Kendrick Lamar performs during"The Pop Out — Ken & Friends," his June 19 concert event the at Kia Forum in Inglewood, Calif.in 2022, he was jittery with agitation. There were many reasons within the songs for him to be anxious, which spend hard-earnedstruggles. His perceived silence during the dog days of activism in the early pandemic was met with questions and criticism, and in the face of those broader discussions, he made clear he would not be goaded into action.
We as listeners are not entitled to any artist sounding off, especially when they are protecting their souls, and while it is fair to ask a socially aware rapper to use his platform as a megaphone for the issues bearing down on his community, I think often of the 2004 Dave Chappelle joke about Ja Rule and 9/11: We don’t need everyone to talk about everything; sometimes they aren’t equipped. Everything is political, but music is not politics. Songs are just songs unless actively weaponized.
The “friends” Kendrick had in mind for his own circling of the bases seemed to consider the team-building that made his run possible. Mid-set he reunited the original TDE foursomeand himself — by bringing each rapper up individually to receive a well-earned salute from the crowd. The gesture was cathartic for a certain kind of rap fan. Kendrick cut ties with TDE in 2020 to start pgLang with former label co-president Dave Free; he hasn’t made a song with another Black Hippy member in years.
In that light, it was striking how many lines from old Kendrick songs now read like disses, in the context of a show that often played like a block party interrupting a wake. As Kendrick paraded the audience through hallmarks of his career — his first hit , his blockbuster soundtrack , his American anthem — he was also taking them on a guided tour past a corpse, and so every time a lyric rang off that matched the tenor of his animosity, the words felt retroactively prescient.
“Not Like Us” commanded its own portion of the show, where it rang out like a clarion call. He played the song five times in a row, each rendition more jubilant than the last. When he ran it back the first time, after holding onto the “A minor” line for dear life, he let the crowd rap the verse word-for-word as he bobbed around the stage, encouraging them to shout “Certified Lover Boy, certified pedophile” and drag that vowel to the moon and back.
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