so kendrick was phenomenal.
there were two opening acts, a local cat who was ehhh. he makes party music, which is something i certainly enjoy but he didnt do anything to stand out or impress me. the next was a dude from phoenix, who seemed to land more on the conscious rapper end of the spectrum. he was better than the first guy imo, but still, not really impressed. its pretty hard for me to be impressed by a rapper when the first time i listen to them is on stage.
so after the second guy leaves, there was 45 minutes of waiting. it sucked, and that is the only gripe i had with the show. once kendrick came on though, man. ok so the place was absolutely packed (sold out show), and when kendrick came out the crowd went wild. now, even if he wasnt good on stage, which he was, his music is just crafted in a way that has points of crescendo, which is perfect for shows, and something that a lot of non-party rap lacks. and especially on GKMC, so many sudden spikes in hype. and speaking of, from the album he played "***** dant kill my vibe", "money trees", "backseat freestyle", "mAAd city", "the recipe", and "swimming pools". all of them were great, and kendrick knew exactly how to pump everyone up. he was interacting with the crowd as much as he could (there was like 4 feet of space between the stage and the front row), giving a pound to a dude in the wheelchair who was in the front corner, and talking to a girl on the other front corner where i was, asking her what her name was, and if she was faithful before turning to the crowd and asking us if we thought she would be faithful, to which the answer was of course a loud "NO!" haha. but then he grabbed her hand and said he was changing her name to tammy and then tammy's song started. she was like in a daze from the whole experience, which i dont blame her. and kendrick is just so genuine when hes on stage, just like his music. he looks people in the eye as he performs, he had like 10 water bottles which he distributed to the crowd and told everyone to share, after every song he would talk to us, telling us a story or something of the sort. just a great showman and person. kendrick is a future legend, end of story. and what is awesome is that he's the first legend of our generation (he was born in 87). but anyway, he also performed other songs like "cartoons and cereal", "adhd", "***** and patron", that one interlude song that goes "pray that we make it to 21", i cant remember what its called, and like 3-4 more songs i cant recall at the moment. he absolutely killed it last night, everyone was going crazy, myself included. i had so much fun, and my only regret is not listening to gkmc sooner so that i could learn more of the lyrics. sorry talib, but kendrick has taken your spot as best hip hop show i've ever been to. i'm already looking forward to the next time i get to see him. TDE!
after the show, i proceeded to get profiled (three guys in hats, bumping music), pulled over because my license plates are expired, and now i have a court date in 10 days :D and its a criminal offense because my plates are from texas :D. the moment they pulled us over i bet they thought they hit the jackpot as far as finding drugs or weapons or something. eventually after they pulled me out and searched me, they asked if i had anything in the car, listed like every ****ing possible drug, i said no, and they asked to search the car. i of course said no, but knowing that we thankfully didnt have anything (weed), i let him search. because otherwise i knew he would be doing everthing in his power to get a search warrant and that would have been like another wasted 30-45 mins just for them to find nothing. since i wasnt getting paid to wait like they were, i just told them to search it. but yeah. little fun sidestory.
tl;dr kendrick is great live, definitely go see him if he comes to your city.
