Breaking records as the biggest co-headline tour in history, Kendrick Lamar and SZA and their respective support, production and creative teams united in the name of hip-hop and R&B to descend on venues across the globe with a stadium-sized spectacle befitting the duo’s respective back catalogues.
Behind the scenes, Tour Director, Christian Coffey of Coffey Black and Production Manager, Bryan Scheckel headed up the production for the Kendrick side. Helping them achieve the feat of staging a three-hour show across multiple territories was a collection of technical suppliers including: Upstaging (lighting), TAIT (staging), G2 Structures (roof), Strictly FX (special effects and pyrotechnics), Clair Global (audio), Screenworks and Vis-A-Vis (video). “It’s the largest tour I’ve ever done,” Coffey said, reflecting on his time spent chasing the artist around the globe since 2022. “Working with an artist like Kendrick challenges me because he’s a consummate professional. It makes us put our best foot forward. We’ve worked so hard to get here, it’s so rewarding.”
The environment on tour is important to the tour director; this is clear with the team both he and Scheckel assembled – many of them handpicked from Childish Gambino’s New World Tour and Kendrick Lamar’s The Big Steppers Tour. “We work consistently with many people, which allows us to operate with a shorter lead time. The most important thing is, we know how to talk to each other, so we can cut to the chase,” Coffey explained. “I love Bryan to death. He works for Coffey Black, and I’ve worked with him nonstop since 2018. We have a great relationship, and I’m glad to work with him.”
Coffey explained to TPi how the GNX Tour has taught him to streamline the stadium tour process. With tour rehearsals starting almost immediately after Kendrick Lamar’s Apple Music Super Bowl Halftime Show, it was down to Coffey and Scheckel to lay out as much of the groundwork as possible before hitting the roads two months later.
“We were able to tee up as much as we could, preparing our vendors for what was to come, and hold onto as much kit as we thought we needed at the start,” Scheckel recalled. “Christian and I are lucky to work with the teams that we do; it’s been a lot of the same players on a couple of projects we’ve worked on together, and it has made us this unit that goes from one tour to another.”
With such little lead time to prepare the tour, Scheckel praised Kendrick for his “vision and determination”, which led to no late changes. Scheckel oversaw the deployment of 40 trucks for the run, but despite it being the production manager’s first stadium tour, he drew knowledge from working on smaller shows. “I like to view it as the same elements that exist in every single show, whether you’re playing the 9:30 Club or Wembley Stadium, you should have the same efforts and ethos behind both,” he said. “The statistics and records we’re breaking are cool, but the best part of being involved is feeling like you’re doing something important, not just for the people at the show, but culturally. It feels way bigger than myself, and that is a really cool thing to be a part of.”
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Words: Alicia Pollitt
Photos courtesy of pgLang by Greg Noire
