Kendrick Lamar, National Symphony Orchestra Unveil ‘Butterfly’ Anthems
Last night at the Kennedy Center, Kendrick Lamar walked onstage in all black, cross around his neck, hair in cornrows, his expression purposeful, dragging the base of his mic stand across the floor of the stage until he reached the center. When he got there and planted his feet, he stared at the mic, fidgeting and maneuvering toward it, as if he were a boxer sizing up his opponent, or Indiana Jones about to grab a precious artifact, while his band, the Wesley Theory, whipped up an anxious jazz groove. Then he snapped toward the mic and finally addressed his audience for the first time: “This! Dick! Ain’t! Free!”
Lamar’s second major-label album, To Pimp a Butterfly, topped the Billboard charts seven months ago. But several of its songs didn’t get a proper stage debut until Tuesday night, when the Compton rapper and his band performed with backing from the National Symphony Orchestra. Throughout 2015, Lamar has mostly played festival sets comprised of older material, with two or three songs from Butterfly sprinkled in. So when “For Free?” opened Lamar’s set, it marked the first-ever public performance of the playfully profane track, and most likely the first time anyone has said “This dick ain’t free” on the stage of the Kennedy Center.
If Kendrick Lamar needed a few extra months to memorize and rehearse some of the most intricate verses of his career before performing them live, it was worth the wait. Much of the album concerns a crisis of confidence that the rapper seemed to have, perhaps surprisingly, after the platinum success of 2012’s universally acclaimed good kid, m.A.A.d. city. The MC addresses “Mortal Man” directly to his fans, and it was thrilling to see him deliver those lyrics to them in person for the first time: “If I’m tried in the court of law, if the industry cut me off/If the government want me dead, plant cocaine in my car/Would you judge me a drughead or see me as K. Lamar?/Or question my character and degrade me on every blog?”
The evening opened with a brief performance by the Mellow Tones, a group of students from the local Duke Ellington School of the Arts who performed inventive a cappella arrangements of jazz standards. The audience greeted the nine talented teenagers with open arms, particularly when they ended their set with a performance of Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” that resonated deeply with the themes the headliner would rap about a few minutes later.
Before Lamar appeared onstage, the NSO performed an overture, giving a quick demonstration of their volume and power. But once arguably the best rapper alive walked out and began working the stage with a tightly coiled energy, it was often easy to forget that there were dozens of musicians behind him. Then something like the ominous orchestration on To Pimp a Butterfly‘s hardest song, “The Blacker the Berry,” or the lush, dreamy strings on “These Walls” reminded you how vital this collaboration sounded.