INGLEWOOD, CALIFORNIA – JUNE 19: Kendrick Lamar performs onstage throughout The Pop Out – Ken & Associates Introduced by pgLang and Free Lunch at The Kia Discussion board on June 19, 2024 in Inglewood, California.Picture by Timothy Norris/Getty Pictures for pgLang, Amazon Music, & Free Lunch4:31 p.m.Hed brings out native Inglewood cult hero Rucci and AzChike to carry out “Gentle It Up.” These two—together with Drakeo, Shoreline Mafia, 03 Greedo (who later stated he was invited however couldn’t make it, and whose fashion can be evoked on stage by Wallie the Sensei), and a bunch of others—represented, towards the top of the 2010s, an rising L.A. avant-garde that additionally appeared poised to cross over. Deaths, incarcerations, and the whims of streaming and radio slowed plenty of this momentum. And nonetheless, it’s surreal to see the BlueBucksClan rap about stealth Prada the place the Showtime Lakers used to play.5:02 p.m.Hed’s forged skews modern till he brings out the dance legend Tommy the Clown, who stalks across the stage with typical authority whereas a coterie of younger dancers scythe via the drum patterns of largely current songs—till Suga Free’s “Why U Bullshittin?” elicits a roar from the sector. Beside me: a pair in Loss of life Row shirts and black N95s.5:23 p.m.Mustard comes out to pyrotechnics and, confusingly, just a few bars of “Again That Azz Up.” From there he spends some time doing an out-of-the-box set: “Rack Metropolis,” “I’m Totally different,” “Present Me,” and “I Don’t Fuck With You.” Collaborators come out for a pair of songs every—Blxst and Steve Lacy hear heat welcomes, Ty Dolla $ign an even bigger pop for “Paranoid”—and none, as much as and together with Tyler, the Creator, are fairly as rapturously acquired as Dom Kennedy, whose “My Kind of Celebration” brings the Discussion board to a fever pitch. The again half of the set is an prolonged tribute to Nipsey Hussle, which is augmented by a Roddy Ricch look, and a mini-set from YG which, one imagines, he may need made career-spanning if there have been something within the again half of his profession that followers cared to listen to.6:13 p.m.“Fuck Wit Dre Day” performs on the home audio system between units, in case anybody was apprehensive this wasn’t about to get pointed.6:17 p.m.Properly: “Stan.”6:33 p.m.As Guru stated, it’s largely the voice. For as distinctive as Kendrick, or any variety of rappers who touched the stage tonight sound, there isn’t a one fairly like E-40. The final time I interviewed him, late final yr, we had been driving in an SUV from downtown L.A. to SoFi Stadium, which shares a parking zone with the Discussion board. Someplace on the 110, he informed me: “L.A. and the Bay have all the time been household. That’s what’s lovely about it: You’d assume that we’d have some sort of struggle or one thing, however we by no means let that occur as a result of we’re all household.” The again half of his pre-recorded intro to Kendrick’s set is drowned out by screams.6:41 p.m.Once I moved to L.A. greater than a decade in the past, I labored at what was then known as the Staples Heart, and, since then, I’ve commonly coated exhibits at just about each venue within the metropolis; I’ve seen rap live shows of each conceivable dimension, ambition, and degree of execution. And nonetheless, I’ve by no means heard a room get fairly as loud because the Discussion board did within the silence following “Euphoria,” Kendrick’s scorched-earth opener. I noticed and heard folks rap each lyric—aside from the brand new ones, which referenced Pac, and Drake’s ridiculous AI gambit.