Last night I had terrible food poisoning and no money, and could not have been more excited to be dragging my sick, broke, sorry butt out to Homebush to see Kendrick Lamar with 80,000 people.
Kendrick is at the top of his game right now, I guess. He is adored by everybody but still holds a cache of cool and oodles of mystique. He is selling millions of albums and winning revered literary prizes. This is what happens when you’re adored by fans and critics alike. Last year he became the first non-classsical or jazz artist to win a Pulitzer prize for his 2017 album DAMN.
It is a wild experience being sick, confused, excited and desperately fanning out at a gig. I love Kendrick so much that I felt a lot like a dog scratching at a bedroom door every time a song played – like I had reached peak excitement and would definitely collapse with boredom or exhaustion at the next song. That, of course, totally didn’t happen, and and everybody around me was totally the same. I also felt super queasy and had waves of sweaty nausea from food poisoning – I could smell the rising and falling of everybody’s sweat around me – I felt like I could tell what they’d had for dinner!
The older and weirder I get, the more I am starting to see big musical events like religious experiences where you leave exhausted and cleansed. People get wild, weird, obsessive. Everybody singing the words, flailing their arms around; people holding hands, everybody in release and reverie. The train ride home was weirdly calm and eerily quiet, like everybody was spiritually satisfied. Actually the thing is this: I have terrible anxiety and I hate leaving the house – I also hate being on public transport and I am afraid of being in enclosed spaces around drunk people.
Kendrick also won triple j’s Hottest 100 with his song ‘HUMBLE’, which means Australians LOVE this song. Which makes it no surprise that he let them kind of take over last night and rap it out. Here is some pretty wild footage of the sold out arena rapping along with Kenny and totally not missing a beat.
Watch Kendrick Lamar’s sold out arena rapping HUMBLE last night in Sydney
Mmmmm, that’s good Kendrick.
