Kendrick Lamar Marathons Through Hits and Drake Disses With SZA at AT&T Stadium (2025)

“Mustaaaaaaaaaard!”

Five fans wearing yellow mustard costumes roamed AT&T Stadium, screaming the condiment’s name in the same style as Kendrick Lamar’s “TV Off.” The viral meme of 2025 influenced these teens to be walking bottles at the home of the Dallas Cowboys, attracting other Lamar fans to take photos with them. It is too bad that Mustard, the Grammy Award-winning producer, missed this tour stop because of a prior engagement. He would’ve loved it.

Kendrick Lamar has been busy recently. He went from therapy sessions on Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers to his animated performances getting memed. Lamar is now closing in on one year since battling Drake and winning the feud, their rap beef becoming one of the biggest pop cultural events of the 21st century. Much has changed since Lamar's stop in Texas in 2022. Several fans wore Big Steppers Tour merch, Kobe Bryant jerseys and Cowboys gear. The generations of rap fans, some with families and kids, show how popular Lamar has become, mainly in part to a rare mainstream moment in 2024 of everyone talking about diss lyrics and waiting for responses from both competitors.

Now, Lamar is on a stadium tour with SZA, his old friend, frequent collaborator and former TDE labelmate. He is on fire right now, celebrating his Drake victory with The Pop Out: Ken & Friends, a concert he held on Juneteenth last year when he performed “Not Like Us” five times, and ushered in what OG hip-hop journalist Elliott Wilson has called the “Dot era.” This moment finds Lamar at the top of the mountain, hitting No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with his album GNX, completing a sweep of his categories at this year’s Grammys by winning Song of the Year with “Not Like Us,” and continuing to dominate the Hot 100 with “Luther” alongside SZA.

This isn’t just a regular Lamar show, either. Credit to SZA, whose SOS Deluxe: Lana was released as an early Christmas gift last year. The two teased this joint tour when they did the Super Bowl LIX Halftime Show, highlighted by Lamar’s diabolical smile when saying “Hey Drake” during “Not Like Us” and Serena Williams C-walking in her surprise cameo. On Saturday night, April 26, the audience expected a Super Bowl-caliber performance and was blown away by two hours and 40 minutes of alternating songs that seamlessly blended contrasting setlists through visual storytelling, choreography and on-screen vignettes.

A Buick Grand National is packed with horsepower, and you could compare Lamar’s stamina behind the mic to his current car of choice. The show opened with footage of him being deposed and a GNX doing doughnuts. Then you hear mariachi singer Deyra Berrera’s voice and her Spanish lyrics splash on the black screen. It’s the beginning of “Wacced Out Murals,” and Lamar is rapping inside the GNX as it rises from the stage. The GNX does a burnout before Lamar exits. He’s locked in. We’re off to the races.

Lamar is intentional and calculated with his messages. In between songs, he’s in a deposition with a lawyer, a clear response to Drake suing Universal Music Group for defamation over the release of “Not Like Us.” In the latest amended lawsuit, Drake has included Lamar’s halftime performance of “Not Like Us” at the Super Bowl as reviving attention to false allegations of pedophilia against him. Lamar doesn’t see it as a threat, using the deposition to poke fun at Drake. SZA was also seen in a deposition, getting loud cheers when she first appeared, telling the lawyer the correct pronunciation of her name.

SZA sat on the GNX, draped in vines and greenery, with backup dancers who show more free-spirited individuality than Lamar’s dancers of militant uniformity. Lamar and SZA work as twin flames. While he is more intense with his rapping, SZA is passionate yet relaxed. In their "30 for 30" performance, their chemistry was recognizable from jump. SZA took over the show, warming us up with her crisp vocals as she did “Love Galore,” “Broken Clocks” and “The Weekend.” A quick crowd scan shows their fan bases are split down the middle, equally excited to see them do songs together and apart.

When Lamar came back, he went straight into hater mode. He has boasted about being Drake’s “biggest hater,” and doing all six minutes and 24 seconds of “Euphoria” was undoubtedly a choice. Again, Lamar is so calculated, you wonder if adding this diss after their beef has quieted down was to keep that same energy. “Euphoria” felt like a Wrestlemania entrance, with pyro and fireworks flying after Lamar hit certain bars. He blasted “Crodie” on the screen, Toronto slang he adopted to try and get on Drake’s nerves.

After “Euphoria,” Lamar went back into GNX songs. He brought Compton to Arlington with “Hey Now,” featuring lockstep choreography. “Reincarnated” was minimal, with arresting imagery of his dancers sitting on steps, contemplating his words of wisdom. Lamar fans were pleased he married his newer material into his older songs, performing favorites “Humble” and “Swimming Pools (Drank).” He added a new verse to Baby Keem’s “Family Ties” and did a different version of "m.A.A.d city," mashing it up with Anita Baker’s “Sweet Love.”

Regarding cameras capturing their performance style, stage design and color schemes, Lamar and SZA used them differently. He was more simplistic and grey, the fierce MC, facing the camera and rapping until his voice cracked. Hers was full of earthy tones and a nature aesthetic with a love of bugs. SZA would calm the mood after Lamar got our adrenaline pumping, seen in SZA coming back with her set list that combined the Lana era with SOS era: “Scorsese Baby Daddy,” a blend of “F2F” / “Garden (Say It Like Dat),” “Kitchen,” “Blind,” “Forgiveless” and “Low.”

When Lamar and SZA performed songs together, they blended their strengths beautifully. You could sense them having fun with their lyrics. “All the Stars” left fans in awe, as both did their parts while rising platforms lifted them physically closer to the stars.

On Lamar’s third go-around, he reminds us why he’s king. His pride for Los Angeles is felt in “Dodger Blue” and “Peekaboo,” making the L.A. transplants proud. Later, he performed his verse on Future’s “Like That,” the verse that kicked off the whole Drake battle, and his verse on Playboi Carti’s “Good Credit” that contains a slick double entrende line at Luka: "Say Kenny been heavy out West and I carry the weight, I'm Luka Dončić.” Casual rap fans might’ve missed that he performed “Poetic Justice,” a song that features Drake, cutting out his verse.

Was Lamar hating on the Mavericks organization for trading Luka? He is a proud Laker fan after all. Was “Poetic Justice” another nail in the OVO coffin? For fans, there's no end to deciphering his lyrics.

By SZA’s return, you had to applaud the pacing of this show. These are two artists with boundless creativity, told through their choice of visual components. Kendrick chose vintage family photos and an urban landscape to connect us to his lyrics. SZA shared her admiration for insects by secluding us in forests and fields. Her metaphors extended to dancers dressed as praying mantises, mounting a giant ant like it was a mechanical bull and her transformation into a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis during “Crybaby.” SZA, the butterfly, was suspended in the air and soared through space, free of the toxic relationships that tethered her to Earth.

Lamar returned to do his unreleased song, nicknamed “Bodies” by fans, before unleashing “TV Off” again. It was a genius move to split “TV Off” into two parts (the first portion of the song played earlier in the evening). At the apex of the song, where the “Mustard!” yell drops, Lamar was at center stage. When the song hit, his dancers ran around him as the stadium screamed “Mustaaaaaaaaaard!” Those mustard-bottle costume-wearing fans are probably losing it.

Then, the song we’ve all been waiting for. In one last deposition clip, the lawyer is lobbing the release dates of Lamar’s diss tracks at Drake. “I don’t keep up with dates,” he said.

“OK, does this ring a bell? Drop, drop, drop,” the lawyer asks, referencing Drake’s adlib from “Family Matters.” Then, "Psst, I see dead people."

You’d expect Lamar to perform “Not Like Us,” delivering it with precision as he has done countless times before. But at this point, the hype behind the diss has died down. It has turned into 2Pac’s “Hit Em Up” or Drake’s “Back to Back” level of infamy, a song that lights up a party when everyone screams the “A-minor” line, but won’t instill any new hatred towards your foe.

Lamar could have ended the show there. Instead, he turned his hatred into love. Lamar and SZA did “Luther,” one final duet before expressing their mutual respect. They told us to make some noise for them both. It’s sweet that Lamar calls SZA by her first name, Solana.

Their song “Gloria” was the send-off. Fifty songs later, Kendrick and SZA returned to the GNX on stage. He opened the door for SZA to ride shotgun. The fans were still reeling before he got into the driver’s seat. Do they have it in them for an encore?

“Dallas! Until next time, we ride on,” he said as they sank back into the stage.

The GNX can hit 60 mph from a standstill in 4.7 seconds. How far is L.A. from Dallas?