Review: Kendrick Lamar reigns supreme in Minneapolis tour kickoff with SZA

The "All the Stars" hitmakers brought out all the stops on opening night of their ambitious Grand National Tour.

By Chris Riemenschneider Star Tribune

April 20, 2025 — 2:29am

Even in the largest room in town with a giant stage production and another huge talent for a co-headliner, the biggest takeaway from Saturday's Kendrick Lamar concert at U.S. Bank Stadium was confirmation of what Twin Cities hip-hip lovers already suspected from his prior, smaller shows: He's the G.O.A.T.

No other rapper has commanded so many fans here — almost 50,000 — with as much intensity and ingenuity as Lamar did in Minneapolis for the kickoff date of his ambitious Grand National Tour. And at least until the WWE SummerSlam lands there next year, Minneapolis' NFL stadium hasn't seen a better tag-team duo than Lamar and his touring partner, SZA.

No, we didn't forget that Beyoncé and Jay-Z played the same venue together in 2018. The biggest hip-hop concert in Minnesota since then, Saturday's show in the acoustically cursed, roofed stadium boasted much better sound than the Bey and Jay gig but followed a similar pattern: a sort of he-said, she-said version of a hits-filled concert.

Each vocalist would perform four to 10 songs on their own, and then the other took over, with the same shared backing band not missing a beat. Duo performances were interspersed here and there, too, starting with "30 for 30" five songs into the 2-hour, 40-minute nonstop set.

With long lines for entry and T-shirts tying them up outside, many fans — who mostly had to shell out $200-$500 for a seat — found out the hard way that SZA wasn't the opening act. Lamar took the stage first, following a 45-minute opening set by his fellow Los Angeles scenemaker DJ Mustard.

"I done been through it all / What you endure?" the rap star, 37, asked as he delivered the opening song "Wacced Out Murals" from inside a late-'80s-era Buick GNX (Grand National Experiment) parked centerstage. Also the source of his latest album's title, "GNX," the same vehicle was seen prominently in his Super Bowl halftime performance in February.

After a hard-wired version of another new track, "Squabble Up," Lamar then raced straight into two of his best-loved older tunes, "King Kunta" and "Element." Any nonfans who still think rap lyrics are just gibberish should be schooled on the sound of the massive crowd loudly following the Pulitzer Prize-winning songwriter word-for-word that early in the set.

Likewise, any fans not aware of SZA's popularity learned quickly just how big a role the St. Louis-reared electro-R&B singer played in helping fill the stadium seats. Loud cheers went up as she rolled up in the GNX for "30 for 30." Another big singalong followed as she went it alone with two hits from her 2017 debut LP, "Love Galore" and "Broken Clocks."

This tradeoff approach worked well. SZA had plenty of time to change outfits. She donned a garden-pixie minidress mid-show as she sang "Diamond Boy" and "Kill Bill" with dancing insects. Later, she wore a ferry costume that stretched higher and higher during "Crybaby," culminating in her flying overhead to deliver the next teary tune, "Sadder."

She and the mostly T-shirt-clad Lamar each got to catch their breath a lot, too, resulting in remarkably strong vocal performances all night, all thankfully aided by relatively clear audio.

SZA's willowy but strong and soulful voice impressed the greatest during "Low," much of which she dramatically delivered bent down on her knees. She also soared high alongside Lamar during "All the Stars," their Oscar-nominated duet with Lamar from the "Black Panther" soundtrack.

His strongest turns at the mic were all over the map musically and thematically — and all over the stage, too. As he did at the Super Bowl, Lamar kept moving around the diamond-shaped proscenium stage that jutted out past centerfield, often followed by his tightly choregraphed dance troupe.

He and the gang coolly slid and marched in unison during one of the night's feistiest, fiercest numbers, "Hey Now." Later, they cleverly played the telephone game during another show highlight, "Money Tree."

Best of all, they turned as wild and excited as the crowd did during the climax of his last solo set, "Not Like Us," a mean dis track against fellow rap star Drake that the crowd showed no guilt in loving. Lamar finished on a much more sweet and congenial note, though. He brought SZA back out and gave her a big hug to end with the new, gospel-tinged hit "Gloria," a surprisingly mellow but effective closer.

Tellingly, some of the night's most thrilling moments also came when Lamar was hardly moving at all. For his reappearance after SZA's first solo set, he performed "Euphoria" all by himself at the tip of the thrust stage with rhythmic precision. Throughout the against-all-odds anthem "Man at the Garden," he crouched on the hood of the GNX while the stage's giant video backdrop whirred through what looked like his old neighborhood of Compton.

In those immobile moments, the size of the venue and crowd didn't matter, nor did the pyro going off or other hi-fi stage effects. All the motion and enormity simply came from Lamar's microphone.

Here's the setlist from opening night of the Grand National Tour:

Kendrick, set 1