Kendrick Lamar prepares for international stretch of his tour

Photo Courtesy of The New York Times

Mr. Morale will take his “Big Steppers” to Amsterdam for the start of the 27-show international stretch of his highly acclaimed “The Big Steppers Tour.” Having just closed the North American leg, which consisted of 38 shows, Lamar will kick off the European and UK sections of the tour with his Friday, Oct. 7, show in the Netherlands. The tour will then wrap around to Australia and close out in New Zealand on Dec. 16.

This 65-show run is centered around Kendrick Lamar’s latest studio album, “Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers,” a double LP released on May 13, consisting of 19 songs in total. This project comes five years and exactly 1,855 days as mentioned in the album’s opening song “United In Grief,” since Lamar’s last solo album, “DAMN.” released on April 14, 2017. However, Lamar’s fans have clearly shown that as impatient as they might have been for a new project in the past half decade, their loyalty has never once wavered.

The success that the music industry has seen from his latest album proves just how much generational power and influence Lamar has, not only on music, but on his followers as well. 

The fact that a man can go silent for five years straight and come right back to selling out arenas and a whopping 295,000 units the first week, is enough evidence to justify his place in what is considered to be the top three hip-hop artists of this generation, accompanied by Drake and J. Cole.

The visual aesthetics of each show have certainly been far from a disappointment. Lamar, at the front of all creative direction involved with his work, made sure he hired the perfect team to share his vision with for the tour. 

Choreographer Charm La’Donna pulled together the dancers for the tour, which are believed to be interpreted as Lamar’s “Big Steppers.” The stage itself has a very minimalistic style, featuring a large white cover which hosts lots of shadow work throughout the performance, meant to resemble a common practice in therapy (which is much of what “Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers” is centered around), in which you work to uncover the parts of yourself that you may repress or hide.

This is the also the first album of Lamar’s that has been officially released under his newly created collective, pgLang, whose roster also includes Baby Keem, Kendrick Lamar’s cousin, and Tanna Leone, a 24-year-old rapper out of Los Angeles. Keem and Leone have accompanied Kendrick on his tour as opening acts and have been called back to stage during Lamar’s set to perform songs they had featured on in Mr. Morale’s album. 

One of the highlights of each show has been when Baby Keem returned to stage towards the end of the night to perform his song, “Family Ties,” a single featuring Lamar that was released on Aug. 27, 2021, and later added to Keem’s album, “The Melodic Blue.” Fire shooting up from the stage and strobe lights illuminating the whole stadium, while Lamar and Keem have 20,000 people in the palm of their hand at once, creates an unforgettable experience for any fan in attendance. 

Kendrick has also made sure to sprinkle in a couple of his older songs for his earlier fans, performing songs like “Backseat Freestyle” from his “good kid, m.A.A.d city” album, “Alright” from “To Pimp A Butterfly” and “LOVE. FEAT. ZACARI” coming from his last project, “DAMN.”