Kendrick Lamar & SZA review – a pyrotechnic party of dark and light

Hampden Park, Glasgow
He’s icy, she’s all sunshine – but the rapper and R&B star’s talents prove perfectly complementary in a historic two-hander

He’s icy and controlled, she’s a beam of sunshine. Kendrick Lamar and SZA’s Grand National stadium tour has already broken records as the biggest co-headline tour in history, and they’ve still got five months left on the road. This yin-yang spectacle is a rare chance for fans to see the world’s most influential figures in rap and R&B in one night, and to bask in their chemistry as storied collaborators.

Their sets weave together over three hours, welcoming us first into Lamar’s incisive (and enjoyably irritable) state-of-the-artform address, filmed austerely in black and white, before blossoming into full colour for SZA’s tactile songwriting about exes, bad habits and heart-leaping, interplanetary hope. The contrast is abrupt but high-energy, and when they overlap for duets, everything changes again: Lamar permits himself a broad grin as SZA circles him, looking very much in charge, during the seductive back and forth of Luther.

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Continue ReadingKendrick Lamar & SZA review – a pyrotechnic party of dark and light

Seeking bulldozer drivers to demolish Gaza: how a genocide is being outsourced | Arwa Mahdawi

The systematic destruction of Gaza is hardly a secret. Now, the IDF is posting Facebook ads for bulldozer operators to help demolish the strip

Omer Bartov is an Israeli-American historian and one of the foremost scholars on genocide in the world. He has spent over 25 years teaching a class on the subject. He deals with atrocities for a living, analyzing some of the very worst things that human beings are capable of. And yet even Bartov has said he can’t bear looking at some of the excruciating images coming out of Gaza any more.

What’s happening, Bartov says, is unprecedented in the 21st century. “I don’t know of any comparable situation. Recent estimates show that about 70% of the structures in Gaza are either completely destroyed or severely damaged,” Bartov says. “The argument that the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] is conducting a war in Gaza is simply cynical, there is no war in Gaza. What the IDF is doing in Gaza is demolishing it. Hundreds of buildings are being bulldozed every week. This is not a secret, but mainstream media coverage has been insufficient.”

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Continue ReadingSeeking bulldozer drivers to demolish Gaza: how a genocide is being outsourced | Arwa Mahdawi

Horner’s Red Bull exit: the end of an era that will be felt across Formula One grid | Giles Richards

Departure now leaves a question mark about the next chapter of one of the sport’s extraordinary success stories

The removal of Christian Horner from his post as team principal at Red Bull represents both the end of an era in Formula One and, in the short term, the most turbulent period in the team’s history. It carries an import that will be felt right across the sport, a significance in how it played out and what happens next as the team Horner built and led to such enormous success faces an uncertain future.

Horner has been at Red Bull since the team was formed in 2005 from the ashes of Jaguar, a team in no little disarray when Red Bull bought it. Horner was at the helm as it was transformed from an operation of 450 personnel, without so much as a win to their name, to one of 1,500 today that has won eight drivers’ titles and six constructors’ championships, and is one of the most extraordinary success stories in F1 history.

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Continue ReadingHorner’s Red Bull exit: the end of an era that will be felt across Formula One grid | Giles Richards

Blair Kinghorn a doubt for Australia Test series as Andy Farrell urges Lions to improve

  • Hugo Keenan likely Test replacement for Kinghorn

  • Farrell: ‘We are doing well in certain aspects’

The British & Irish Lions are facing renewed injury uncertainty at full-back for the first Test in Brisbane on Saturday week. Having already lost Elliot Daly there are now doubts over Blair Kinghorn’s availability for the Test series after the Scotland player limped off in the first half of the Lions’ 36-24 victory over the Brumbies.

Kinghorn, widely expected to start at 15 against the Wallabies, lasted just 25 minutes before leaving the field and the Lions are now awaiting an update further on the injury’s severity. “He got a bang on the knee,” said the Lions head coach, Andy Farrell. “He carried on for quite a bit but there was no need to keep him going.”

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Continue ReadingBlair Kinghorn a doubt for Australia Test series as Andy Farrell urges Lions to improve