The last time Kendrick Lamar stepped foot on a St. Louis stage was in April of 2013. He was one of three acts to play The Verge College Tour at SLU’s Chaifetz Arena. Steve Aoki, a popular internationally known electronic dance music DJ, was the headliner.
He returns next week as the other half of the biggest concert for “the culture” since Beyonce’s Renaissance Tour painted The Dome at America’s Center silver in 2023. Lamar and SZA’s co-headlining Grand National Tour will play The Dome on June 4th.
Though it was a dozen years ago, it would be misleading to imply Lamar took the Chaifetz stage as an unknown show opener. In 2011, he was included in XXL Magazine’s Freshman Class – which is essentially hip hop’s equivalent to being named “most likely to succeed” in one’s high school yearbook. That same year, Dr. Dre, The Game and Snoop Dogg proclaimed the Compton rapper to be “The New King of the West Coast.”
His first major label studio album, “Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City,” was released in 2012. When he performed as part of The Verge lineup with Aoki and The Bad Rabbits, Lamar hadn’t too long completed his run as opening act for future nemesis Drake’s Paradise Tour.
The music industry is so unpredictable that the aforementioned credentials and co-signs weren’t a guarantee that he wouldn’t suffer the fate of fading into obscurity. But seeing him own the stage with just a microphone and tracks without vocal assistance back then was a huge indicator of respect for his trajectory.
“He ain’t on the verge,” Lawrence Bryant said immediately after capturing Lamar’s set in 2013. “He got next. That’s the one right there.”
Perhaps as sharp as his eye for creating unforgettable moments through photography is his discernment when it comes to separating the superstars from the talented (or not so talented in a few cases) artists and performers.
Three years after Lamar opened for Steve Aoki, he headlined ESSENCE Festival. As fate would have it, Bryant was one of the small cadre of photographers granted credentials to shoot Lamar for what is arguably the biggest Black music festival in America – and perhaps the world.
He said the same thing he always did when the opportunity came for him to photograph the artists he pinged as future giants after their ascension.
“What I tell you!”
If his ESSENCE Festival gig had been Lamar’s career mountain top, Bryant would have been right to say “I told you so.” But ESSENCE Festival was just the beginning. He ultimately soared even beyond music superstardom. Kendrick Lamar is a bonafide culture shifter, which was further solidified just two years after he played ESSENCE Festival. In 2018, he became the first rapper to win a Pulitzer Prize – and the first non-classical or non-jazz musician to do so. Since the start of the Grand National Tour, Lamar has broken records for the highest-grossing rap concert and the highest-grossing concert by a Black male artist. According to allhiphop.com, it was announced after his three-night concert at Sofi Stadium that Lamar is the only rapper to have multiple tours in the top five highest-grossing hip-hop tours of all time.
And he’ll blaze another trail when he and SZA come to town next week. Just as he did when he played Super Bowl LIX in one of the most buzzed about halftime performances ever, he will be the first solo hip hop act ever to headline a show at The Dome.
SZA’s STL roots
While Lamar will be making history in St. Louis with the Grand National Tour, the city is embedded in SZA’s personal history. Bryant did not photograph the future Grammy winner for her first visit to St. Louis as a rising star in music. When she toured here to promote her debut album “CTRL,” Citizen photographer Roscoe Crenshaw had the entire pit area to himself for her two sold-out shows at The Ready Room in 2017.
“You know, her mother Audrey and I went to Soldan together,” Crenshaw said after promising to mail a few of his best images to The American for publication. He beamed as he talked about the line that wrapped around the former Mangrove venue for blocks just to see his classmate’s “baby girl.”
“Man, this is really something,” Crenshaw said before scurrying back towards the stage to get some more shots.
On a personal note, SZA is no stranger to St. Louis. In fact, she was born here. Solána Imani Rowe was raised in New Jersey, but spent her summers here – a fun fact she pointed out when she returned to St. Louis with a sold-out show at Enterprise Center for her “S.O.S” tour. During that show, she paid tribute to her recently deceased grandmother with a special video.
“Tonight is now my favorite St. Louis memory,” SZA declared in 2023 after calling the city her “second home.”
Based on the record-breaking run of the tour on the heels of its arrival at The Dome – and “Luther,” the hit she and Lamar share that has held steady at number one for an astonishing 13 weeks and counting at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 Singles Chart – she’ll have a new favorite St. Louis memory in the coming days.
The Grand National Tour: Kendrick Lamar and SZA will take place at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, June 4 at The Dome at America’s Center. For tickets or additional information, visit www.livenation.com.