Kendrick always takes audience participation to new levels, and his show last night at Maryland’s Sweetlife Festival was no exception. The rapper, who’s been on a high since To Pimp A Butterfly dropped, invited a few fans on stage to take over for him on the song “m.A.A.d city.”
“I want to go back to day one and see who’s been rocking with me,” the Compton-native said to the crowd. But they can only join him on one condition: “They gotta know every single word to ‘m.A.A.d city.'”
The first person to try, festival co-founder Jonathan Neman, stumbled on the first verse and was booed off stage while Kendrick shouted “nahhhhh.” It was an epic fail. An embarrassment to the fandom. But just as it seemed all hope was lost Kendrick called a female fan named Ayanna to the stage, and what happened next is the stuff of legend.
She stepped on stage as a timid girl, and stepped off as a beast. Even with her voice slowly giving out, I say she completely owned the song, getting the crowd hyped and she spat one of Compton’s finest tunes to perfection.
As for Kendrick’s assessment, at the end of the performance he hugged her before saying, “That’s what I’m talking about…. She killed that s**t.”
Check the video above (The magic starts at ~5:15).
