sequestered behind the scenes. For this outing, he was joined in fits and starts by a troupe of formation street dancers dressed down for the Scottish mizzle, but the early part of the set was really about Lamar’s simmering lyricism.
Only occasionally did SZA let some of the musicians out to rock up proceedings but make no mistake the power of live drums and bass supercharged this show as it gradually ramped up. With all apologies to Lamar, SZA knew how to make an entrance atop the same now vine-covered car. She proved an extrovert foil for the enigmatic Lamar on their first joint effort, 30 for 30, before SZA was joined by her bendy gal pals, all neutral colours and casual wear, undulating sensually during The Weekend.
The enormous screen parted in the middle to reveal an epic stairway for Lamar’s next interlude. Why does one man need so much room when he hasn’t even used the catwalks through the crowd? Right on cue, he scaled up the performance with dancers moving like a sassy army, navigating the minimal groove and bass judder of Hey Now, the cascading synth lines of Black cultural history primer Reincarnated and the energizing bounce of Humble before he reached further back to early calling card m.A.A.d City and his Black Lives Matter anthem Alright, accompanied by visuals mimicking money lending adverts.
Next, SZA paid tribute to her surroundings appearing in a backwards cutaway kilt and tartan socks, later admitting to an encounter with a Highland cow. In one of her more eccentric moves, she mounted a sleek animatronic ant for some sweet R&B sounds. Her love of bugs appeared unrelated to her power ballad emoting or sultry make-out music but she held her nerve and followed through on her theme, trilling Kill Bill along to screen footage of murderous insects (insecticide?) and manifesting as a butterfly suspended above the stage during Nobody Gets Me. Both artists mounted hydraulic platforms for their pop anthem All the Stars, while Love produced the truest moment of connection and chemistry between the pair.
Lamar still had some bangers left in his armory as the show reached a successions of crescendos, including the staccato charge of DNA, energetic TV Off and the anthemic Not Like Us. All fired the crowd up afresh before the pacifying comedown of their duets encore. Both songs, Luther and Gloria, feature on Lamar’s latest album GNX, named after his wheels of choice, so there was only one way to exit, with both piling back in the Buick and riding off into the sunset “til next time”.