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Kendrick Lamar & SZA review – a pyrotechnic party of dark and light
He’s icy, she’s all sunshine – but the rapper and R&B star’s talents prove perfectly complementary in a historic two-hander
Their sets weave together over three hours, welcoming us first into Lamar’s incisive (and enjoyably irritable) state-of-the-artform address, filmed austerely in black and white, before blossoming into full colour for SZA’s tactile songwriting about exes, bad habits and heart-leaping, interplanetary hope. An opening gambit speeds through Wacced Out Murals’ laundry list of betrayals by his peers, his arm fixed defensively across his chest; and a painfully abridged King Kunta, which swerves to a halt after its now decade-old Drake dig: “A rapper with a ghostwriter? Beaming, she gets a huge response to platinum singles such as Kill Bill and Broken Clocks – a woozily gorgeous, millennial take on 9 to 5’s work hustle – but it’s the grungy double-punch of Scorsese Baby Daddy and F2F that really ignites: dancers with electric guitars slide on their knees as she ad-libs with goosebump-inducing intensity.
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