Kendrick Lamar Glasgow review: Hip-hop masterclass narrated by Dame Helen Mirren

Even for an artist known for providing the unexpected – sudden changes of tone or tempo are a hallmark of his songs – it’s somewhat from leftfield when, at a packed out Hydro in Glasgow, her Mirren-ness gets the introduction out of the way and we see the Compton rapper sitting at a piano with what appears to be a dummy of himself.

Clad entirely in black he kicks off with ‘United In Grief’ and ‘N95’ from new album Mr Morale & The Big Steppers in what is, at this point, a fairly spartan production of man and mic, the band hidden off to the side of the stage and Lamar’s only company an arresting overhead light and a camera man keeping a safe distance.

“You’ve let your ego get the better of you again, Mr Lamar,” admonishes Dame Helen over the PA system as he returns to the piano. He plinks out a few bars of piano before launching into the unmistakeable beat to ‘Humble’. The floor bounces as one as a phalanx of dancers in vaguely militaristic uniform join the main man on stage, fireworks and lightshow in full effect.

There’s no letup as Lamar blasts through ‘m.A.A.d city’, ‘King Kunta’ – which sees 13,000 people screaming “we want the funk” in unision - and an all-too-brief ‘Swimming Pools’.

Kendrick Lamar's show is at times surreal, but always brilliant (Image: Chuff Media)

There’s not much in the way of audience interaction. Aside from thanking the Glasgow crowd for coming when they could have been “anywhere in the world” and the odd instruction to raise hands in the air, for the most part Lamar prefers to let his formidable flow do the talking, his bars clear even over a thumping bass that must have the fish bouncing in the Clyde.

That dialled-back start is thrown into sharp relief as the set proceeds and the full extent of Lamar’s arena box of tricks is revealed. One particularly arresting set piece sees four PPE-clad backing dancers encase the rapper in a faux isolation cage as Dame Helen informs him it’s time to take a Covid test. The box fills with dry ice and rises up toward the arena roof, its reflective side beaming the audience’s open mouths.

If it sounds odd, quite frankly it is. If there’s a theme it’s hard to pin down: a man’s travels through his own anxieties? The seven deadly sins? The existential pain of that voice in your head telling you you’re never good enough being the star of The Long Good Friday? Whatever it is, it works.

Lamar returns to audience level to perform ‘Alright’ from within his prison, a sea of arms bouncing in time to the beat.

Kendrick Lamar on stage during the Big Steppers tour (Image: Chuff Media)

If there’s a fly in the ointment it comes shortly thereafter when support act – and Lamar’s cousin – Baby Keem joins in on the action. His entrance is certainly arresting – he and cousin Kendrick staring menacingly at each other with the stage bathed in red light – but at three songs his cameo perhaps outstays its welcome ever so slightly, particularly given the almost complete absence of any cuts from To Pimp A Butterfly.

Mr Morale & The Big Steppers sees Lamar largely eschew the political statements he made on that acclaimed 2015 effort in favour of introspection, so it’s not altogether unsurprising we don’t get ‘The Blacker The Berry’ but seriously, no ‘i’?

Closer ‘Savior’ sees Lamar practically begging to be removed from the cultural pedestal To Pimp A Butterfly put him on, declaring in the intro “Kendrick made you think about it/But he is not your saviour”.

The lyrics deal with the artist’s own contradictions as he wrestles with cancel culture, Covid (“Seen a Christian say the vaccine’s mark of the beast/Then he caught COVID and prayed to Pfizer for relief”), the war in Ukraine and the Black Lives Matter movement from multiple angles. As he spits about “capitalists posing as compassionates” it’s hard not to recall the advert, featuring Lamar himself, for PG Lang/Cashapp that was broadcast on the screen before the show. It is, like the show as a whole, at turns bombastic and baffling but never short of utterly compelling.

Lamar returns to the piano for the final time, delivering a closing soliloquy that ends with a promise: “I WILL be back”. On this showing his return can’t come soon enough.