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Watch Kendrick Lamar save the Grammys with a transcendent performance

He might not have won the evening’s biggest awards, but Kendrick Lamar stole the show.

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Ramon Ramirez

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On a Grammy night that made time to showcase the runaway Broadway success of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton, it was rapper Kendrick Lamar who stunned with transcendent musical theater. 

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But when it came time for the actual, prime-time awards—album of the year and song of the year—mainstream heroes Ed Sheeran (“Thinking Out Loud”) and Taylor Swift (1989) elbowed Lamar from the frame to claim the trophies.  

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The performance of To Pimp a Butterfly standouts “The Blacker the Berry” and “Alright” was electric and shocked social media with its prison industrial complex-spotlighting flare of trembling raps from the Compton, California, rapper. He donned handcuffs as his sax player blared from inside a jail cell. Shimmering in white against a black backdrop, the continent of Africa—with “Compton” stenciled in the center—punctuated the spectacle’s baseline intent: Lamar was here to enlighten. 

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“Isn’t a song worth more than a penny?” asked National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences President Neil Portnow, standing alongside rapper Common. It was an awkwardly direct dig at streaming music—and the night’s second most political moment.

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Elsewhere, Justin Bieber disturbed with a star-crossed mustache and indulged Skrillex’s rock roots.

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Lady Gaga paid tribute to the late David Bowie with an ample medley of his greatest hits, while the Eagles, B.B. King, Maurice White, and Lemmy Kilmister enjoyed celeb-loaded homages. (Lemmy’s featured Alice Cooper, Johnny Depp, and Joe Perry’s sideband Hollywood Vampires kicking “Ace of Spades,” and it was boldly ridiculous.)

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Beyond the forced Grammy moments and tributes, viral “All About That Bass” YouTube goddess Meghan Trainer took home best new artist honors; Adele sang off-key; and Dave Grohl enjoyed the procedural Vegas-like structure of Lionel Richie’s tribute. 

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But, perhaps most curiously, one particularly high-profile billed guest (no, not Rihanna, who publicly canceled a Grammy performance despite making the red carpet) was missing from the moment.

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Pitbull made it out to perform with a dazzling Sofia Vergara after the awards all went to pop magnets, quelling the Web’s restlessness once and for all.

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Screengrab via CBS.com

 
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