Kendrick Lamar wrote the unofficial anthem of the Black Lives Matter movement yet, in charged times, the rap star found he could be mellow while staying salient.
Lamar, whose live schedule has been surprisingly sparse since he triumphed at the Grammy Awards in February, on Saturday headlined the inaugural Panorama festival, a New York expansion by promoters of Coachella in California.
The hip-hop star has won acclaim for dramatic live performances. At the Grammys, he entered as a prisoner chained to fellow African American men and, earlier at the Black Entertainment Television Awards, rapped atop a vandalized police car.
Yet in a tense summer -- marked by a slew of police shootings of African Americans, vigilante killings of cops, mass attacks worldwide and a nasty-toned US election -- Lamar emphasized the fundamentally peaceful message of "Alright," his song embraced by the Black Lives Matter protest movement.
"We're going to celebrate life. We're going to celebrate our life, we're going to celebrate the life of the victims that passed these last three weeks all around the world," Lamar said to applause.
In a business where asking the crowd to make noise is one of the biggest cliches, the 29-year-old rapper instead worked his voice down to a whisper before opening "Alright," a single overhead spotlight following him.
Lamar has confounded expectations for a hip-hop artist, with much of his Grammy-winning album "To Pimp a Butterfly" more jazz than rap, and he played Panorama with a live band.
If Lamar chose not to hammer the crowd with messages, he offered more subtle commentary with an overhead slideshow of cultural figures from Muhammad Ali to Prince to Ronald and Nancy Reagan.
As Lamar sang his chill "Bitch, Don't Kill My Vibe," the screen ironically switched to a viral video of Bill O'Reilly, now a popular commentator on right-leaning Fox News, in an earlier role in which he becomes enraged over a teleprompter problem.
The Southern California rapper later went to "i," his ode to self-worth, as the screen switched to a good-humored Barack Obama -- a professed fan of Lamar -- dancing with television host Ellen DeGeneres during his first presidential run.
The Panorama festival on New York's Randalls Island is the latest in a fast-growing calendar of festivals, which have increasingly become a rite of passage for young North Americans and a lucrative revenue stream for the music industry.
With the presidential campaign in full swing, volunteers registered fans to vote yet, like Lamar, most artists stayed away from overt political advocacy.
One exception was indie rockers Arcade Fire, the headliners Friday, whose frontman Win Butler denounced Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump as a racist and vowed the United States would never elect him.
"We have to... stick together," Butler told the crowd as he shouted, "Black Lives Matter!"
Feminist punk pioneer Kathleen Hanna also shared social commentary as she performed Saturday with her high-decibel project The Julie Ruin, charging that she was too often invited to appearances as a "token" who is paid less than men.
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Kendrick Lamar took the main stage at the inaugural Panorama festival (an expansion by promoters of Coachella in Californi) in New York City to the biggest crowd Randall's Island has seen this weekend.
Near the end of the set, Lamar took time to recognize the string of police shootings and brutality cases in recent months
Emphasizing the fundamentally peaceful message of "Alright," a song embraced by the Black Lives Matter protest movement, Lamar offered subtle commentary with an overhead slideshow of cultural figures from Muhammad Ali to Prince to Ronald and Nancy Reagan during his show.
