An explosive performance and several wins to top it off. That’s how the night went for Hip-Hop heavyweight, Kendrick Lamar at the 60th annual Grammys on Sunday night from Madison Square Garden in New York.
While one of Kendrick’s idols and homegrown New York icon, JAY-Z was the most nominated artist for this year’s Grammy Awards. Jay was completely shut out and didn’t end up winning any of his eight nominations, while Kendrick won five of his seven nominations.
The TDE emcee nabbing three of those awards before the actual broadcast of the awards show started, he started Music’s Biggest Night with a bang.
As backed by U.S. flags on a screen behind him and with soldiers in masks aside him, Kendrick set the bar to start the night very high with a very politically-charged performance that sent a statement to open the show. Performing a medley of his U2 collaboration XXX from his Grammy-Award winning album, DAMN., with Bono and The Edge of U2 joining him, he would also go into LUST. and DNA. for the mashed-up medley. Which also featured legendary comedian, Dave Chappelle, coming in during brief cameos of explosive bursts from Kung Fu Kenny. As he went through portions of King’s Dead and All the Stars.
Kendrick would win for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration for the Rihanna-featured, LOYALTY., not long after that. But it was Bruno Mars, who was the third most nominated artist with six, who would sweep all six of his awards. Including three of the Big Four categories in Album, Record and Song of the Year, who got the most wins on the night.
There was also very stellar performances from Lamar’s TDE labelmate, SZA, of her standout record, Broken Clocks, off her Grammy-nominated album, Ctrl. She was also surprisingly shutout from her five nominations. Which included a very competitive Best New Artist category, which seen Def Jam Recordings artist, Alessia Cara win. Cara herself apart of one of the better performances of the night with her Def Jam labelmate, Logic’s Grammy-nominated, suicide prevention record, 1-800-273-8255, which also featured fellow Best New Artist nominee, Khalid.
Overall it wasn’t to bad of an awards show, but could’ve been a lot better than it was and at times dragged on. Overall I would give it a C+ or B -, with The Recording Academy having a lot of work to do to make The Grammys great and memorably classic again.