Fresh from his explosive Grammy night performance, Kendrick Lamar brings his DAMN. tour across the Atlantic to a packed-out Hydro.
As his music has moved further into the personal-political space of black life in America, it seems reasonable to wonder how well it would translate when transplanted so far from its original context.
From the moment Lamar springs to his feet clad in all black Neo-Shaolin gear, fireballs bursting into the air behind him, the calamitous opening bars of ‘DNA.’ thundering outwards into the crowd, all such wonderings are obliterated.
Powering straight into ‘ELEMENT.’, he’s joined on stage by a katana-wielding ninja-cum-dancer.
Leaning in to the Kung-Fu Kenny moniker from his latest album, the Hydro’s giant screens are used throughout the night to show a series of videos inspired by old-school martial arts flicks and video games that document his rise to greatness.
Aside from a sight gag in the final video, the whole thing is played pretty much straight, with Lamar maintaining a stoney-faced intensity whether there’s a ninja dancing next to him or not.
A quality great hip-hop and martial arts movies have in common is the ability to be simultaneously ridiculous beyond words and cool beyond reason.
For a show of this scale, the visual accompaniments are kept pretty minimal, leaving the stage mostly as a blank canvas for Lamar to fill.
Few could hold a crowd of 13,000 baying Glaswegians so completely with nothing but themselves and a microphone in sight, but the combination of Lamar’s scintillating stage presence and the effortless perfection he performs even the most mind-frayingly complex, tongue-bustingly fast verses with keeps 16,000 eyes fixed upon him for every second.
Stating his desire to see who’s been with him since day one, he provides a series of “tests” throughout the gig by reaching deep down into his back-catalogue to pull out the likes of ‘Swimming Pools (Drank)’ and ‘Bitch Don’t Kill My Vibe’, and watches on as the faithful chant them back like they dropped last week.
They’re rewarded in turn with speaker-blowing renditions of To Pimp a Butterfly’s anthems ‘King Kunta’ and ‘Alright’.
It’s while he plays these songs that launched him into the world’s pop cultural stratosphere that his current status as a walking cultural moment becomes most viscerally obvious.
It had been five years since Kendrick Lamar last touched down in Glasgow.
Back then, M.A.A.D City had just announced him as a serious player in the game, a performer of anarchic lyrical energy and musical power.
His next two albums saw him channel those chaotic instincts through jazz’s freeing form and into the political arena, producing music that pulsated with rage and resilience.
When he breaks out ‘HUMBLE.’ near the end of his Glasgow set, he kills the backing music and spits a little acappella before leaving the crowd to roar back line after line after line without prompt.
He puts something into motion and watches the world sing along.
Who knows where it will go next.
Words: Ross McIndoe
