Kendrick Lamar brought his latest album Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers to life onstage for the first time in Milan, Italy on Thursday night (June 23).
Just hours after he helped soundtrack Louis Vuitton’s Men’s Spring-Summer 2023 show during Paris Fashion Week — paying tribute to the late Virgil Abloh throughout — the Compton rap star flew southeast to headline the 2022 Milano Summer Festival.
Rocking a bedraggled white outfit and joined onstage by a rotating group of male dancers in white shirts and female dancers in red dresses, Kendrick performed tracks from his fifth studio album including “N95,” “Count Me Out,” “Silent Hill” and his “favorite” record from the project, “Savior.”
The pgLang MC also dug deeper into his decorated discography and treated the Milan crowd to old favorites such as “Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe,” “Swimming Pools (Drank),” “Alright,” “King Kunta,” “HUMBLE.” and “LOVE.”
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“All the way from Los Angeles I hear you… everyday I heard you… and that’s the reason why Mr. Morale is alive right now around the world spreading love,” he told the crowd during his set. “Feelings that people can cope to… because everybody going through something.”
The Milano Summer Festival was Kendrick Lamar’s third performance this week following his intimate set at Spotify Beach during the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in France, as well as his aforementioned Louis Vuitton medley.
The 35-year-old will take the show on the road to the U.K. on Sunday (June 26) to headline the closing night of Glastonbury Festival in Somerset. The mini European jaunt serves as a warm-up for Kendrick’s Big Steppers Tour, which gets underway in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma on July 19.
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From there, K. Dot will journey across North America — playing cities like Houston, Miami, Atlanta, New York, Toronto, Chicago and his native Los Angeles — before traveling to Europe and Oceania, where the massive 65-date trek concludes on December 16.
Kendrick Lamar Tributes Virgil Abloh During Louis Vuitton Paris Fashion Week Performance
The long-awaited follow-up to 2017’s Pulitzer Prize-winning DAMN., Mr. Morale & The Big Steppersdebuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in May after notching 295,000 album-equivalent units in its first week. That figure has since surpassed 500,000, making it eligible for gold certification.
The 18-song, double-disc effort boasted appearances from the likes of Kodak Black, Ghostface Killah, Baby Keem, Summer Walker and Sampha, with cinematic production supplied by Sounwave, The Alchemist, Boi-1da, Cardo, DJ Dahi and others.
