Even in the largest room in town with a giant stage production and another huge talent for a co-headliner, the biggest takeaway from Saturday’s Kendrick Lamar concert at U.S. Bank Stadium was confirmation of what Twin Cities hip-hip lovers already suspected from his prior, smaller shows: He’s the G.O.A.T.
No other rapper has commanded so many fans here — almost 50,000 — with as much intensity and ingenuity as Lamar did in Minneapolis for the kick off date of his ambitious Grand National Tour. And at least until the WWE SummerSlam lands there next year, Minneapolis’ NFL stadium hasn’t seen a better tag-team duo than Lamar and his touring partner, SZA.
No, we didn’t forget that Beyoncé and Jay-Z played the same venue together in 2018. The biggest hip-hop concert in Minnesota since then, Saturday’s show in the acoustically cursed, roofed stadium boasted much better sound than the Bey and Jay gig but followed a similar pattern: a sort of he-said, she-said version of a hits-filled concert.
Each vocalist would perform four to 10 songs on their own, and then the other took over, with the same shared backing band not missing a beat. Duo performances were interspersed here and there, too, starting with “30 for 30” five songs into the 2-hour, 40-minute nonstop set.
With long lines for entry and T-shirts tying them up outside, many fans — who mostly had to shell out $200-$500 for a seat — found out the hard way that SZA wasn’t the opening act. Lamar took the stage first, following a 45-minute opening set by his fellow Los Angeles scenemaker DJ Mustard.
“I done been through it all / What you endure?” the rap star, 37, asked as he delivered the opening song “Wacced Out Murals” from inside a late-’80s-era Buick GNX (Grand National Experiment) parked centerstage. Also the source of his latest album’s title, “GNX,” the same vehicle was seen prominently in his Super Bowl halftime performance in February.
After a hard-wired version of another new track, “Squabble Up,” Lamar then raced straight into two of his best-loved older tunes, “King Kunta” and “Element.” Any nonfans who still think rap lyrics are just gibberish should be schooled on the sound of the massive crowd loudly following the Pulitzer Prize-winning songwriter word-for-word that early in the set.
Likewise, any fans not aware of SZA’s popularity learned quickly just how big a role the St. Louis-reared electro-R&B singer played in helping fill the stadium seats. Loud cheers went up as she rolled up in the GNX for “30 for 30.” Another big singalong followed as she went it alone with two hits from her 2017 debut LP, “Love Galore” and “Broken Clocks.”
