Dame Helen Mirren is not someone you might associate with hip hop, but the great British thespian’s distinctive tones resounded through the Ziggo Dome in Amsterdam, imperiously overseeing the onstage action of American rapper Kendrick Lamar for the opening date of his European tour.
As the award-winning, multi-million-selling rap superstar bragged “I’m aloof Bhudda! I’m Christ with a shooter” to the noisy adoration of a 17,000-strong crowd, the Dame’s voice cut bossily through with a sharp edge of disappointment. “You’ve once again let your ego get the best of you. Must I remind you of how this went before?” Cue Lamar breaking into ironically braggadocious 2017 smash Humble, and the crowd going even wilder.
Mirren effectively voiced a therapist guiding the performer through a transformative psychoanalytical session where his complex internal world was vividly enacted onstage. The artful design was starkly monochromatic, with subtle deployment of mood-altering colour. A huge, cubist, white-draped mainstage was extended by a long catwalk with further stage points, across which the 35-year-old ranged with choreographed deliberation. There was not a move that had not been considered for intent and effect, from Lamar’s first appearance rapping the tortured solipsims of United In Grief to a ventriloquist’s dummy, to a pyrotechnical face off with his cousin Baby Kweem on Family Ties staged as a battle for competing loyalties to past and present values.
With a setlist constructed around this year’s long, complex, self-involved fifth album Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers, every song was given a subtly unique presentation. Lamar was spotlit to create shadowplays, pursued and boxed in by descending lights and shot full of arrows in the back. A team of dancers executed elaborate set pieces with a tone of cerebral modern ballet rather than pop culture’s usually more licentious pizzazz.
“It is time to take a Covid test,” Mirren sternly announced as four hazmat-suited dancers incarcerated the star in an opaque cube. “Oh no, it won’t be gentle. But this is for your own good.” As the cube filled with smoke and was slowly elevated above the crowd, Lamar battled back, rapping the gloriously optimistic Alright from 2015’s To Pimp a Butterfly.