Kendrick Lamar Takes Victory Lap With SZA in L.A.: Concert Review

Just past the halfway mark at the final of his three homecoming shows at Los Angeles’ SoFi Stadium, Kendrick Lamar took a beat to reflect on the sizzling energy in the room. “They always say you’re the most turned-down crowd around the world, I swear to God they say that,” he said. “But for the last two nights, I think we changed their whole perspective around the world.”

The closer was no exception. Lamar capped the trifecta of homecoming shows with SZA for an electric performance on their co-headlining “Grand National” tour, a victory lap timed to Lamar’s commercial juggernaut “GNX” and SZA’s “SOS Deluxe: Lana,” released a few months apart. Throughout the three-hour performance, the crowd hung on to every note and rode each mood shift as Lamar and SZA traded off stage time, overlapping for duets that underscored how seamlessly their two worlds collide.

Most of the performance stayed true to the prior stops on the tour, which kicked off on April 19 in Minneapolis. In Inglewood, just a few cities over from Lamar’s native Compton, they kept some surprises in store: SZA brought out Lizzo and Justin Bieber for the first two nights, while Lamar enlisted rapper AzChike for “Peekaboo” during the third. But while much of the evening hit all the cues that have lit up social media for the past month, the two fed off of Los Angeles’ unbridled enthusiasm. At SoFi, they delivered a show with ferocity and intent, as palpable as you’d expect with any hometown return.

The show itself, a staggering 52-song set, is an exploration of varying moods and textures. Lamar fired up the stadium with more fanged fare from “GNX” and his earlier catalog while SZA often played the more sensitive counterpart, her sections more breathable and elastic. Throughout their respective careers, they’ve built different worlds. More recently, Lamar embraced regionality with “GNX,” an album that elevated his sound with songs that became instant cultural touchstones. SZA, meanwhile, has dug only deeper into the truth of her romantic experience, honing her confessional ability to point her emotional flashlight both outward and inward.

Together, they offer variety without so much as a hint of refraction. At the “Grand National” tour, each section blended into each other by design, even as they crossed emotional terrain. Following a crowd-hyping opening set from Mustard, Lamar set the tone with “Wacced Out Murals,” rapping atop the Buick GNX that inspired his album’s name. As backup dancers punctuated “King Kunta” and “Element,” SZA emerged for their duet “30 for 30,” taking over for a string of songs including “Love Galore” and “The Weekend.”

SZA often eased down the mood to a more serene level, evoking the imagery of nature that powered her “Lana” aesthetic. As the evening progressed, that imagery became accentuated. At one point, two backup dancers dressed as human-sized praying mantises took center stage. Vines snaked across her set pieces and on her dancers’ outfits. For “Garden (Say It Like Dat),” she straddled a giant ant as she performed. (“Bout time my ride got here,” she said.)

It’s when their sets intersected that their chemistry rang clear. They performed “30 for 30,” “Doves in the Wind,” “All the Stars” and, of course, “Luther,” their titanic smash that’s held court atop the Billboard Hot 100 for the past 11 weeks. It’s no wonder they keep returning to one another: Lamar has an intensity that his songs can often barely contain, while SZA sands down the sharper edges with her mellifluous tenor.

But it was Lamar’s spark that continuously ignited the stadium as the night wore on. Flames erupted around him as he tore through “Like That,” the verse that set off his very public beef with Drake that’s since spilled into legal territory. Decibels hit full peak as the crowd screamed “Mustard” during “TV Off”; the ground shook as he ripped through “Not Like Us,” a Los Angeles anthem that was met with more than enough enthusiasm.

“Not Like Us” became the biggest hit from his beef with Drake, and it’s clear why. Lamar has a way of drawing in the listener with an innate ability to map context to delivery; SZA does the same, only in a different musical space.

And as the night came to a close, that connection had played out in real time, and the audience felt it: the space between them wasn’t far apart, if at all.