Kendrick Lamar's Performance On Made In America
On September 1-2, 2018 I attended the Made in America Music Festival in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. American rapper and entrepreneur Jay-Z founded the festival in 2012. The festival brings together numerous genres of music including but not limited to hip-hop/rap, rock, pop, EDM, and even some alternative music as well. As a result the attendees are all as eclectic as the music itself.
The festival takes place right in the heart of the city on Benjamin Franklin Parkway with the Philadelphia Museum of Art as the backdrop for the main stage. There were even large historic statues interwoven into the festival grounds. The largest and most daunting is the statue of George Washington riding a horse lifted up on a pedestal surrounded entirely by a small flight of stairs. The main stage is named the Rocky stage due to its placement right in front of the famous rocky steps and statue.
The placement of the festival took me by surprise, but the more I thought about it the more symbolic it became. In the music industry no two performers or artists are the same. Each has their own personal style, motivations, and ideas that make their music unique. What they all share is a passion to share the art that they have worked so hard to create. One might even say that the festival is a two-day interactive extension of the museum presenting music as an art form. It is even common to see festivalgoers attend the museum in their red, white, and blue apparel prior to walking down the steps into the festival park.
The festival tries to bring together many aspects of city of Philadelphia. Local vendors are placed around the grounds selling homemade products while the food trucks of Philadelphia line the pathways each offering delicious meals. There are even many homegrown artists who get the chance to showcase their talents and musical abilities, none bigger than the headliner Meek Mill. The act that I have chosen to focus my research on and write this paper about today is Kendrick Lamar. Added a mere three weeks before the festival was scheduled, Lamar put on one of the most energetic, nostalgic and impactful performances of the festival. Kendrick Lamar used a variety of artificially produced sounds accompanied by a small band to create a magnetic atmosphere allowing him to use the audience’s overwhelming energy to enhance the performance while provoking relevant discussions about issues engulfing American society today.
Kendrick Lamar is an American rapper from Compton, California. As I have already mentioned he was not originally part of the festival lineup, but for unstated reasons was added to the already impressive list of performers. Many on social media platforms thought it was an attempt at boosting ticket sales. Although the reasoning behind his addition is unknown, nobody was complaining. With the little time Lamar had to put a set together he did so intertwining old songs with new, and fast paced upbeat songs with slower ballads giving nice variety to the performance.
Most of the hip-hop/rap artists at the festival had another DJ to, at first hype up the crowd prior to the artist performing, and then once the performance started was responsible for playing the backing tracks to the songs performed. Lamar was no exception, and had a small band join him on stage as well. They were placed off to the side, and could only be seen clearly by the audience when the lights flashed brightly on stage. The band consisted of a drummer with a full drum set, a guitar, a base, and a keyboard.
Other than the small band, Kendrick Lamar was the only other figure on stage. There were no dancers, but there were flames shooting out from the stage accompanied by a large screen displaying graphics accompanying each song. The graphics were often clips from music videos of the played song or large colorful geometric graphics with movement at the pace of the provided rhythm. Even with all of these performance-enhancing distractions, all eyes were solely on Lamar as he rapped each track with energy and ease. Lamar opened the show with the two high-energy songs from his must recent album DAMN., “DNA.” and “ELEMENT.”. This immediately allowed Lamar to energize the crowd and engage the audience. There was heavy base, accompanied by some slight distortion, which could have been intentional, or from the sheer noise the crowd was able to sustain.
Following an instrumental performance of the song “YAH.” Kendrick Lamar decided to test the crowd and see how many fans have been with him “since the beginning”. He then threw it back and played his hit song “King Kunta” from his 2015 Grammy award-winning album To Pimp A Butterfly. This song has a carefree message with the drums providing the rhythm to which the song is set. Intensity levels rise throughout the song as the rhythm consistently increases in pace.
After seeing the excitement from the crowd following this song Lamar decided to mainly stay in the earlier part of the decade, with the remainder of his set pulling from the albums To Pimp A Butterfly (2015) and good kid, m.A.A.d city (2012). Once this precedent was established it was clear to see many of the younger audience members beginning to head over to an accompanying stage to wait for the next performer. Lamar did manage to slow it down a couple times in the performance, none more effective and poignant than the song “LOVE.” .
This song is conversational between Lamar and his love interest. He goes back and forth asking hypothetical questions followed by the question “would you still love me”? This smooth and mellow song provided a nice breather amidst the intensity and allowed the crowd to get involved, often singing the question aforementioned above. Kendrick Lamar’s set was a mere fifty minutes and ended abruptly following the performance of “HUMBLE.”. Seeing that he was one of the headliners and arguable one of the most well known performers many thought, including myself, that his performance would last longer than it did. Nonetheless the performance left the crowd with speechless with nothing to say other than adoring and appreciative screams.
The demographic of the audience was something that I was entirely not expecting. Due to the diversity of the music being performed at the festival I was expecting quite a diverse group of attendees. Although there was some of that diversity present, it seemed as if the average age of attendees was low. I never expected to feel old as a 21 year old attending a music festival, but that is exactly how I felt at times.
The festival grounds were dominated by hoards of white high school age individuals running back and forth between stages not willing to miss one second of the action. This surprised me because although there were many genres of music present, the majority of the performers were hip-hop/rap artists. Rap had started out as a “black cultural form” that became extremely popular with black teens in urban neighborhoods, such as Philadelphia (Forman and Neal, 2004: 61). Knowing this I anticipated there being greater audience diversity than there was throughout the festival.
The audience attending Kendrick Lamar’s performance was one of the largest seen all weekend. Lamar performed on Sunday, the last day, which had the greater amount of people by far when compared to Saturday. Even before Kendrick Lamar came out the grounds were buzzing with anticipation and excitement with each group of people talking about songs they hope he will perform and even singing their renditions of their favorite Kendrick Lamar songs.
The atmosphere definitely seemed to create a sense of community as attendees bonded over their love for Lamar. As soon as the first song came on there was a tremendous amount of crowd participation and involvement. The crowd was able to feed off of Lamar’s positive energy as he got so close to the audience the people in the front row could touch him. He varied his positioning on stage enabling him to engage with every part of the audience so not one side felt favored or neglected. Although a concert in this type of setting is usually considered presentational, it could be argued that Lamar’s performance had some participatory aspects.
There were more than a few songs where Lamar encouraged the audience involvement. Whether it was to repeat after him, or actually sing a part of the song with him, it continually kept the crowd attentive and energized. He was able to make the thousands of people in the audience feel as if they had an important role to play in his performance. Although none were explicitly stated, it could be argued that the songs that ended up on Kendrick Lamar’s set list were a social and cultural statement.
Of Lamar’s fourteen song set list the majority of the songs came from Lamar’s most recent album released in 2017. What was unexpected was that the album with the second most songs performed was good kid, m.A.A.d city that was released back in 2012. Lamar has had multiple award winning songs and albums between these two, so it was thought provoking to wonder why he chose to perform the songs he did.
Throughout the album good kid, m.A.A.d city Lamar discusses the challenges he faced as a black youth growing up in Compton, California. He discusses his feelings about the state of United States and the topic of race. He eventually comes to the conclusion that so many African-American youths fail in a system not made to help you succeed, no matter the amount of drive, talent, or potential that one might contain (Love, 2016: 320).
With the current social injustices that are occurring daily to numerous minority groups it would not be surprising is Kendrick Lamar was trying to make a statement with his song choice. He may have not wanted to make any statements overtly, and instead chose to let his songs and his ability to perform do that talking. Challenging the norms of society and reinforcing his beliefs and stances through his music has been a staple of Lamar’s music career.
People attend music festivals mainly for the entertainment, but another motivation I picked up from this busy weekend is community. The amount of people coming in large groups of fifteen or more was astounding. Coordinating with that many people is truly impressive, but it was the enticement of music that brought them all together. Communities are also established once people are at the festival. Different people from different backgrounds are brought together by their love for a particular artist. It is hard to feel like an outsider at an event like this. The reason for this is that the motivations of each festivalgoer are completely different. The answers to why someone bought their tickets, which acts they want to see and why, what songs they hope to hear have thousands of possible answers.
The one common theme among all attendees is the hope to have a good time and watch amazing performers showcase their talents. Kendrick Lamar was able to encompass all of that and more. He was able to deliver an emotional performance taking the audience with him on a journey encompassing love, excitement, and acceptance. By engaging with the audience so personally, it created an addictive atmosphere that the audience hope would never end.
Many artists speak on the impact they want their performances to have. Kendrick Lamar managed to give a transparent performance allowing the audience to see what kind of artist he his and what motivates him, while performing thought provoking pieces that have the ability to spur greater and bolder ideas to enhance the country in which we live.
