Mountains, Jesus, fire and a special appearance by Drake made the final two nights of the Yeezus tour strange and spectacular. As I've mentioned before, Yeezus is one of my favorite albums of the year and I was excited to see how Kanye would translate the abrasive and alienating album live but past experiences with live hip hop had been hit and miss. Live hip hop can be problematic due to a heavy reliance on backing tracks as well as the difficulty in understanding lyrics for a storytelling-focused medium. Both artists dispelled some but not all of these negative preconceptions. I did my best to avoid too much press about the tour beforehand so that I would be going in to the concert relatively fresh, though I had heard about several of the elements of the show. Kanye's set was divided into five sections, titled "Fighting", "Rising", "Falling", "Searching" and "Finding". The songs and staging during these sections were connected to these titles. While I saw both nights of the tour, the set was largely the same, with some small changes, as he played many of his best songs over close to two and a half hours.
Kendrick Lamar opened with a powerful set that highlighted his strong rap skills. He was backed by a heavy rock band that gave all of his tracks a more aggressive edge. He played for over forty minutes, covering all his best tracks. Unfortunately, his excellent lyrics were rendered mainly unintelligible by the overly bass-heavy sound mixing. Surprisingly, the crowd knew the lyrics to almost all of the songs he played. The crowd responded best to "Swimming Pools" and "Backseat Freestyle". Videos projected behind him helped to reinforce many of the themes and concepts of his music.
While Kendrick was preceded by a selection of classic hip hop tracks over the P.A., Kanye was preceded by dark, droning electronic instrumentals. It was already clear from this that he was not going to have a typical hip hop show. The mountain was unveiled and a robotic female voice announced the name of the first section, "Falling", followed by a definition of sorts of the word. This was followed by the disjointed electronic intro of "On Sight".
From the first track onward, Kanye performed significantly altered versions of his tracks. For the most part, this enhanced the songs, though I felt that "Power" would have been more effective in its original form. He was backed up by a D.J., singer Tony Williams as well as guitarist and frequent collaborator Mike Dean. He played songs from all of his album, with Yeezus being played in its entirety. Oddly, Late Registration was completely ignored during the second show, with only "Diamonds Are Forever" played at the first show. The songs from the G.O.O.D. Music compilation seemed much better outside of that uneven album. "Cold" with its Foreigner-sampling intro was especially good. As I guessed would be the case, all of the tracks were heavily reliant on prerecorded elements though that didn't diminish the performance as much as I thought it would.
The staging of the show was very impressive though the overall concept was not entirely clear. It was only by the second show that I realized that the five words and definitions on-screen represented divisions of the show, a realization that clarified the concept somewhat. A red-eyed monster stalked the stage and the mountain for a large chunk of the show, seemingly looming over Kanye. A group of women, either wearing robes or skin-coloured bodysuits sauntered around the stage during many tracks performing several functions. They laid down in a circle around Kanye as he sang, they walked out of the opened mountain in an Orthodox Christian procession, they performed very subdued dance moves and finally held up flares during "All of the Lights". Finally, Jesus came out to anoint Kanye for "Jesus Walks", an odd and surreal moment.
A highlight (or lowlight, depending on your perspective) of both shows were his rants or "visionary streams of consciousness". During both shows, he delivered his views on life, himself and the music industry for about fifteen minutes per show, interspersed with auto-tuned singing. I found the second one more entertaining than the first but they were both fascinating and exhausting. During the second show, after about fifteen minutes of ranting, a section of the crowd began to chant "wrap it up!" Some choice quotes were "F*** you with the love" directed to the Grammys as well as "I am the worlds crazy cousin just out of prison".
During the second show, as he seemed to be wrapping up, he brought out Drake to perform briefly. They performed two Drake songs, "Forever" and "All Me". Normally I'm not a huge Drake fan but Kanye must have brought out the best in him as he performed skillfully, including an impressive section of a capella rapping. The finale for both shows included exuberant, crowd-pleasing renditions of "All of the Lights" and "Good Life" followed by the natural closer "Bound 2" as well as a short outtro replaying the interlude from "On Site" with Jesus on top of the mountain, standing below a video of sun coming through a cloudy sky. It was a triumphant and slightly confusing finale for a stunning show.
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