“You said you feel the love, right?” Kendrick Lamar asked SZA after performing their twinkling 2018 hit collab “All the Stars” during the first LA tour stop of their Grand National Tour at Inglewood’s SoFi Stadium Wednesday night (May 21).
“I think so,” she responded breathlessly. “You feel it?”
“I definitely feel it.”
The two dove head over heels into “Love” from his 2017 Pulitzer Prize-winning album DAMN., with SZA’s honeyed vocals taking the track’s featured artist Zacari’s place. While Dot has been hailed as a generational hater for vanquishing Drake in last year’s monthslong epic rap war, the stadiums he and SZA have been dominating for the last month since the tour started don’t feel like battlefields. Sincere and cheeky love songs like “Snooze” and “Kiss Me More” share the stage with scathing and calculated diss tracks like “Euphoria” and, of course, the five-time Grammy-winning juggernaut “Not Like Us.” The Grand National Tour serves as a well-deserved victory lap for Lamar, who headlined the Super Bowl halftime show earlier this year, and SZA, whose 2022 blockbuster album SOS has continued breaking Billboard 200 chart records three years later. Because what’s better than taking over one stadium? Taking over 32.
As both superstars embarked on separate and at times intertwined trips down memory lane throughout the show, their modes of transportation were very different, yet very them. Lamar pulled up in his sleek black 1987 Buick GNX and frequently flexed his signature whip on stage, while SZA’s “ride” was a gigantic animatronic ant named Anthony (because why not) that carried her throughout “Kitchen.” Shortly after, she sang Rihanna’s “Consideration” lyric about “ridin’ in on a pale white horse,” but that couldn’t be further from the truth. One can only dream of RiRi returning to any stage for their first joint performance of the song since the 2016 Brit Awards, but SZA did surprise concertgoers with her “best friend” Lizzo.
The dynamic duo ended on a high note with the one-two punch of “Luther” and “Gloria,” the former of which has spent the last 13 consecutive weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, as of this week (chart dated May 24), and samples Luther Vandross’ 1982 hit “If This World Were Mine.” Well, if you’re Kendrick Lamar and SZA, it certainly feels like it is.
Here are the five best moments from the first SoFi Stadium stop during their Grand National Tour.