Kendrick Lamar and SZA gave a wall-to-wall showcase at Gillette
Lamar and SZA already proved they could handle stadium-sized crowds in February, when the pair headlined the
Get Starting Point
A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday.
Enter Email
Sign Up
Stadium shows can be a bit of a trade-off, with spectacle and sonic clarity often seeming at odds, but on Monday, each headliner's lyrics reverberated throughout the hulking stadium, even as pyrotechnics blazed and dancers in praying-mantis getups romped.
Advertisement
Lamar, who won a Pulitzer Prize in music for his high-concept 2017 album 'DAMN.,' fills his offerings with wordplay and knowledge, his moral clarity amping up the bravado that animates incendiary cuts like the storming 'HUMBLE.' and adds weight to introspective offerings like the restless 'Count Me Out.'
SZA, whose songs, like the agitated 'Kill Bill,' possess the intimacy of bedroom pop and the vitality of show-stopping arias, grounds her withering observations on romance and womanhood in hard-won wisdom, as well as the occasional cathartic guitar solo. ('I owe everything to those terrible interactions,' she deadpanned during one of the show's interstitial videos that was set in a hostile-on-both-sides deposition.)
Each set by the headliners highlighted these qualities in arresting fashion; as they paced and strode across the stage and its catwalks, whether accompanied by kinetic dance troupes or solo, they reveled in the crowd's energy and their own mastery of their chosen forms. The generous pyrotechnics only added to the lively atmosphere, whether it was the fireworks punctuating SZA's most flirtatious moments from the fizzy 'Kiss Me More' or the flames shooting up out of the stage as Lamar recounted the most vicious lines of his acid-tipped mini-epic 'euphoria.'
That track was one of a few moments that recalled Lamar's 2024-defining battle with the Canadian rapper Drake, which reached its peak a little more than a year ago when Lamar released the giddy romp 'Not Like Us.' The back-and-forth between the two rappers reached its final inflection point with that relentlessly uptempo cut, which packed lessons about the slave trade and heinous accusations into a party jam. Lamar had already been a pop force, but 'Not Like Us' came to define a certain mood of 2024, and when it capped Lamar's final solo set on Monday, Gillette Stadium came unglued as the crowd attempted to keep up with Lamar's intricate, rancorous rhymes.
Advertisement
SZA returned to the stage for the night's final two songs, both of which appeared on Lamar's surprise-released 2024 album, 'GNX.' The gently grooving 'luther,' which notched its non-consecutive 12th week atop the American singles chart on Monday, was first, its well-deployed sample of the R&B legend Luther Vandross setting up its longing, which is romantic in the best sense: 'I just wanna see you win,' the chorus goes.
The 'GNX' closer 'gloria' followed, and while SZA's microphone seemed to short out at times, Lamar's extended metaphor on his winding, still-evolving relationship with his craft served as a fitting closer to a night that plainly showed why these two artists are firmly implanted, yet hardly resting on their laurels, at American music's pinnacle.
KENDRICK LAMAR AND SZA: GRAND NATIONAL TOUR
With Mustard
At Gillette Stadium, Foxborough, Monday
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Chicago Tribune
16 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
Meet the former Chicago ‘theater kid' who stages Kendrick Lamar
Mike Carson made the backdrops for school plays. Mountains, villages, flat and colorful, that sort of thing. He also ran the lights. He was a tech guy in school theater. He played football at Plainfield North High School, but at heart, he was a theater kid. Even now, living in Los Angeles, he heads to the theater whenever he can. As a child, his parents often took him to Chicago theater. That stuck in surprising ways. So much so, you are familiar with Mike Carson's work even if you don't know him by name, or thought of that work as theatrical. Carson, now the creative director at pgLang in Los Angeles, is one of Kendrick Lamar's longtime production designers and creative partners. If you're headed to Solider Field this week to see 'The Grand National Tour' featuring Lamar and SZA, know this: a lot of what you'll see is Mike Carson's ongoing collaboration with Lamar and Dave Free, childhood friends who cofounded pgLang in 2020 as an arts incubator that, according to its mission statement, speaks in music, podcasts, film, theater, books, TV, visual arts — 'because sometimes we have to use different languages to get the point of our stories across.' Next spring, they have a movie co-starring Lamar, made with Matt Stone and Trey Parker of 'South Park,' about a Black intern who plays a slave in a living history museum. But so far, their best-known production is the Super Bowl halftime show from February, the most watched halftime show in NFL history, a furious, petty, startling satire of American dreams, joys and contradictions. If its stage kind of looked like a PlayStation controller to you — that was the idea. Nothing about a Lamar performance is phoned in. Carson thinks of them as quasi-theatrical musicals. 'The music becomes the script and gives us an intention of how the show will flow the way it does,' he says. 'When we're conceptualizing, you might imagine us just throwing songs onto a board or images up on a board, then going from there, but there's a reason, or a narrative, or something underlying everything on that stage. Myself, I like some tension in there, but everything gets crafted, from the setlist to the color of the lights at one moment to why there are (dancers) on stage another moment. I definitely took that approach from going to plays.' Take the backdrops. Your average stadium concert is going to blow up the performer's image to Godzilla proportions, blending in bits of video and a lot of CGI surrealism — the DNA comes directly from the churning swirls of late 1960s concert psychedelia. With Lamar, not so much. Yes, he's gargantuan on those video screens; it is a stadium. But he also mingles with images reminiscent of 'The Last Supper' and sculptor Augusta Savage, Los Angeles car culture and the great contemporary collagist Lauren Halsey; the tour uses seven of her assemblages of Black archival images, street advertising and neon colors, blowing them up big enough to stretch across Soldier Field and superimposing Lamar into the mix. A few years ago, when Lamar headlined Lollapalooza, he performed against large lo-fi backdrops of Black friends and family, made by the contemporary painter Henry Taylor. Lamar's shows are big on motifs. For this tour, it's a 1987 Buick Grand National GNX, the same one that was the focus of the half-time performance. 'We've been rolling with that car since the Super Bowl,' Carson said, 'only now its retooled from that, where it was basically a clown car.' Car collectors may flinch. The GNX, counted as one of the last American muscle cars, was so limited edition that only 547 were manufactured by General Motors; each of the top 500 Buick dealers in the nation received just one or two to sell. After a countrywide search, Carson and Co. landed one — then gutted it for the Super Bowl, allowing an improbable number of dancers to appear to stream out of it. The Grand National Tour opens with laser-drawn interpretations of Latino-inspired car window fonts, backed by a swooning serenade from Mexican American mariachi Deyra Barrera. Then the GNX rises out of the stage with Lamar in the driver's seat. Lamar's previous 'Big Steppers' tour was even more outwardly theatrical: It opened with Lamar at a piano, playing to a puppet of Lamar. Dancers moved mechanically, separated out exactly. At one point in the show, when Lamar bent over, his shadow was cast huge against a backdrop, except on the backdrop, a row of arrows appeared to be stuck in his back. 'Doing that kind of thing in arenas is a little easier,' Carson said. 'You can get more abstract, or you can be a little more theatrical. In a stadium, the expectation is for a spectacle and you think in terms of how three corners of a stadium are getting the same thing. But we can be subtle, we can — Kendrick's always willing to push things past a normal show.' One of the tour's indelible images involves Lamar simply sitting on steps, tens of thousands before him. Carson knows pop ambitions. He grew up in the western suburbs of Berkeley and Bellwood, then later moved to the Chicago neighborhood of Pilsen. He attended Columbia College for a time until meeting legendary Chicago fashion designer and Kanye West collaborator Virgil Abloh, who died in 2021. 'I basically dropped out after my first semester sophomore year and began working with Virgil and went on the whole 'Watch the Throne' thing with Kanye and Jay-Z, the album and the tour. I was documenting Kanye and Jay-Z. Virgil took a chance on me. For a few years, that was my college experience.' He remembers Abloh, no matter how any assistants were around him, often doing the work himself. Indeed, you could argue that Abloh's creative spirit is in 'The Grand National Tour,' in the blend of street clothing and stark minimalist staging, and in the way Lamar, Carson and Free make the familiar feel fresh, and how they somehow come off bold without forgetting to remain accessible. 'You want to be always forging a new way of doing this,' Carson said. 'That could mean our version of what concert choreography could look like. Or our version of what stage design can look like. Or Kendrick's interpretation of what a stadium concert could look like right now. How do you get your own distinctive visual language out? And how do you do it at the scale of a football stadium?'
Chicago Tribune
17 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
What to do in Chicago: Blues Fest, the ‘Grand National Tour' and Jeremy Piven doing standup
Kendrick Lamar and SZA: You got a taste during the Super Bowl, but now you can see the full show. Kendrick Lamar and SZA bring their 'Grand National Tour' to a sold-out Soldier Field. Expect the two to trade off sets before performing together during the nearly three-hour show. Rolling Stone called it 'a spellbinding display of star power.' Chicago Blues Festival: Mavis Staples caps off the Chicago Blues Festival on Sunday, but in the meantime, you have dozens of reasons to head downtown. Catch Christone 'Kingfish' Ingram Friday in a B.B. King tribute, along with D.K. Harrell and Jonathan Ellison with the B.B. King Centennial Band. Or, see him Saturday night when he headlines on his own. 57th Street Art Fair: If you'd like to browse some art and also work in some blues, head to Hyde Park. Now in its 78th year, the juried fair offers the opportunity to browse the works of more than 150 artists. Buddy Guy's Legends also hosts a stage. Jeremy Piven: Evanston native Jeremy Piven brings his stand-up routine to The Vic. Perhaps best known for his Emmy Award-winning performance as a Hollywood agent in HBO's 'Entourage,' Piven has had a long acting career that started with training at the Piven Theatre Workshop, founded by his parents, Bryce and Joyce Piven. Caamp: The folk-rock band's two-night stand at the Salt Shed coincides with the release of their new album, 'Copper Changes Color.' Following an initial burst of success a few years back, the Ohio-bred Caamp canceled shows in 2023 to work on their mental health. This international tour marks their return — and clearly they've been missed. Ravinia Festival: Get thee to the Metra! Ravinia kicks off its summer season this weekend with Heart on Friday and Grace Jones and Janelle Monáe on Saturday. Ann and Nancy Wilson return to Ravinia with the rest of Heart, marking the 50th anniversary of the release of their debut album, 'Dreamboat Annie.' Then, on Saturday, Jones and Monáe light up Highland Park as only they can. Get there early for LGBTQ+ dance party Queen! Ben Harper and The Innocent Criminals: Last month, the Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter released a new song, 'Before the Rain Dried.' Now he's on a world summer tour that stops at the Auditorium Theatre before rolling on to a couple dozen other venues, including the Montreal International Jazz Festival. Lincoln Park Greek Fest: Maybe you've been to Greektown, but have you enjoyed the filoxenia — hospitality — of the Lincoln Park Greek Fest? Centered around St. George Greek Orthodox Church, the festival offers a mix of traditional Greek music and folk dancing, Greek food and a lot of the standard fixings of a Chicago summer festival. Ribfest Chicago: Smoke will rise in Northcenter this weekend, as crowds gather to binge on barbecue. It's the 25th annual Ribfest, featuring more than 20 food vendors, whiskey tastings, live music and kids entertainment. Dinopalooza Dino Derby: Faster than a nanotyrannus? Break out your best dinosaur duds and head to the Field Museum for its Dino Derby. The winner gets a $1,000 cash prize. It's part of Summer of Sue, the museum's 25th anniversary celebration of its beloved display. While you're there, see the Jabberworcky Marionettes' dinosaur puppets, see show off your dino smarts during live game shows, participate in arts and crafts and more family fun.
Yahoo
18 hours ago
- Yahoo
David Mamet's Complicated Brain
DAVID MAMET, THE PULITZER PRIZE–WINNING, Trump-and-Israel-supporting writer and filmmaker, is having something of a banner year. After the premiere of the much-ballyhooed Broadway revival of Mamet's essential play Glengarry Glen Ross (this time, boasting a headline-making cast that includes Bob Odenkirk, Bill Burr, and Kieran Culkin), Mamet premiered Henry Johnson, his first film as a director since Phil Spector in 2013. And now, this month, we have the publication, for the first time ever, of Russian Poland, an unproduced screenplay written by Mamet in 1993, when his then-burgeoning career as a movie director was really beginning to ramp up. In 1991, Mamet released Homicide, his divisive but impactful third film as writer/director, and in 1992, the late James Foley's electric film of Glengarry Glen Ross, featuring a stacked ensemble cast led by Jack Lemmon and Al Pacino, became something of a cultural event—not a box office hit, but critically acclaimed, nominated for a slew of awards, and considered a bit of a comeback for Lemmon, while its (movie-original) scene featuring Alec Baldwin as an abusive sales executive became instantly iconic. The stage should, by all rights, have been set for Mamet to get a new project, something really ambitious, off the ground. Mamet's Jewish faith had been strengthening in those years, and had manifested itself in his writing most forcefully in Homicide, the victim at that film's core murder investigation being an old woman whose corner shop was a front for an operation running guns into Israel. The opportunity to pursue these themes further seemed to have presented itself. Mamet attaches a very brief introduction to the published screenplay of Russian Poland; in it, he lays out the historical, as well as the political, but more so the personal, inspiration for the script. For instance, he writes that his grandmother grew up near the Polish city of Chelm, and that she told him stories of the pogroms she'd survived in the Pale of Settlement—the area permitted to the Russian Jews. The Pale was geographically known as Volhynia, known to her, and, then, to me, as Russian Poland. The tales-within-the-tale, here, are fables of Isaac Luria, the Ari (lion) of Sfat, in the late 16th century… I set his mystical tales in my grandmother's Volhynia, and framed them in another fable. And that is, ultimately and unexpectedly, what Russian Poland is: a collection of Jewish fables, almost an anthology, with an illegal shipment of supplies by air to Israel functioning as a kind of framing device. This setting for this framing device is the late 1940s, shortly after the establishment of the state of Israel. The military men carrying out the mission are British RAF officers, and throughout the script, they are referred to only as Sergeant and Officer. Also on board is an elderly Holocaust survivor called Old Man. (Almost none of the characters are given names, except for one or two that appear in the fables.) Neither the Officer nor the Sergeant seem to know who the Old Man is, and they even ask him what he's doing there. Not very talkative, the Old Man does indicate he's on the plane because he's going to Palestine. The RAF men object that none of the planes at the airfield have the fuel capacity to reach that destination (and the Officer also asks why the Old Man wants to go to Palestine, because, he says 'The Arabs say they're going to drive you people into the sea'), to which the Old Man offers only a shrug. Something mysterious has now been established. Explore the deep mysteries while supporting our growing coverage of books, culture, and the arts: Sign up for a free or paid Bulwark subscription today. The Old Man begins to drift into his past, and into Mamet's fables, as the flight becomes more dangerous. In the first, set in a village in the 1890s, the Beggar roams the village, seeking charity, first from a pair of housewives, then from the local Rabbi, and then from the Rich Man (or, Reb Siegel, one of the few proper names in the script). As these short tales begin to take over the narrative of Russian Poland, the dialogue becomes less casual and more formal, but what's most interesting about this aspect of Mamet's script—Mamet being justly famous for his gift for stylish, stylized dialogue—is how it reflects his attitudes as a director more than as a writer. In his book On Directing Film, and more recently when promoting Henry Johnson, Mamet has said that ideally, when directing a film, it should be possible to remove all the dialogue and, as in silent films, let the images and the editing tell the story. This is, of course, the central idea behind all motion pictures, but I can't imagine following the narrative of a film as word-drunk as Henry Johnson with all the language removed. Henry Johnson is a very skillful and artful piece of film direction, but the words, and the performances of those words, are the whole show. This is not the case with Russian Poland, or it wouldn't have been, had a film ever been made from it. In the story about the Beggar, the Rabbi, and the Rich Man, Mamet lays out his scenes and his shots in strict visual terms, as directing choices he made at the screenplay stage. It begins with this image: A longshot. A road on a hill. A Beggar comes into the shot, moving across the frame from left to right. A mullioned window bangs into the shot. Camera pulls back slightly to reveal we have been looking at the scene through a window. The window frame bangs in the window. Then a cut to the Rabbi, outside the building, commenting on the deteriorated state of the window, and the Shul to which it is connected. We have also been introduced to the Beggar, and his journey. There is now a connection (ideally, anyway) in the viewer's mind between the state of the shtetl, where this is all taking place, and the Beggar. There is conflict in this connection, one that will play out as both Rabbi and Rich Man are shown to be somewhat callous towards the Beggar—though the Rabbi is perhaps more officious than callous—but the story is one of redemption. More importantly, that window, through which we were introduced to a setting and a key character, returns as an image, and through it we are shown actions the meanings of which the audience understands better than the characters do. We see, more than hear, both the Beggar and the Rich Man, independent of each other, find evidence for the existence of God, through each man's misunderstanding of events. To Mamet, these misunderstandings, and the revelations they inspire, are as true and as spiritual as would be those brought about by a literal angel appearing on the scene. Join now It's difficult, in this venue, to get across how much of Russian Poland's story is communicated visually rather than through dialogue. But this is very much a script written by a man who intended to direct: visuals, shot descriptions, and even camera edits are described at length, broken up by streams of conversation that is sometimes of a spiritual nature, sometimes just pure gossip. This is done in the same way that a film heavy with talk might find relief, or a heightening of emotion, through bursts of silence. I can imagine one fable, late in the script, being told entirely through images, with no dialogue whatsoever (not that there's so very much of it to begin with). This fable is much darker than the life-affirming tale of the Beggar (Russian Poland can get pretty bleak at times), and it ends with a punchline—I think a certain gallows humor is at play here, but as far as gallows humor goes, it's pretty heavy on gallows—that is entirely visual. (Words are spoken, but don't need to be.) Granted, these visuals include words written on a piece of paper—words that reveal the aforementioned punchline—but this is all part of the silent film grammar Mamet aspires to. Because of his outspoken conservative politics over the last several years, even well before Trump, Mamet long ago fell out of favor as an artist. Some artists, when confronting such a fate, will withdraw; others will lean into it, inflating the political rhetoric that had been subliminal or even non-existent in their work before. And while Mamet's responses in interviews and his nonfiction writing have gotten nakedly reactionary, it has not gotten in the way of his fiction. As implied earlier, this unproduced screenplay is particularly compelling when looked at Mamet's career as a film director as a whole, and especially in the context of his work during the 1990s. Once again, Homicide, his best film, can't help but spring to mind. Mamet's current politics (many say his politics have always leaned right, if not far-right, but I don't), and what I'd call the spiritual politics of Russian Poland, often seem to be at odds with each other. In Homicide, for example, the murder of the Zionist shopkeeper is not, as homicide detective Bobby Gold (Joe Mantegna) believes, an antisemitic act. In a final twist (a swing so wild I almost can't believe Mamet brings it off), it's shown to be a random act, an apolitical crime of greed, and evidence for the anti-Zionist motive is revealed as a blind alley. Though Gold has faced antisemitism in his past, and experiences it over the course of the film, his political righteousness becomes a mental trap, and his inability to view the situation from any other angle ultimately destroys him. Not the same kind of thing you'd expect from the author of Russian Poland, which radiates a kind of arcane energy. If Russian Poland can seem esoteric, especially to a gentile like myself, it is nevertheless clearly the work of an artist who sees in it a grand truth, whereas Homicide is awash with uncertainty. Yet both works are about, essentially, the same thing. And if Henry Johnson, the story of an unprincipled idiot who believes everything people tell him, doesn't seem like it could possibly have been made by someone who supports Donald Trump, well, the human brain is a complicated organ. Share this article with someone who appreciates the complicated nature of the human brain. Share
