Eventually, all roads lead back home. For Kendrick Lamar, that was taking his custom GNX ride all the way back to where it began in Chicago.
“This is my second hometown, make some noise,” the chart-busting rapper demanded midway through a masterful performance at Soldier Field on Friday. While Lamar oozes California pride and many tracks detail an American saga of growing up in Compton, his parents actually hail from the South Side of Chicago. And it was their complicated journey to find a better life for their family that initially planted the seeds that would soon flourish in Lamar’s insightful urban poetry that has led to 22 Grammys, reported estimates of $71 million in equivalent album sales and a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for his album “DAMN.”
That full-circle journey is a large theme of this summer’s Grand National Tour and Lamar’s 2024 surprise album “GNX,” both an homage to Buick’s very rare, high-performing muscle car, the 1987 Buick Grand National Experimental. The model is not only a perfect characterization for the unstoppable Lamar but it’s also a symbolic shadow figure in his story. The GNX was released in Lamar’s birth year and is similar to the Buick that Lamar’s father used to drive him home from the hospital when he was born.
Lamar tracked down one of the limited-edition models and made the car a prominent centerpiece of his rich Super Bowl Halftime Show this year as well as this tour, which carries on the deep conversations about personal roots, spirituality, disparity and discrimination, as well as empowerment and revolution. Tapping into his exemplary body of work from early hit “m.A.A.d city” to the still-hot diss track “Not Like Us,” Lamar is still the unseated poet laureate of the Black experience in America.
Of course, Lamar’s co-pilot for this ride is SZA, the equally impressive R&B phenom and Lamar’s longtime friend/collaborator. The two first became loosely connected in 2011 when SZA was slinging merch at one of Lamar’s shows in New York. They ended up on the same roster at Top Dawg Entertainment, and they’ve been inseparable ever since.
The Grand National Tour brings the two talents together in a novel way that justifies the magic of their ongoing partnership. A true co-headlining bill, it spans three hours and 50-plus songs broken up into nine acts in which Lamar and SZA rotate turns in the spotlight before joining together for a number of their collab tracks. The standout duet was a moving delivery of 2018’s “All The Stars,” the handsomely nominated lead single from the “Black Panther” soundtrack. Lamar and SZA performed it on raised platforms on opposite sides of two long stage thrusts as fans in the sold-out stadium created a man-made cosmos with illuminated phones.
“All The Stars” is one of the more mainstream and poppier songs the two artists have ever individually created, but it was also the perfect crossroads of the way the two approached this tour, with a heavy contrast between dream-like fantasy and in-your-face reality. Whereas Lamar came in hard with fast-lipped wordsmithing, SZA softened the edges with her smooth R&B serenades. Whereas Lamar’s sets were gray-toned and monochromatic with solider-like dancers and balls of fire, SZA’s were green and lush like a midsummer garden fever dream, complete with ballet breakdowns. Whereas Lamar sang about life in the streets, SZA narrowed in on the just-as-conflicted life under the sheets. “This is the only almost love song I’ve ever made — if you still believe in love,” she said to introduce “Snooze.” And whereas Lamar’s set was all about the journey, SZA’s was about a metamorphosis. As she sang her loaded fantasies about killing an ex on “Kill Bill,” dancers dressed as life-sized praying mantises battled it out on the stage. After, a video montage showed the singer emerging from a cocoon like a beautiful butterfly, flipping off the cameras with a smile.
Of course, revenge was also Lamar’s MO. Still riding high on “Not Like Us,” the rapper took every chance he could to take stabs at his nemesis Drake, like packing in a cover of Future & Metro Boomin’s “Like That,” which first amplified the feud and SZA even trolling with a cover of Drake’s “Rich Baby Daddy.” But most dramatic was padding the tour with a series of videos from a mock deposition, clapping back at Drake’s defamation lawsuit waged earlier this year. “You said you wanted the ‘party to die,’ was that a metaphor or were you being serious?” asks an off-screen “lawyer” in one bit. Lamar’s response: “However you wanna take it.”
The fact is, Lamar’s fighting words still make him the victor. The ongoing spat with Drake has only continued to blast Lamar up the charts, as he has broken even more records in real time on the Grand National Tour. The gross earnings from opening night in Minneapolis on April 19 made Lamar the first rapper ever to exceed $9 million from a single show, and just prior to the Chicago stop, on June 4, Lamar and SZA’s track “Luther” became the longest-running No. 1 on Billboard’s R&B/Hip-Hop Songs Chart. The duo made the song one of the final numbers of the transcendent night. Wrapping it up, they went back into the GNX and left the stage on to the next destination.
SET LIST
Act I: Kendrick Lamar
wacced out murals
squabble up
King Kunta
ELEMENT.
tv off
Act II: SZA
30 for 30 (with Kendrick Lamar)
What Do I Do
Love Galore
Broken Clocks
The Weekend
Act III: Kendrick Lamar
euphoria
hey now
reincarnated
HUMBLE.
Backseat Freestyle
family ties (Baby Keem cover)
Swimming Pools (Drank)
m.A.A.d city
Alright
man at the garden
Act IV: SZA
Scorsese Baby Daddy
F2F
Garden (Say It Like Dat)
Kitchen
Blind
Consideration (Rihanna cover)
Low
Act V: Kendrick Lamar & SZA
Doves in the Wind (SZA song)
All the Stars
LOVE. (Kendrick Lamar song)
Act VI: Kendrick Lamar
dodger blue
peekaboo
Like That (Future & Metro Boomin cover)
DNA.
GOOD CREDIT (Playboi Carti cover)
Count Me Out / Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe
Money Trees
Poetic Justice
Act VII: SZA
I Hate U
Go Gina
Kill Bill
Snooze
Open Arms
Nobody Gets Me
Good Days
Rich Baby Daddy (Drake cover)
BMF
Kiss Me More (Doja Cat cover)
Act VIII: Kendrick Lamar
N95
tv off
Not Like Us
Act IX: Kendrick Lamar & SZA
Luther (Kendrick Lamar song)
Gloria (Kendrick Lamar song)