Kendrick Lamar and SZA: Kisses and scratches of our time in a colossal concert

He's barely five feet six inches tall. He doesn't change into his loose, streetwise, chained wardrobe for two and a half hours. His gestures are moderate, almost spare, far from bombastic, but he's a domineering force, and his wiry figure is a magnet for attention, because his voice—changing, ductile, also aggressive, warm at times, also swift like a string of insults driven by anger—summons the spirits of music, love, self-affirmation, personal crises, and the aftertastes of slavery. His name is Kendrick Lamar , and he's one of the most influential artists of the moment, the spirit of an era, its musical emblem in the key of hip-hop, a dominant style. And she has the ability and vision to understand that the participation of a friend, the singer SZA , a subtle interpreter of rhythm and blues , far from detracting from her show, amplifies it in a collaboration in which concomitant worlds, that of their musical styles, are capable of illuminating a stadium and a time. What they offered at the Olympic Stadium in Barcelona was a majestic, dazzling, and overwhelming example of contemporary music in an exceptional show.

Everything was thought out, everything had a meaning, nothing was a mere coincidence. Neither the costumes of the dance troupe, nor the lighting, nor the distribution of the two and a half hours of the show into nine acts, nor ending with two ballads, Luther and Gloria , a majestic concert in which the changing rhythm alternated between both artists, complementary to all intents and purposes. Because Kendrick makes hip-hop, but beneath the recitations throbs rhythm and blues and, beyond that, soul , because he recites, but also sings, because SZA, who has an extraordinary voice, is capable of caressing, Love Galore can melt the leads of sensitivity, infiltrate rock guitars as in F2F or flirt with the pop-funky to eat lollipops of Kiss Me More . Two halves fitting together, but not geometrically, but like that space churned by the tides and that now is water and then becomes sand. A border world, a fertile space.

The show began under daylight, but it didn't lose any of its power or character. TV Off was responsible for turning on the lights of euphoria for the 48,000 people present. And from the very first minute, a splendid sound was provided, with rumbling bass that shook the lightest structures in the venue, along with the voices of Kendrick and SZA, sounding absolutely clear. The musicians were hidden, but always the sound of a band coexisting with digital reinforcements that didn't dilute the sensation of direct sound, sometimes raw ( DNA) , sometimes dark ( Like That) , sophisticated in the magical trio of the concert with Bitch Don't Kill My Vibe , Money Trees , and Poetic Justice , in which the only sonic blemish of the night was Janet Jackson's delicate sampler.

For her part, SZA sounded equally convincing, with an acoustic guitar opening "Nobody Gets Me" and the general warmth of a typical rhythm and blues repertoire, made up of ballads with a rhythmic pulse born to rock. Pure sensuality attenuating without dissolving the verb and the rhythm of Kendrick, capable of assaulting the keyboard arpeggios of " Reincarnated" with rhymes or getting the audience in "mAAd city" dancing, doing moshing , which is what pogoing is now called. Alright followed, a soundtrack to Black Live Matters, and it was a glorious chaos.

The screens and visuals deserve a separate chapter, more monochromatic and street-style with Kendrick and more colorful and rustic with SZA. The embedding of the real image of the scene with the previously edited image, the resources and effects employed, the multiplication of the same image in a different distribution of the screens used in Not Like Us to emphasize the choral sense of criticism of the recording industry, the elegance in the distribution of colors and shapes, the extensive use throughout the concert of pyrotechnic effects and flares in time with the rhythm, the use of elevated platforms so that, at another moment of the night, the stars sang All The Stars together but separately at opposite ends of the stage, complemented by the flashlights of their cell phones, were all examples of millimetric planning that enhanced the choreography. And all of this without the concert seeming rigid or unnatural. And all of this with darkness only from the fourth act onwards, with SZA liquefying the stadium with a ballad like Blind , gloom for an already dead relationship.

While two and a half hours of music between two artists might have been a bit of a turn-off, at first glance, the night flew by at the speed of a vacation. Is it over already? one might wonder after the second half of "TV Off ." It ended, yes, a little later, but the most complete of the three shows Kendrick has offered in Barcelona remains in the memory. The Primavera del 23 performance was no small feat, complemented for the greater glory of black music by SZA, who, far from detracting from the night, opened it up to other textures and atmospheres based on ballads. A simply colossal concert, a prime example of contemporary music performed by artists at the height of their careers. SZA ended up signing whatever was thrown at her on stage, kneeling, and together with Kendrick, they disappeared inside the car, a 1987 Buick GNX, which also opened the night and represents the aspirations, past and present of an artist and their music.