Despite the cheers that erupted from the antsy Key Club crowd, Kendrick Lamar walked onstage last night like the underdog fighter in a championship boxing match. Planting himself squarely in the center of the stage, he bowed his head, raised one fist and began the song he claims best explains him, “The Heart Pt. 2.”

In November, I met Kendrick Lamar at the Key Club during a sold-out J.Cole show. Just four days earlier, Dr. Dre had told Power 106’s morning show that he wanted to work with the young Compton rapper, but Lamar was inconspicuous, standing against the far back wall. Later that night, I posted on my Twitter: “Not long till Kendrick’s in Cole’s place.”

From the back of the club to headlining his own sold-out show in three months seems a rapid ascent, until you consider the twenty-three year old Lamar’s been waiting for over seven years. Last night his show was so well rehearsed, it seemed as if he’d been working towards this moment his whole life.

Lamar and fellow rapper ScHoolboy Q, acting as hypeman, responded to each other’s every eye blink. As choreographed as a dance but easy as a stroll, they two-stepped, bounced, and cooked through some of Lamar’s most well known songs. Lamar’s self-proclaimed “Negro spiritual,” “P&P,” had him almost flying off into the audience. The crowd chanted along with his mountaintop anthem, “I Do This.” Ending his freestyle over Kanye West’s wonky, neck-breaking track “Monster,” with “Bitch, I think I’m Tupac,” his DJ launched into Los Angeles’ adopted son’s “California Love.”

That was just the beginning of this family affair. The born-n-raised in Compton DJ Quik was in the VIP section. Jay Rock and Ab-Soul, other members of TopDawg Entertainment, made appearances, as did L.A. rappers Dom Kennedy and Skeme. Murs, longtime supporter of underground talent, joined Lamar in morphing the pillow-soft synths of “She Needs Me” into A Tribe Called Quest’s moseying “Bonita Applebaum.” Out-of-town students also in the new school—J.Cole, the Jay Z protégé Lamar’s been working with, and Big Sean, who was signed by Kanye West—were in attendance as well, to the audience’s roaring approval.

Smartly pacing himself, Lamar planned breaks from the songs that required furious energy. For “Ignorance is Bliss,” he dipped forward so low it was almost like he was kissing the lip of the stage. Ever the actors, ScHoolboy Q lit a blunt and followed Lamar, exhaling great puffs of smoke into his face as the nonsmoking Lamar’s “H.O.C. (High Off Contact)” played; they then pretended to sit inside a “car” comprised of chairs for Q’s “#BETiGOTSUMWEED.”

But the most unusual (for a rapper) and truest (for a rapper who wrenches his chest open as willingly as Kendrick Lamar) interlude was an extended scene between his parents. Imitating his mother doing the Tootsie Roll to Tupac’s “Hail Mary,” or his father swaying to the Isley Brother’s “Choosey Lover,” he revealed his earliest musical influences. But, repeatedly breaking out of character to remind the audience, “I’m six years old,” he played out an exchange that, taken beyond its humorous surface, displayed the kind of seeds planted in his most receptive years.

With muscles straining his shirtsleeves, Dr. Dre ended the show with a bang. But it was hard to not find more excitement in knowing Lamar’s own father was there, watching. On “Wanna Be Heard,” Lamar raps, “My pops got a different approach/Yeah, he believe, but he always question when Ima drop my debut cd … ‘I ain’t trying to kill your confidence or forcing you to quit, I just wanna hear you heard.’” He is now.

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