For years, Drake and Kendrick Lamar’s careers have been moving in parallel – an almost too tidy contrast of rappers at the top of their game and on top of the charts. Now you can add one more overlapping circle to their Venn diagram: Kendrick has his own version of OVO Fest.
This summer, TDE: The Championship Tour comes to OVO Fest’s home court, Budweiser Stage, for a showcase of Top Dawg Entertainment’s roster, headlined by Kendrick. The show also features his suddenly surging teammates, including SZA, whose fantastic Ctrl fell just a couple of notches below #1 Kendrick’s DAMN. on our best albums of 2017 list, plus Schoolboy Q, Jay Rock, Ab-Soul, SIR, Lance Skiiiwalker and more to be announced. That’s a solid-as-hell front-to-back hip-hop and R&B lineup by any measure, even if the label didn’t have to get too creative putting it together.
TDE artists have been overlapping on a number of songs lately, which is no surprise considering Kendrick and TDE CEO Anthony “Top Dawg” Tiffith are co-curating the upcoming Black Panther soundtrack. So call it synergy if you want, but this thing is likely to sell-out fast.
If TDE really is taking notes from OVO Fest and a handful of other hip-hop tours that follow its format, there are likely to be some surprises, too.
June 12 at Budweiser Stage (909 Lake Shore West), doors 6:30 pm. $39.50-$175. ticketmaster.ca.
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