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Kendrick Lamar at Bonnaroo: Is This Dude Even Capable of Making Mistakes?

Kendrick Lamar was almost too perfect at Bonnaroo last night, but that's alright.

Photos by Joshua Mellin

More so than most music festivals—and this, of course, is why people love it—Bonnaroo is a place that indulges mistakes, or at least the kind of regrettable decisions that will make your coworkers envious as they contemplate how much freer their lives could be when they hear about it the following week. You might find yourself, like I did, having a stranger painting an abstract symbol on your arm—why not?!—and actively asking for her to add more glow in the dark paint. Maybe you, like one member of the extended festival crew I fell into, will gradually transition your wardrobe from a black T-shirt and shorts to black T-shirt and light-up blue tutu to nothing but a particularly revealing set of rainbow underwear. Who cares? It's Bonnaroo!

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Given this backdrop, Kendrick Lamar is something of a misfit in that nothing he does could really ever be construed as a wacky, bad decision. Kendrick's uncertainties are confined to his music; while his lyrics constantly wrestle with self-doubt, every aspect of his career is guided with total precision. While Bonnaroo might generally be a place for goofy, off-the-cuff moments, a Kendrick Lamar set is not the place where those moments thrive. Kendrick's arrival onstage in a burst of white light was dramatic, his rendition of “Money Trees” the kind of thing engineered for maximum crowd response.

In fact, this whole set was finely tuned: Despite it being nearly three months since Kendrick released To Pimp a Butterfly, the first 45 minutes of his set was more or less the same good kid m.A.A.d. city set he's been playing for the last couple years. He kept referencing his last time at Bonnaroo, calling the set's level of turn up an “eight and a half” versus the desired ten or 20 we were going to reach this time. But besides that and the fact that the main stage crowd was truly massive, it might have been 2013. That's not to say it was bad: The gkmc tracks are classics, and Kendrick and his band have the art of performing them perfectly honed. If the day comes when it's not sweet to be in a crowd of people rapping along to “Backseat Freestyle” or “m.A.A.d. City,” it will be a sad day for music indeed. May we all yell “girl, I know you want this D” until the end of time.

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Kendrick is an insanely musical rapper; he's comfortable altering his flow to suit the mood of his band and of the moment. At one point, he played a version of “Fuckin' Problems” with a heavy, hard guitar backing, and then he immediately followed it with a slower, funkier take. Unlike his closest contemporary, Drake, who also has a talent for stealing songs by molding them into his own singsong image, Kendrick steals songs by just sounding more comfortable on the track than anyone else. He raps more complicated bars and makes it look effortless. This is also why he avoids the trap of many “lyrical” rappers, whose complex delivery is undercut by the fact that they make it so clear how hard they're trying. Kendrick works hard, but his work is elegant and therefore a joy to watch.

Still, it seemed like Kendrick might be going off the rails by staying so steadfastly on them, that he might focusing so much on giving the crowd a familiar, turn up-friendly set that he would miss the chance to slip into the more interesting energy of his newer material in a place built on the idea of interesting energies. If it was possible for Kendrick to make a mistake, his flawlessness here might have been it.

But Kendrick Lamar doesn't make mistakes, so, suddenly, he was playing “i” and then “These Walls,” bringing featured singer Anna Wise out to join him for the latter. Maybe it was just my imagination out of my own anticipation for his newer material, but Kendrick seemed, as he eased into this part of the set, to take on a more relaxed air, to take the show off of its perfectly calibrated auto-pilot. “We're just gonna vibe out and shit,” he said, introducing “These Walls,” and, true to his promise, we did. Kendrick is great at commanding a large stage by himself, or maybe with the odd moment of his guitarist stepping to him, but he seemed thrilled to be exchanging the moment and sharing space with Wise. The much-promised higher levels of turning up came through with new material, too. He hopped into “King Kunta” with a huge smile on his face, and the crowd responded to the song's calls about wanting the funk in a way that suggested they were pretty amped about the funk.

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If the first part of his set was almost aggressive in the way that it asked for the crowd to lose its shit, these new hits felt more welcoming, energetic but with the kind of warm embrace that marks music that endures. Kendrick might have one really good live set down now, but “King Kunta” and especially “Alright” made clear the possibilities that await in ten or 15 years when Kendrick has a true, career-length set. The pressure, then, to be so tight and perfect and get it right won't be as pronounced, and the show will be, as always, flawlessly executed.

There was another moment that hinted at the possibilities of this, too. After Kendrick's set, Earth, Wind & Fire played on the other main stage, delivering just such a career-spanning set. They sounded pristine and looked great, in dramatic matching outfits befitting of funk legends, and they worked the stage with flair, doing coordinated shuffles and using brass instruments to accentuate the dancing. It was thrilling. And to cap it off, they introduced some newer talent, in the form of Kendrick and Chance the Rapper, who came onstage for a funk breakdown to lead the crowd and freestyle a few enthusiastic verses. It was totally organic and, free of the commitment to control the stage himself, Kendrick bounced around encouraging people to cheer and generally exuding the impression that he could not be more thrilled to be there. It was pure Bonnaroo: natural, positive, and totally unexpected.

Kendrick closed with “Alright” blended into his “I Am” verse, a bombastic celebration tempered by a serene moment of reflection and, once again, that rapping that is both so complex and so comfortable in his hands. It was also a fitting reminder of the ways that the Bonnaroo ethos fits him perfectly, despite the fact that you'll never see Kendrick Lamar dancing through a field in a ridiculous costume. All the mistakes and the wackiness of Bonnaroo are in service of a greater idea, which is that life should be lived honestly and earnestly, that music should matter. Kendrick Lamar's music—and his utter dedication to making it perfect—is infused with this same earnestness and positivity. Kendrick wants you to love yourself, and he has long before being explicit with it with "i": "Poetic Justice" has a line I'd overlooked until last night that goes "love is not just a verb it's you looking in the mirror." If there were ever an attitude to have when you're covered in mud and weird body paint designs, that's probably it.

Kyle Kramer still hasnt' showered. Follow him on Twitter.