Last year, after almost a decade on the air, Stephen Colbert chose to close his iconic The Colbert Report with a performance by Kendrick Lamar. Kendrick shocked the audience with the performance of an entirely new piece of spine-chilling music. The track was simply credited as Untitled and fans waited for an official release that never came. Nine months later and Stephen Colbert has shrugged off the Bill O’Reilly parody to replace David Letterman as the host of the Late Show.
Given the overwhelming response to Kendrick’s performance, it’s little surprise that Colbert has enlisted the Compton native for the second episode of the Late Show. Whilst it’s maybe disappointing that K-Dot didn’t opt for another smouldering original, he still more than delivered with a To Pimp A Butterfly medley. Kendrick manages to capture the feeling of the album even in the live performance. He lends a slam poetry feel to Momma, with some long-empty silences. The standout track is unsurprisingly King Kunta, in which Kendrick channels James Brown with a “huhhh” that emphasizes the jazz undertones. Colbert has already set the musical benchmark for his new format very high, assembling Mavis Staples, Ben Folds, Brittany Howard, Buddy Guy for a rendition of Everyday People in his first episode.