Kendrick Lamar @ UBS Arena

To cut right to the chase, there's only one phrase that I could conjure up to perfectly describe the experience one can have seeing Kendrick Lamar’s Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers Tour; ‘masterfully curated chills.’ Seeing the show at the UBS Arena was unlike any concert I have ever been to. I’ve seen the likes of Jay-Z, Eminem, Drake and J. Cole. Acts like Playboi Carti to Travis Scott and Mac Miller. I’ve even seen Kendrick at the TDE Championship tour along with other members of the legendary TDE label. But none of them were like this show. This was a live art performance.

From the moment the lights go out and you hear the first piano key play from the intro song “United and Grief” it is incredibly hard to look away. I’ve been every type of concert goer. Front row, or in the mosh pit and even playing the outskirts with enough space to take in the show how I see fit. But this was the first show I got the feeling of being entranced. Minimal head nodding including, I was focused like I was staring at a Renaissance painting, admiring and fixating on the small perfected details. Each line and color is important to the overall picture helping them convey any and every emotion you could imagine as the brain takes in everything you see. The setup of the stage alone helps to convey this message perfectly. A white stage with a walkway that cuts right through the middle of the crowd, accompanied by a gray curtain as a backdrop. The simplicity makes you focus without seeming like the bare minimum. You can tell that everything has a reason for its choosing just as Kendrick does with every song and album he creates.

The lighting is used in various ways from casting a plethora of shadow images in the background during deeper and darker cut songs such as “Worldwide Stepper” and one of my all-time favorites “LUST.” To match the warmth of the songs like “Bitch Don’t Kill My Vibe” and “Die Hard” the lights make what looks like a solar eclipse or almost the opening door of a higher plane for the songs respectively. Some artists use lights and visuals to just match a feeling, or to show what they are talking about in a song or to just add to the grandiose of the music. But during this show, Kendrick uses them for all that and more.

As the concert continues, there is a voice playing as Lamar’s therapist that follows and narrates along every few songs in the same vein as the therapist throughout the Big Steppers album. From what I can gather, just as it does in the album, it is almost a marker for the concept of the progress he has been making in therapy and what new challenges he has to learn to overcome, for it is a never ending fight to continue to better yourself. This is perfectly matched when we get to the song “Count Me Out.” Here everything discussed is used to perfection. The therapist before the song talks about “moving forward by getting past yourself” and the song then starts with the words “session 10 breakthrough” being what you hear before the music starts. You then see Kendrick with the lights casting a shadow of Mr.Morale himself with multiple arrows in his back. While he raps about looking himself in the mirror and still wanting to forgive himself for his past, he talks about how he has to continue to better himself even with the pain as he has endured and the scars they’ve left.  As the concert goes on he slowly makes progress towards the end of the stage to be in the crowd but with every few steps closer, he ends up retreating. It may seem dramatic, but you can’t fully understand until you’ve experienced it yourself. Mr.Morale is in a class of his own and he shows us time and time again.

By the time the setlist gets to the classic “Money Trees” the head of pgLang has made it all the way down to the stage's walkway and is in the thick of the crowd. But things change when the last line of the song “LOVE” is uttered. The lights go out and a box with plastic walls one might see as a decontamination room in a movie about a killer virus begins to descend on Kendrick while 4 individuals in white hazmat suits suddenly appear on stage. All of them, including kendrick, are encased in this box with the word overhead saying “Mr.Morale it’s time to take a covid test… this is for your own good” as one of the extras in the suits goes up to Kendrick and swabs his nose, in the same fashion that millions of us have had to go through over the last 2 years. I’ve never seen anything like this. The tension in the room is palpable and as “Alright” plays you can't help but think that it almost comes across as hoping that we’ll be okay rather than the usual anthem of celebration and declaration that everything will be alright as it has in the past.

We then hear that Kendrick is “contaminated” and that the smoke he is going to inhale is not lethal so he has no reason to worry. The song “Mirror” begins to play as Kendrick, still in this box, is elevated above the stage. As he says in the song, it's a perfect metaphor displaying that it's not about “whose right or whose wrong” he is above all the discourse that has permeated through the world over the last few years and that he’s focusing on himself, his family and love. Now at the end of the stage is the perfect time for the song. In the album it perfectly represents the culmination of all the therapy sessions and all the work he's done. He is no longer scared to step up and face the hard realities about his insecurities, self proclaimed flaws and problems he has had, and is willing to push forward and focus on what he views as important. 

After this time in isolation and period of reflection, the box is lifted and the braggadocios “Silent Hill” is the perfect follow up. Everything on the setlist, from songs on the new album, intercut with classic records is picked out perfectly and matches with the concept this show has been steadily and expertly conveying. Then my personal favorite part and peak moment of the entire show. The lights go out, the stage is lit up red, and the beginning of the track “family ties” can be heard as Baby Keem himself rises from the bottom of the stage. They proceed to go seamlessly from “vent” to “range brothers” and finally with “family ties” with not one person I could see sitting down. The energy in that room was electric. I have rarely seen any concert hype ever reach close to  that level. Even when I’ve seen Baby Keem on his solo tour which was one of the rowdiest shows I’ve experienced. This was like that on illegal steroids. All it has shown me was that the two cousins need to do a collab album so they can do a real collab tour in the vein of Drake and Future for the What a Time To Be Alive tour. Their level of breath control while running around the stage to some of their most energetic songs in both of their entire discographies is incredibly impressive, especially for Keem who is still very much a newcomer.

We finally reach the closing song, after the opinionated and direct “Mr.Morale,” with one of the Big Steppers’ highlights, “Savior.” Here with no colors or images, just standard lights and a white background with his dancers, Kendrick leaves with the perfect closing message. At the end of the day, all of these things in these songs, all the art he puts out, he is still just a man, he is also flawed, gets paranoid and questions things on the daily. He has highs and lows but he is his own man and these are just his honest opinions, viewpoints and experiences. Just like J.Cole, Future, LeBron James and Kendrick Lamar himself, he is not humanity’s savior, he is just another human being trying to figure things out and get through days just like all of us walking this planet.

For those of you reading this who were able to get tickets and experience this show, you know some of these feelings and moments that I’ve described. Out of all my concert experiences this is one that I feel incredibly lucky to have witnessed. For those who couldn’t and want the closest thing to experiencing it live, you can watch the recently released concert movie on Amazon Prime from his performance at the 02 Arena in London, or go online and find his Glastonbury 2022 show which was on another level of incredible. It made me look at the album in a new light. Every time I press play on a song, I can see the performance in my head but nothing will compare to standing in the UBS Arena and being in that moment.