Osheaga Saturday highlights (Kendrick Lamar, Weezer, St. Vincent and more)

Osheaga’s second day featured an incredibly eclectic mix of acts, including a highly-anticipated headlining set from Kendrick Lamar, the futuristic space-rock of St. Vincent, the ethereal chamber-pop of Patrick Watson, and much more.

Below are our highlights of the Saturday Osheaga acts. Stay tuned for our interviews from the festival in the coming days. Our photos and reviews from Friday, including Florence and the Machine and FKA Twigs are here.

St. Vincent

St. Vincent’s mid-afternoon set was the most dynamic of the day, filled with the futuristic-sounding material from last year’s incredible self-titled LP, coupled with choreographed stage moves that put the moonwalk to shame.

Annie Clark is one of the best current guitarists in rock today, and her blistering bursts of guitar work drew rounds of well-deserved cheers from the enthusiastic crowd. On a musical and showmanship level, this was easily one of the top performances of the festival so far.

Bihop Nehru

New York rapper Bishop Nehru is only eighteen, but has already collaborated with MF Doom for the NehruvianDoom LP, and was just signed to Nas’ Mass Appeal Records. He drew a respectable crowd of young, herbal smokers to his side-stage set, which demonstrated his back-to-basics approach to hip-hop, focusing on personal emotions and lyrical dexterity. Check back for our interview with Bishop in the coming days.

Alvvays

Toronto’s Alvvays delivered a refreshing stream of fizzy indie-pop, perfectly suited for an outdoor festival stage. The smiles-per-crowd-member ratio seemed highest during Alvvays than in any other set of the day, a great reflection of how far the band has come in such a sort time.

Nas

Hip hop royalty Nas drew an enormous crowd to the Green Stage, while also holding the honor of the act that festival security were the most amped to see. When a security guard acts as a pre-show hype man to rile up the crowd, you know excitement is running high, and Nas did not disappoint.

Drawing primarily from his classic debut, 1994’s Illmatic, “N.Y. State of Mind,” “Life’s A Bitch,” and “The World is Yours,” were all dropped back-to-back, with the audience bellowing back the iconic “I never sleep, cause sleep is the cousin of death,” credo from “N.Y. State of Mind.”

Keeping it firmly old-school, Nas gave an extended shout-out to cassette tapes, which likely went over the heads of the Tumblr kids in the crowd, but was a firm declaration of his role in the glory days of hip hop.

Patrick Watson

Patrick Watson took this huge hometown festival slot seriously, incorporating a brass section and choir to flesh out the group’s already dynamic sound even further. The band had a number of GoPro cameras set up on various instruments and mic stands that were transmitted to the massive screens bookmarking the stage, allowing for some extreme facial close ups throughout the set. However, Watson’s set wasn’t entirely a cacophony of sights and sounds; the acoustic “Words in the Fire,” was perhaps as intimate as one can get on a festival stage of this size.

Weezer

Weezer have their festival sets paired down to a science at this point, running through their greatest hits in an efficient, if workmanlike manner. Drummer Patrick Wilson was unexpectedly absent from this show, replaced by a fill-in who was strangely never introduced to the crowd. Perhaps Cuomo and co. assumed the casual fans wouldn’t notice, but us Weezer diehards deserve an answer!

A couple of welcome tracks off last year’s Everything Will Be All Right in the End LP added some excitement amidst a set-list of Weezer standards, but it was appearances by two of Rivers’ children that really seemed to liven up the crowd (and the band). Rivers’ daughter joined the band on keyboard for “Perfect Situation,” and his son jammed out on an inflatable guitar for “Back to the Shack.” Hopefully Rivers is grooming them more towards Pinkerton than “Beverly Hills,” but time will tell.

Kendrick Lamar

Kendrick Lamar‘s headlining performance drew a massive crowd to the main-stage, filled with a crowd eager to sing along and party to Lamar’s often dark tracks, including “Swimming Pools,” and “Bitch Don’t Kill My Vibe,” the latter of which found the crowd basically drowning out the P.A.

Lamar’s control of the audience was absolute during his 90-minute set, enabling a crowd numbering in the tens of thousands to follow his rapid-fire tales of growing up in Compton, without any of the usual crowd-baiting tactics often seen in hip hop shows.

Deciding to focus almost entirely on his breakthrough LP, 2012’s Good Kid, M.A.A.D City, Lamar only played three tracks of 2015’s nearly universally-praised To Pimp A Butterfly. Whether the arrangements were to tricky to reproduce live, or the new tracks too dense for a festival-crowd looking to party, it was somewhat of a surprising choice for an artist who seems to eschew most industry conventions.

The highlight of the night was the appearance of Mos Def for “King Kunta,” and “Alright,” which saw the famed MC dancing around the stage and mouthing the words to both tracks, before Lamar eventually coerced him into adding a few lines to “Alright,” to his (and the crowd’s) delight.

As a sheer demonstration of Lamar’s ability to work a crowd this large, the set was a total knockout; hopefully he can incorporate more of his new channelling material into the set on his next run through.