Review: Kendrick Lamar's 'Kunta's Groove Sessions' at the Trocadero

The 10-minute unexpected intermission allowed the assembled hardcore fans to consider and appreciate what they'd been witnessing. And it upped the intensity of of the second half of the show, which seemed like it might not go on, and then indeed did.  lt as afforded the 28-year-old rapper from Compton, Calif., who is in the midst of the intentionally intimate 12-city Kunta's Groove Session tour for his outstanding album To Pimp A Butterfly, the opportunity to further celebrate his bond with his people.   

"Philly shut the s--- down!," Lamar exclaimed after the "Pimps Only" neon sign that served as the stage backdrop's only special effect was switched back on. "That ain't never happened before."

Dressed in basic black with his hair in tight cornrows, Lamar fronted a four piece band that, with the help of some triggered samples that, for example, brought the sound of Kamasi Washington's free jazz saxophone into the Chinatown theater, was impressively proficient at bringing to life To Pimp's free flowing funk, jazz and, on tracks like the scalding soliloquy on identity and race "The Blacker The Berry,"  forcefully rocking groove.

Lamar returned from the unplanned intermission with "u," the thorny, inward looking and lacerating To Pimp jam that shows the vigorously enunciating rhymer at his most self critical. The person he is speaking of when repeating "loving you is complicated" over and over is himself.
           
Then he talked about how much the no-frills small scale 'Kunta's Groove' dates - which take their name from To Pimp's bulldozing funk workout "King Kunta," which is in turn inspired by the slave protagonist of Alex Haley's Roots - meant to him.

"Music is so disposable right now," he said, explaining why after spending a summer playing to festival crowds of 80,000 or more, he chose to head out on a tour of rooms the size of the Troc, which holds just over 1000. 

"The people in this room are my core," he said turning the affection that the crowd, who had chanted the hook to his anthem "Alright" before he even took the stage, back at them. He thanked them for the loyalty that gave him the confidence to boldly experiment on To Pimp without fear of commercial failure, and suggested that this could be the last time he performs the album live. (We'll see if he sticks to that.) But he came across as fiercely earnest in announcing his intention to make the high intensity show "a moment for all you to remember." 

Then he got back to business.