The Score | Rap Remixed at the National Symphony

Tickets sold out in just minutes after the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts announced in late September that rapper Kendrick Lamar would perform with the National Symphony Orchestra this fall. For the October 19 show, NSO Principal Pops Conductor Steven Reineke led an orchestral version of Lamar’s 2015 critically praised album To Pimp a Butterfly, featuring the NSO Pops and Lamar’s own band. The orchestral remix was not the NSO’s first time with a rapper; in 2013, the orchestra joined Nas to perform that artist’s 1994 Illmatic album. In a pre-concert interview at Washington, D.C. broadcaster WTOP, Reineke said, “A few years ago I realized there’s one genre of music that’s very important in American culture that we have never worked with … and that is hip-hop.” Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly addresses issues including depression, racism, and celebrity culture.