After a stormy start to Kendrick’s concert, did he say ‘Atlanta’ or ‘Carolina’??
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Weekend of music: Lovin’ Life Festival and Kendrick Lamar in Charlotte
Enjoying tremendous success as a brand-new musical festival presents an inherent challenge, one that the Lovin’ Life Music Fest now must confront: Can it meet the high bar it established in its debut?
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It should come as no surprise to anyone at this point that controversy would follow Kendrick Lamar, even to a place as unassuming as Charlotte.
And it wasn’t about the weather. After all, we could see the storm coming Saturday from miles away on our weather apps, and indeed it came. At 4:45 p.m., to be exact.
Drops of rain started pecking at heads and shoulders, then within minutes, lightning was flickering in the skies to the southwest of Bank of America Stadium ahead of Lamar’s big co-headlining show with SZA. Moments after that, stadium officials gave a “seek cover” order to match the one issued just over a dozen blocks away in First Ward Park in the middle of rapper Petey Pablo’s set at Lovin’ Life Music Fest.
By the time the clock struck 5, it was a downpour, with anyone headed toward BofA who hadn’t packed a waterproof jacket or purchased a poncho from a sidewalk hawker likely remorseful and definitely damp.
The lucky break? The timing. If the same storm had rolled into uptown at, say, 8:45 p.m., we’d be writing about noise-ordinance fines, post-midnight Uber pricing surges, antsy babysitters and a lot of Charlotte waking up at least a little later on Sunday morning than usual.
Instead, the “seek-cover” order was lifted by 6:15, in plenty of time for DJ Mustard’s half-hour set to start at 7:15 as scheduled, in plenty of time to load Lamar into the 1987 Buick Grand National sports car (the one he made famous during his Super Bowl halftime performance in February) and to make them both rise out onto a cloud of smoke on stage a few minutes after 8, as scheduled.
More precipitation was on the way, but it would be of the lighter, lightning-free variety. So, then, where’s the controversy?
Hang on, we’ll get there.
‘Grand National Tour’ vs. Super Bowl
Charlotte was just the fourth stop on the 23-show Grand National Tour, which will eventually wind its way through 18 stadiums in the U.S. and one in Canada.
Hardcore fans would have come in to this one knowing it’s a marathon affair with no true opening act. But those who hadn’t read ahead might have been surprised to find Lamar and his longtime/part-time collaborator SZA spend 160 minutes taking turns performing a series of individual mini-sets, touching on parts or wholes of a total of a staggering 53 songs, including a handful of duets.
It was a contrast of styles.
SZA’s staging incorporated bright pops of color and more-traditional big-budget pop-show trappings — a giant animatronic ant she rode like a horse during “Garden (Say It Like Dat),” a long, glittery ballgown she shed like a cocoon before soaring 20 feet above the stage with butterfly wings on her back during “Saturn” — and even the occasional appearance of a live musician.
Lamar, on the other hand, largely stuck to a black-and-white motif, his 16-member, predominantly male dance crew moving more militarily — e.g. during “reincarnated,” when they exaggeratedly nodded heads and moved arms in rigid lockstep while seated diagonally, in a row, on a set of steep stairs; or during “peekaboo,” when they shadowed and surrounded him on the catwalk as he spit lyrics, stalking him with dramatic head thrusts that made them look like roosters.
Those moments seemed to harness some of the ferociously frenetic energy of the 13-minute Super Bowl show. But the overall feel of this concert was a little less urgent, perhaps if for no other reason than the sheer difference in running times.
It’s like a runner trying to run their 5K race pace for 26.2 miles. It can’t be done. You’ve gotta pace yourself.
Still, the pace the artists were able to keep was remarkable. And to a certain degree, it seemed like they got a second wind when the rain returned in the homestretch.
The skies started opening up as SZA sang the initial verse of her 2022 hit “Kill Bill,” and drops fell increasingly as she moved through “Snooze” and a shortened version of “Crybaby.” Lamar returned for his final solo miniset a few songs later, and as he rapped a new unreleased song in a crouch on the main stage, the rain that was pouring off the rigging and splashing on the stage behind him created an unexpectedly eye-popping, all-natural visual effect.
When SZA returned to join Lamar to kick off the encore with their collaborative effort “luther,” the 35-year-old songstress shouted, “This is our first stadium without a ceiling!”
And while I sometimes wish BofA had a roof, I also have to admit that wild weather always manages to give shows their character that they wouldn’t have had in a covered, climate-controlled setting.
The headliners, apparently, agreed. “I love the rain,” Lamar said, and SZA repeated the same four words before they launched into their last song.
“Gloria,” gloriously, capped the first major hip-hop show at the Charlotte stadium, on a night that represented the largest-scale celebration of rap in the city’s history: Over at Lovin’ Life, DJ Jazzy Jeff, Ludacris and Pitbull all still got in their full sets after the multi-genre festival’s rain delay.
Controversy, schmontroversy. Except ...
Wait. So did Kendrick say Carolina? Or Atlanta?
Just four songs into the show, my wife nudged me and asked, “Did he just call us ‘Atlanta’?”
I had tuned out for a second or two and hadn’t heard what he said. I shrugged. But I made a note to check my recording when we got home. And when I did, I heard it clear as day: “Yeah, Atlanta, how y’all feelin’ tonight?” I felt sure he’d said, “Atlanta, how y’all feelin’ tonight?” I felt so sure of it that I wrote several paragraphs lamenting the fact that he’d slipped up. Then I listened to my recording of him saying it five times in a row, and heard “Atlanta” every time.
But soon after I found a post on X of a photo of Lamar on stage in Charlotte with the caption, “Kendrick looking perplexed after calling Charlotte Atlanta” — and when I clicked through to the comments, I saw multiple people point out that he was actually saying “Carolina.”
I went back and played my recording again. I could hear “Carolina” this time, on the first try.
I quickly rewrote this review to take out my lamentations and lecturing. Then I sent the recording to two editors here ... who said, “No, he’s saying ‘Atlanta.’” I said, “No, he’s not — listen to it again. He’s saying, ‘Carolina.’” One said she heard “Carolina” the second time. The other said she still heard “Atlanta.” She played it for her husband. He heard “Carolina.”
She listened again. She STILL heard “Atlanta.”
It’s bizarre. I played it for my wife. She said, “That’s ‘Atlanta.’” I told her to listen again, for “Carolina.” The next time, she heard “Carolina.”
This was starting to feel like a twisted joke. Like we were on “Candid Camera.” Or like a 2025 version of that old viral mind-teaser centered on a photograph of a dress that appeared definitely blue and black to some, while definitely white and gold to others.
But I guess the bottom line is this:
At 37 years old, Lamar has achieved god-like status as a rapper, boasting a collection of 22 Grammy Awards (including five earned this year); a Pulitzer Prize for Music; status as the most successful artist on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 2024; and the fresh title of most-watched Super Bowl halftime-show performer of all-time (133.5 million viewers, more than tuned in for the actual game itself).
So the answer to his “how y’all feelin’” question, regardless of which geographic location he’s referring to, is this: We’re feelin’ lucky.
Lucky we got to see him on such a big stage, with such a great co-conspirator.
Lucky we keep getting shows like this, in general.
Lucky we can support, as a city, an A-list concert and a separate A-list music festival in the same place at the same time.
Lucky that the storm didn’t have the negative impact it could have had, on either event, and that — at the stadium, at least — the rain even made the night a little more memorable in a positive way for some.
And lucky, in his BofA Stadium show’s fleeting final moment, that Kendrick Lamar got it right once and for all: After helping SZA into the passenger seat of his classic Buick, he paused one last time before climbing into the driver’s seat and said, “Carolina, until next time. We love y’all.”
He definitely said “Carolina” this time. I mean, I’m 99% sure.
Or maybe 98%.
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Setlist
Act I: Kendrick Lamar
1. “wacced out murals”
2. “squabble up”
3. “King Kunta”
4. “ELEMENT.”
5. “tv off”
Act II: SZA
6. “30 for 30”
7. “Love Galore”
8. “Broken Clocks”
9. “The Weekend”
Act III: Kendrick Lamar
10. “euphoria”
11. “hey now”
12. “reincarnated”
13. “HUMBLE.”
14. “Backseat Freestyle”
15. “family ties”
16. “Swimming Pools (Drank)”
17. “m.A.A.d city”
18. “Alright”
19. “man at the garden”
Act IV: SZA
20. “Scorsese Baby Daddy”
21. “F2F”
22. “Garden (Say It Like Dat)”
23. “Kitchen”
24. “Blind”
25. “Forgiveless”
26. “Low”
Act V: Kendrick Lamar & SZA
27. “Doves in the Wind”
28. “All the Stars”
29. “LOVE.”
Act VI: Kendrick Lamar
30. “dodger blue”
31. “peekaboo”
32. “Like That”
33. “DNA.”
34. “GOOD CREDIT”
35. “Count Me Out”
36. “Money Trees”
37. “Poetic Justice”
Act VII: SZA
38. “I Hate U”
39. “Diamond Boy (DTM)”
40. “Shirt”
41. “Kill Bill”
42. “Snooze”
43. “Crybaby”
44. “Saturn”
45. “Good Days”
46. “Rich Baby Daddy”
47. “BMF”
48. “Kiss Me More”
Act VIII: Kendrick Lamar
49. (Unknown)
50. “tv off”
51. “Not Like Us”
Act IX: Kendrick Lamar & SZA
52. “luther”
53. “gloria”
This story was originally published May 4, 2025 at 9:09 AM.
